With Court Ruling, Fan Subtitles Officially Copyright Infringement In Sweden
from the sadface dept
Several years ago, in an unfortunate display of police bending the knee to the copyright industries, Swedish law enforcement raided the offices of Undertexter, a site chiefly dedicated to fan translations for subtitles of films. While these fan translations have been handcuffed to film piracy -- mostly through the messaging efforts of film and television content producers -- the raid registered as an extreme escalation in the battle on subtitles. Most folks have a hard time understanding why such action was taken, with most fan translations only being useful due to the content makers underserving parts of the earth that speak a variety of languages. These fan translations mostly open up those markets for makers of movies and television who have otherwise chosen not to translate their work into the relevant languages.
For its part, Undertexter vowed to fight the legal action, proclaiming its work non-infringing by virtue of serving up mere dialog translations.
Undertexter.se has had a police raid this morning (July 9) and servers and computers have been seized, and therefore, the site is down. We who work on the site don't consider an interpretation of dialog to be something illegal, especially not when sharing it for free. Henrik Pontén [the copyright industry's primary henchman in Sweden], who is behind the raid, disagrees. Sorry Hollywood, this was the totally wrong card to play. We will never surrender. [...] We must do everything in our power to stop these anti-pirates. [...]
Well, the fight is now over and, unfortunately, the man behind Undertexter has been convicted of copyright infringement.
The Attunda District Court sentenced the now 32-year-old operator to probation. In addition, he has to pay 217,000 Swedish Kroner ($27,000), which will be taken from the advertising and donation revenues he collected through the site.
While there were millions of subtitles available on Undertexter, only 74 movies were referenced by the prosecution. These were carefully selected to ensure a strong case it seems, as many of the titles weren’t commercially available in Sweden at the time.
During the trial, the defense had argued that the fan-made subtitles are not infringing since movies are made up of video and sound, with subtitles being an extra. However, the court disagreed with this line of reasoning, the verdict shows.
What ultimately happened here is that Undertexter had translations for a few films available legitimately in Sweden and the prosecution proceeded to essentially pretend like those films were the whole story. The reality is that sites like Undertexter are primarily useful because those legitimate options, including the relevant language translations, are not available. Sites like this are used by many who buy movies and television and then apply the fan-subs afterwards. Customers who would, in other words, not be able to be customers if not for the fan-subs. The piracy portion of these subtitles is incidental to the mission, in other words, but the copyright industries in Sweden claimed that piracy was really the whole point.
On the other hand, one wonders exactly how much Swedish tax money was spent to bring a guy who ran a subtitle site to the tune of probation and $27,000? Is this really the best use of everyone's time?
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Filed Under: copyright, fans, subtitles, sweden
Companies: undertexter
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Only one thing to do then
Become fluent enough in every language you might run across such that you are able to translate on the fly and enjoy movies from different areas that would otherwise be incomprehensible to you. It's not like learning new languages is hard or anything, so clearly the people making use of fan subtitles are merely lazy criminals engaging in a practice that causes untold damage to the film industry.
... or I suppose you could just ignore any movies in languages you don't know. That's might be cheaper, and as the oft said saying goes, 'If you don't like/know the terms/languages, do without', so I'm sure the industry will be quite content with people going that route.
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Re: Only one thing to do then
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What? What does the fact that some studios are willing to translate some films to another language in order to serve another market have to do with the fact that, as subtitle sites like this demonstrated, most of the time they don't do that since they don't feel the market in question is large enough to bother?
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Re: Re: Re: Only one thing to do then
I thought I was being snarky about how obvious it was that the movie companies seem to ignore foreign markets unless it suits them. I can't, for the life of me, think of how it works, so I'm sorry.
I was trying to laugh at the movie companies, and ended up dumping sand on my own foot.
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Re: Re: Only one thing to do then
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Med domstolsregleringen, Fläktens undertexter Officiellt upphovsrättsintrång i Sverige
För flera år sedan, i en olycklig polisvisning som knäböjde knäet till upphovsrättsindustrin, slogs den svenska brottsbekämpningen undertexterens kontor, en plats som främst ägde rum till fanöversättningar för filmtexter. Medan dessa fläktöversättningar har handbojsats till filmpiracy - mestadels genom film- och tv-innehållsproducenternas meddelandehantering - registrerades raid som en extrem eskalering i slaget om undertexter. De flesta människor har svårt att förstå varför en sådan åtgärd togs, med de flesta fläktöversättningar är endast användbara på grund av innehållsskaparna som underskrider delar av jorden som talar en mängd olika språk. Dessa fläktöversättningar öppnar mestadels de marknaderna för film- och tv-tillverkare som annars har valt att inte översätta sitt arbete till relevanta språk.
För sin del lovade Undertexter att bekämpa den rättsliga åtgärden och förklarade sitt arbete icke-kränkande genom att tjäna upp bara dialogrörelser.
Nå är kampen nu över och tyvärr har mannen bakom Undertexter dömts för upphovsrättsintrång.
Vad som till sist hände här är att Undertexter hade översättningar för några filmer som lagligen finns i Sverige och åtalet fortsatte att väsentligen låtsas som om filmerna var hela historien. Verkligheten är att webbplatser som Undertexter är främst användbara eftersom de legitima alternativen, inklusive relevanta språköversättningar, inte är tillgängliga. Sidor som detta används av många som köper filmer och tv och sedan tillämpar fan-subs efteråt. Kunder som med andra ord inte kunde vara kunder om inte för fan-subs. Piratkopieringsdelen av dessa undertexter är oavsiktlig för uppdraget, med andra ord, men upphovsrättsbranschen i Sverige hävdade att piratkopiering verkligen var hela punkten.
Å andra sidan undrar man exakt hur mycket svenska skattepengar spenderades för att få en kille som körde en undertextsplats till låneprov och 27 000 dollar? Är detta verkligen den bästa användningen av allas tid?
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Re: Med domstolsregleringen, Fläktens undertexter Officiellt upphovsrättsintrång i Sverige
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Re: Re: Med domstolsregleringen, Fläktens undertexter Officiellt upphovsrättsintrång i Sverige
Dirty rotten pirate Google
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YAY! Justice triumphs again!
Sheesh. First paragraph has same slimy slant as ever here: "open up those markets for makers of movies and television who have otherwise chosen not to translate their work into the relevant languages." -- By which you mean allow non-paying pirates to wallow in entertainments that the owners have controlled, for whatever reason, as is their Right, to not market there.
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Re: YAY! Justice triumphs again!
"In addition, he has to pay 217,000 Swedish Kroner ($27,000), which will be taken from the **advertising and donation revenues he collected through the site.**" -- And yet you pirates claim there's no money gained from infringement. Just wrong and lying all round.
Another good solid victory for productive people over pirates. YAY!
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Is Techdirt shortening the limit from TOR yet more? Because two first attempts didn't work: the above right in.
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Secondly, the vast majority of films these fan-translations were being offered for were things that these producers DIDN'T STAND TO GAIN MONEY FROM because the films weren't localized, as stated in the article. It is probable that many of the fan translations they targeted were posted during a time the 74 movies mentioned had no market there!
Thirdly, these producers you feel so sorry for aren't getting paid for subtitles, they are getting paid for the end product of the film. A work of audiovisual media. The subtitles are an ancillary service offered for the convenience of those who don't understand the offered language and the hearing impared. Unless you are stating that the subtitles alone amount to an experience that utterly replaces the film itself the argument seems invalid, since piracy of the film itself is a separate issue. Unless these producers you are sympathetic towards are charging strictly for the translations, they are not even in a competing market, and the act of subtitling a foreign movie could arguably under any proper fair use distinction be considered transformative and non-competing.
FOURTHLY, I am sick and tired of this mentality that media can be freely denied to entire markets of people, often entire countries or even continents on the whims of the people who made it. As a writer and independant business owner, as well as an avid consumer of manga, anime and live japanese television, I can confidently say if you do not want to adaquitely serve an area, you have no right to bitch when someone else does it for you. If you want to POORLY service an area, don't bitch when someone else does it better than you. Fan translation efforts are the only legitimate way for me to actually experience a lot of foreign media I enjoy because the home market doesn't think it worth trying to serve me as a customer.
Finally, while you are least likely to accept this particular argument, if you can't stand not having complete 100% control over your creative work, be it film, photography, illustration, animation, music or whatever, your best bet is to never show it to the public. The idea that you as the creator can dictate who in the world is worthy of trying to enjoy your creative work is not only selfish and egotistical, it is logistically impossible and frankly batshit insane.
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Re: YAY! Justice triumphs again!
That's funny because you didn't.
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What on earth was the court's reasoning?
Will sites like IMDb be in danger of being sued for having quotes now?
Hey, Monty Python & the Holy Grail had an option on the DVD to play it with subtitles taken from Henry IV.
Perhaps all subtitlers should do that from now on, create subtitles that tell a completely different story from what's happening on screen. Like the Downfall parodies.
I'd like to see a court label THOSE subtitle files as infringing.
...But yeah, back on topic, could someone clarify for me, in English, not Swedish, how the court came to the conclusion that translating the language used in a movie in such a way that the translation can be used as subtitles, caused an actual loss of opportunity for profit to the copyright owner?
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Re: What on earth was the court's reasoning?
I think that the movie companies don't think importing DVD's from outside your region is legal, either. After all, DVD regions are, apparently, still a thing?
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Re: What on earth was the court's reasoning?
Did they come to that conclusion? The article didn't say that, and (in most countries) it doesn't need to be shown to prove copyright infringement. Most countries also don't have the level of fair-use protections the US does.
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Netflix, Amazon ....
When will the content providers learn that customers will pay when they get what the customers want, not what the content providers want to push?
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I mean, let me really, really get this straight: if the viewers of these movies decided not to get the fan translations and instead decided to learn how to speak English as a second language, then imported the raw movies to enjoy them in that second language, *it is the viewers who are in the moral wrong and the imports should be banned in order to appease the pathetic solipsism of the copyright holder who doesn't want his movie to even be translated within the privacy of the viewers' own minds?*
Because there is no difference there.
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Unable to translate the above language
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Level Achieved
Short-sighted, moron badge awarded.
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Re:
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How DARE you offer a service we are unwilling to offer to consumers.
How DARE you offer them for free!
How DARE you steal imaginary money from us that we might someday make when we finally get around to thinking about maybe we should offer subtitles.
But then one only needs to look at the rental version of "Up" where the main character had a hearing aid & they left off subtitles for the hearing impaired because it MIGHT have hurt their retail sales. Because everyone willing to pay the small fee for RedBox is totally going to spend 30x's the price to 'earn' the right to be treated like someone worthy of being acknowledged.
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Shouldn't there have been lawsuits filed over not providing for the hearing impaired, or have they managed to loophole themselves out of caring for anything but their bottom-line?
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Sad to see Sweden going deeper and deeper in the mud.
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