7 ms·

Who loses out when fans provide subtitles for films? My partner's native tongue is Spanish and so we often want to watch films with Spanish subtitles. Unfortuna

by ollysb 13y ago

Who loses out when fans provide subtitles for films? My partner's native tongue is Spanish and so we often want to watch films with Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately it seems incredibly rare that subtitles are provided through legal channels. I can't tell you the number of times I've paid for a film in iTunes only to discover that there are no subtitles available in _any_ language. There's subler but the timing usually doesn't match which means I'm forced to go to the pirate bay to download a film that we can watch that I've already paid for. The fans are filling a gap here which, speaking personally, I'm extremely grateful for and incredulous that film companies don't provide themselves. To shut people down when they're effectively doing your job for you (and the fans aren't taking any money) is infuriating to say the least. /rant

kyllo 13y ago
Exactly. "Pirates" are just under-served customers. And in this case, they are not even "stealing" anything, they are filling a market vacuum by creating a new product for which there is significant demand and no other supply. My wife is from China and wants to have Chinese subtitles when she watches American shows and movies with me. Where is she supposed to get them? The copyright holders and licensed content providers simply don't offer them. Fansubs are literally the only available option.
- janesvilleseo 13y ago
  Wow - you have summed it up perfectly. "Pirates are just under-served customers" Imagine if the Executives at the all of these entertainment companies looked at it like this.
- coldarchon 13y ago
  How many films friends of mine "pirated" movies from Japan although the companies in Japan never intended to publish these movies or series outside of Japan ..
- archgrove 13y ago
  I no longer buy the "under-served" customer concept, unless by "under-served", you mean they're waiting for "I want it delivered exactly when I want, in the format I want, to do with as I want, for free" to be "served" to them. I'm sure there is a some truth to it, but the fact that the "Pay what you want" Humble Indie bundles are pirated, along with thousands of $0.99 mobile apps, indicates that many people won't pay even a pittance for content they clearly want, no matter how convenient the delivery or noble the causes.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available, only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no Russian) soundtrek. Of course cool and patient me would learn Spanish... (not that i have anything against learning and even plan it eventually as well as Chinese. Ni-hao-ma? do-shao-t'en? ni-dzao-sha-ma-minz?) And speaking about really under-served - there are deaf people among us.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available, only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no Russian) soundtrek. Sure -- but the most popular torrents are always the latest hollywood films (not to mention screeners or rips before they are even released on a DVD). The case for "15 years old movies with no US DVD copies" are not really representative of the majority of cases. The long tail, maybe.
      - guard-of-terra 13y ago
        How does the "majority of torrent cases" relate to subtitles question?
        coldtea 13y ago
        Because subtitles are used with movies. And those movies come from torrents, more often than not, (even worse, subtitles are actually made for specific rips, with respect to frame rates and sync, and say so in their metadata).
pessimizer 13y ago
The customer loses out. Subtitles serve the same purpose as region coding.
- brazzy 13y ago
  I think you mean "the publisher and distributors lose out when geographically exclusive licenses are undermined, and the customer when they are enforced".
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    It's not geographically exclusive licenses per se; rather an implementation of said licenses which let licensees to provide subpar product in their geo region: later, less accessible and more expensive. This is not zero sum game. It is possible for both customer and publisher lose; it is possible for both to win at the same time.
    - sageikosa 13y ago
      Thank you for injecting the basic principle of economics: transactions only occur when both sides win.
      - brazzy 13y ago
        Ah, but the transaction here is not between publisher and customer, there are separate and quite different transactions between publisher and distributor as well as distributor and customer (usually with some additional intermediates). In each of them both sides win, but in the latter the customers don't win as much as they could if the first didn't create local monopolies. But publisher and distributor win more, this way.
        sageikosa 13y ago
        Your point being? If the (potential) customer doesn't feel it's a big enough win for the price being asked, they can used their expenditure budget elsewhere to what they perceive to be a bigger gain. If the price being asked is greater than the cost they are willing to bear, it's up to the (potential) consumers to reassess their priorities within their means.
probably_wrong 13y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, there is no Hollywood-approved way of getting a movie in such a format that allows to apply your own subtitles to it. Therefore, all the customers of this site are pirates, and annoying pirates is what the Copyright Industry does. From their point of view, it doesn't hurt their customers in the slightest, because their customers don't need subtitles (and if they did, they wouldn't be able to use them either way).
- jeltz 13y ago
  I am pretty sure you can use subtitle files when playing DVDs with vlc.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    But Bluray requires HDCP, right? Meaning the video bits are encrypted all the way to the "secure" output device. Also, is VLC legally playing DVDs? I thought they used DeCSS or something to bypass the DVD's "protection".
    - jeltz 13y ago
      Bypassing DRM is only illegal in some countries so if DeCSS is legal or not depends on where you are. But you are right even legal bypassing of DRM is not Hollywood approved.
coldtea 13y ago
>Who loses out when fans provide subtitles for films? My partner's native tongue is Spanish and so we often want to watch films with Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately it seems incredibly rare that subtitles are provided through legal channels. I can't tell you the number of times I've paid for a film in iTunes only to discover that there are no subtitles available in _any_ language. There's subler but the timing usually doesn't match which means I'm forced to go to the pirate bay to download a film that we can watch that I've already paid for. Maybe so, but in 99% of the cases, the people using the subtitles have not also downloaded the film in iTunes. They just use them with the film they got off a torrent. (Sure, they might have also "bought the DVD", but I doubt that too, if my friends are people I know are any indication).
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Is that supposed to be a problem? In some countries where basic cause and effect are respected, they don't try to stop you from downloading a copy of a file you already own a license to.
  - jgross206 13y ago
    Your parent's point was that 99% of people do not own a license to the file.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Are you sure? The comment was very focused on the download method, even though that should be basically irrelevant.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        >The comment was very focused on the download method, even though that should be basically irrelevant. No, the download method is very much relevant. People download from torrents files they DON'T own any license for (from DVDs or whatever). The just casually pile on new movies to watch. Oh, and they are not previewing the movie to "consider it for purchase" either.
nnash 13y ago
One thing I've noticed in pirated copies of films is that if there is a language being spoken other than english there will often be no translation for it which is especially annoying when a foreign language scence goes on for two or three minutes. I've used http://www.opensubtitles.org/en http://www.opensubtitles.org/en and vlc to get around this.

by ollysb 13y ago

kyllo 13y ago

Exactly. "Pirates" are just under-served customers. And in this case, they are not even "stealing" anything, they are filling a market vacuum by creating a new product for which there is significant demand and no other supply. My wife is from China and wants to have Chinese subtitles when she watches American shows and movies with me. Where is she supposed to get them? The copyright holders and licensed content providers simply don't offer them. Fansubs are literally the only available option.

janesvilleseo 13y ago
Wow - you have summed it up perfectly. "Pirates are just under-served customers" Imagine if the Executives at the all of these entertainment companies looked at it like this.
coldarchon 13y ago
How many films friends of mine "pirated" movies from Japan although the companies in Japan never intended to publish these movies or series outside of Japan ..
archgrove 13y ago
I no longer buy the "under-served" customer concept, unless by "under-served", you mean they're waiting for "I want it delivered exactly when I want, in the format I want, to do with as I want, for free" to be "served" to them. I'm sure there is a some truth to it, but the fact that the "Pay what you want" Humble Indie bundles are pirated, along with thousands of $0.99 mobile apps, indicates that many people won't pay even a pittance for content they clearly want, no matter how convenient the delivery or noble the causes.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available, only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no Russian) soundtrek. Of course cool and patient me would learn Spanish... (not that i have anything against learning and even plan it eventually as well as Chinese. Ni-hao-ma? do-shao-t'en? ni-dzao-sha-ma-minz?) And speaking about really under-served - there are deaf people among us.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available, only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no Russian) soundtrek. Sure -- but the most popular torrents are always the latest hollywood films (not to mention screeners or rips before they are even released on a DVD). The case for "15 years old movies with no US DVD copies" are not really representative of the majority of cases. The long tail, maybe.
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      How does the "majority of torrent cases" relate to subtitles question?
      - coldtea 13y ago
        Because subtitles are used with movies. And those movies come from torrents, more often than not, (even worse, subtitles are actually made for specific rips, with respect to frame rates and sync, and say so in their metadata).

pessimizer 13y ago

The customer loses out. Subtitles serve the same purpose as region coding.

brazzy 13y ago
I think you mean "the publisher and distributors lose out when geographically exclusive licenses are undermined, and the customer when they are enforced".
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  It's not geographically exclusive licenses per se; rather an implementation of said licenses which let licensees to provide subpar product in their geo region: later, less accessible and more expensive. This is not zero sum game. It is possible for both customer and publisher lose; it is possible for both to win at the same time.
  - sageikosa 13y ago
    Thank you for injecting the basic principle of economics: transactions only occur when both sides win.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      Ah, but the transaction here is not between publisher and customer, there are separate and quite different transactions between publisher and distributor as well as distributor and customer (usually with some additional intermediates). In each of them both sides win, but in the latter the customers don't win as much as they could if the first didn't create local monopolies. But publisher and distributor win more, this way.
      - sageikosa 13y ago
        Your point being? If the (potential) customer doesn't feel it's a big enough win for the price being asked, they can used their expenditure budget elsewhere to what they perceive to be a bigger gain. If the price being asked is greater than the cost they are willing to bear, it's up to the (potential) consumers to reassess their priorities within their means.

probably_wrong 13y ago

Unless I'm mistaken, there is no Hollywood-approved way of getting a movie in such a format that allows to apply your own subtitles to it. Therefore, all the customers of this site are pirates, and annoying pirates is what the Copyright Industry does. From their point of view, it doesn't hurt their customers in the slightest, because their customers don't need subtitles (and if they did, they wouldn't be able to use them either way).

jeltz 13y ago
I am pretty sure you can use subtitle files when playing DVDs with vlc.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  But Bluray requires HDCP, right? Meaning the video bits are encrypted all the way to the "secure" output device. Also, is VLC legally playing DVDs? I thought they used DeCSS or something to bypass the DVD's "protection".
  - jeltz 13y ago
    Bypassing DRM is only illegal in some countries so if DeCSS is legal or not depends on where you are. But you are right even legal bypassing of DRM is not Hollywood approved.

coldtea 13y ago

>Who loses out when fans provide subtitles for films? My partner's native tongue is Spanish and so we often want to watch films with Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately it seems incredibly rare that subtitles are provided through legal channels. I can't tell you the number of times I've paid for a film in iTunes only to discover that there are no subtitles available in _any_ language. There's subler but the timing usually doesn't match which means I'm forced to go to the pirate bay to download a film that we can watch that I've already paid for. Maybe so, but in 99% of the cases, the people using the subtitles have not also downloaded the film in iTunes. They just use them with the film they got off a torrent. (Sure, they might have also "bought the DVD", but I doubt that too, if my friends are people I know are any indication).

Dylan16807 13y ago
Is that supposed to be a problem? In some countries where basic cause and effect are respected, they don't try to stop you from downloading a copy of a file you already own a license to.
- jgross206 13y ago
  Your parent's point was that 99% of people do not own a license to the file.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Are you sure? The comment was very focused on the download method, even though that should be basically irrelevant.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >The comment was very focused on the download method, even though that should be basically irrelevant. No, the download method is very much relevant. People download from torrents files they DON'T own any license for (from DVDs or whatever). The just casually pile on new movies to watch. Oh, and they are not previewing the movie to "consider it for purchase" either.

nnash 13y ago

One thing I've noticed in pirated copies of films is that if there is a language being spoken other than english there will often be no translation for it which is especially annoying when a foreign language scence goes on for two or three minutes. I've used http://www.opensubtitles.org/en http://www.opensubtitles.org/en and vlc to get around this.