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I think that you are significantly wrong. Subtitles are a derivative work of that which they are created from and should be covered by that copyright. The cre
by josephlord 13y ago
I think that you are significantly wrong. Subtitles are a derivative work of that which they are created from and should be covered by that copyright. The creator of the derivative would have a copyright on that derivative but that does not permit them to distribute it without the original work's copyright holder's permission (and the original work's copyright holder would need the derivative's copyright holder's permission to distribute that.
It may be however that there is a fair use argument that could be made in many jurisdictions (based on the intended use being by a licensee of the original work, the accessibility benefits and the (presumably) noncommercial nature of the operation).
I would strongly oppose police enforcement rather than civil action and even that would strike me as a bad commercial practice by the movie companies. It would be better to either ignore the practice or even endorse it in some way as there is no significant profit to be won by fighting and plenty of goodwill to lose.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago> Subtitles are a derivative work of that which they are created from and should be covered by that copyright. Even if the subtitles are a translation? There are usually many possible translations, and the words in translated subtitles were most likely never written anywhere by the dialog copyright holders. [and based on what I've seen, subtitles are often a rather .... loose ... translation to boot...]
- lmm 13y agoStill a derivative work. In the same way that you can take a copyrighted novel and rephrase all the scenes in your own words - and the result is still a derivative, and still can't be distributed without the permission of the copyright holder on the original.
- VMG 13y agoYou can't just translate Harry Potter and sell it or give it away for free. edit: fixed analogy
- gillianseed 13y agoBut the creators/translators of these subtitles weren't selling them, they uploaded them for free. I guess argument could be made that the actual site owner made money from ads (assuming there were ads on the site).
- hussong 13y agoYou can't just translate Harry Potter and distribute it.
- gillianseed 13y agoWell I personally think that translating and distributing spoken dialogue from a film is quite different from translating a distributing a book. It's like song lyrics in my opinion. I realize that it is likely just as illegal according to today's copyright laws, but that something like this would warrant a police raid is just beyond me.
- hnha 13y agothat does not matter at all, you are "stealing" "intellectual property". yeah, those word are a dumb concept.
- icebraining 13y agoI don't know about translations, but in many derivate works, what happens is that the work is covered both by the original copyright and a new copyright hold by the creator of the new work. The creator is still prohibited from distributing the work without securing a license from the copyright holder of the original work.
- coldtea 13y ago>Even if the subtitles are a translation? Yes. Even for a book, you have to buy the rights for your language/country to be able to legally put out a translation.
- wslh 13y agoI'd love to see an improvement on speech recognition + translation to display automatic subtitles.
- casual_slacker 13y agoOn a tangent, I wonder how copyright laws will handle more sophisticated AI systems. Can you train AI systems on copy written data? What parts of the formed neural network are considered derivative works? To what extent are things created by the neural network considered derivative work?
- sbarre 13y agoQuiet you! :-) But seriously, that is a fascinating topic (copyright law as it applies to automated or real-time mutation & usage of existing content) that I've also thought about before.. I wonder if this will become a big enough issue in our lifetime to warrant legal intervention..
- inportb 13y agoWelcome to Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
- sk00byd00 13y ago> but that does not permit them to distribute it without the original work's copyright holder's permission (and the original work's copyright holder would need the derivative's copyright holder's permission to distribute that. There are cases (at least in Scandinavia) where the subtitles on a Norwegian subtitle site showed up on the Blueray version (noticeable due to huge cultural mistakes in the translation), when the Norwegian site clearly had subtitles first. I'll start holding my breath for when the law will be applied equally on both sides.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- madaxe 13y ago"Snow White" is a derivative work. Doesn't stop Disney from owning it lock, stock, and barrel - so why should this be any different? Oh right, selective justice.
- jmduke 13y agoDisney does not own a trademark on Snow White's use in literature (fiction or non-fiction.)
- brazzy 13y agoNo, copyright expiration. And yes, I know how Disney is at the forefront of efforts to abolish that and how it's ironic that they profit from it in this case, but I doubt they'd have problems paying license fees either.
- pallandt 13y agoInteresting, I never thought about it that way and it surprised me because it's fairly obvious they are indeed derivative work.But you're right, they've jumped the shark on how they handled it.It's unfortunate they feel the need to make strong statements only by involving the police.