Techdirt. Stories filed under "subtitles"

Netflix To Try Crowdsourcing Subtitles; Will It Get Sued For Infringement?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 3 Aug 2012 07:22:17 PDT

Before getting into the details of this new story, let me bring up a pair of recent Techdirt stories as background. First, there's the story of Netflix being told that not having closed captioning on its streaming movies means it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. As we noted at the time, this raised interesting copyright questions, considering that Netflix may not be legally allowed to put captions on videos. A few days before that, we had written about a student who ran a site that provided crowdsourced downloadable subtitle files for TV and movies, and had been found guilty of copyright infringement.

Knowing both those things, isn't it interesting that Netflix is now experimenting with crowdsourcing captioning/subtitles for films and TV shows? Perhaps it figures that having lost that first legal fight, it should lean in the other direction and see if it gets sued there as well. Either way, it seems like it opens up some pretty serious copyright questions. While some of us think that providing captions/subtitles should be pretty clear fair use, others (obviously) disagree. And, when it's an operation like Netflix -- which is obviously a commercial entity -- you have to wonder if it's going to get sued...

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Student Fined For Providing Free Film And TV Subtitles; Yet Another Business Opportunity Thrown Away By Copyright Industries

Glyn Moody — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:01:00 PDT

Mike recently reminded us that for some people, bizarrely, stopping "piracy" is more important than making money. Here's another example, this time from Norway:

A student who ran a site which enabled the download of a million movie and TV show subtitle files has been found guilty of copyright infringement offenses. Despite it being acknowledged that the 25-year-old made no money from the three-year-old operation, prosecutors demanded a jail sentence. After struggling due to a lack of case law, in the end the court settle on a fine.

Note that no money changed hands, and there was no attempt to copy the work of others in any way. Instead, the student was simply meeting an evident need for Norwegian subtitles that the original creators and distributors of those films and TV shows didn't address.

So wouldn't the rational thing have been to embrace what this person was doing, and turn it into a commercial opportunity for both him and the studios? That way, the Norwegian public would be happy, because they would have official subtitles that they could use; the Norwegian distributors would be happy, because they could offer English-language shows; and the original producers would be happy, since they would be selling more of their films and TV shows to the Norwegian market, and sooner.

Instead, out of sheer vindictiveness it would seem, charges were pressed, and a jail sentence was "demanded". It's telling that no custodial sentence was in fact handed down, because the infringement was so minor, and the judge simply couldn't find any justification for doing so. That's a further hint that prosecuting this non-commercial activity was completely inappropriate.

But as TorrentFreak explains, it wasn't money that the studios were interested in, but something else -- keeping control:

Although relatively rare, US movie and TV studios have taken legal action against subtitling sites before. The reason they appear to get so annoyed by the existence of these sites is that they allow people abroad to watch movies and TV shows that due to licensing issues haven’t even arrived on their shores yet.

In other words, rather than adapt their business models to the changing times through simultaneous releases around the world, the copyright industries prefer to wield the blunt instrument of enforcement, however counterproductive that may be for everyone -- including themselves.

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Movie Industry Overreaction: Attacking Fan Subbers

Mike Masnick — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:24:00 PDT

We've wondered in the past why the movie industry tries to shut down fansub efforts. It makes no sense. These projects tend to increase attention for a particular movie by making it accessible to those who couldn't enjoy the movie before. And yet, once again, we see stories of movie studios going after sites that are doing free labor for the studios in helping them translate the movies into other languages. In this case, they're demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from three people who helped translate a bunch of films, and run a site for more such fansubs. What a world we live in when those who do free labor for you are worthy of being sued for huge cash amounts.

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