from the making-new-enemies dept
In the past, we've seen the movie industry
attack "fansub" efforts for trying to translate movies into other languages. But, in the video game industry, we did see glimmers of hope when a publisher
allowed fansubbers to complete their version of the translation and compete side-by-side with the commercial translated version in the marketplace. So, it's sad to see
Japanese game maker Minori slap TLWiki, a translation site, with a DMCA takedown for their work on a one of their games. Apparently, this was after an
edit war on the wiki itself, where the game maker supposedly deleted the entire contents of a page, replacing it with:
minori holds copyright over all the files made available on this webpage. We, minori, have removed the contents of this page because the owner of this page has not received our permission for distribution of these materials. Please understand [the above statements]. Still, if there are objections, etc., please contact Minori, Inc. in Japanese at info@minori.ph.
Of course, since wikis have an easy rollback feature to prevent errant deletions like this, this change was easily reverted, and after a few more rounds of edits & reverts, the site was slapped with an official DMCA takedown notice. Once again, quashing fansub efforts is a fantastic way to annoy and disenfranchise your most loyal fans, who donate hours of their free labor as a hobby. We've seen ways to engage these communities advantageously (like
hiring them to do the official translation), so surely Minori should take note.
Filed Under: dmca, fansubs
Companies: minori
