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.

> 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.

> 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...]

Still 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.

You can't just translate Harry Potter and sell it or give it away for free.

edit: fixed analogy

But 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).

You can't just translate Harry Potter and distribute it.

Well 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.

that does not matter at all, you are "stealing" "intellectual property".

yeah, those word are a dumb concept.

I 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.

>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.

Interesting, 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.

I'd love to see an improvement on speech recognition + translation to display automatic subtitles.

On 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?

Quiet 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..

Welcome to Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

"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.

No, 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.

Disney as a rule do their thing and wait to see if anyone complains, and then, and only then, do they license.

That's a bold claim. Could you site a source or some examples to back it up?

Disney does not own a trademark on Snow White's use in literature (fiction or non-fiction.)

Well actually the people who created the subtitles were most likely breaking copyright law themselves if they didn't have explicit permission from the movie owners. Subtitles are themselves derived work.

Maybe, but what they were doing is harmless in every sense of the word, and law is about repairing harm.

It's actually not harmless because it undermines geographically exclusive distribution licenses. European distributiors pay a lot of money for the rights to sell Hollywood movies in Europe and are understandably annoyed when people then import movies from the USA and watch them with crowdsourced subtitles.

Arguably, the benefit to consumers should outweigh the harm to license models, but that's not what the law says, currently.

And I did not say that it wasn't. Nor did I say if the law is just or not, but simply clarifying that transcribing/translating movie dialog is breaking copyright law.

that's such a bromanian answer...

The subtitles are a derivative work of the film. It's illegal to make and distribute a derivative work of a copyrighted work without permission.

The subtitles are transcription of art made by other people. As a contrast, you shouldn't borrow books from a library and read them aloud and record it and start distributing your "self made" audio books on your website.

It's not just a "transcription" it's people taking their own interpretation of the dialogue and translating it however they see fit. Some people leave in puns, some people take them out, some people add a note at the top of the screen to explain the cultural significance of a certain line.

Actually, that's explicitly allowed by copyright law (EDIT: so long as you're in the accessibility business): http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#121

(Granted, that the "phonorecord" must be in a "specialized format exclusively for use by blind" is fuzzy.)

It seems to say that "it is not an infringement of copyright for an _authorized entity_ to reproduce..."

Ah good catch. From the definitions:

“authorized entity” means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities;

Sounds like the exact same website could be setup and remain the right side of the legal boundary simply by presenting themselves as a service for the deaf. YMMV.

The owners would have plausible deniability I feel, they don't know whether their users are deaf. Then it would be down to the copyright owners to address whether individual users had rights to format-shift audio tracks [they purchased] in to a format they could consume [specific language subtitles].

So it would be equally outrageous when a thief's stolen goods are returned to the original owner? I mean, it might be wrong to disrespect property rights in the first place, but is it even more wrong if it is done again?

PS. Yeah, I know, "sharing is not stealing!!!1! blah blah blah". Please pay attention here, this example does not equate the two. I am pointing at the pattern "It might be wrong to do X in the first place, but I am outraged when the X is done to the X's perpetrator!"

Transcribing audio does not transfer ownership. People get amazingly confused about copyright. You can argue that all info wants to be free, which is very bad for privacy, but you cannot argue if you transcribe Star Wars now you own the dialogue.

Sure but then Netflix and Universal stealing translated subtitles from these "pirates" and including it on their commercial content is also piracy.

Thing is though, as a civil claim, the monetary incentive is clear on the movie companies side but not the "pirates". I suppose with all things being equal, in the spirit of fair play, we can expect to see headlines stating these people have been awarded a massive sum of money in the future right?

People get confused about copyright because it is confusing. It isn't what it was when it was created and your interpretation of copyright makes no allowance for fair use, and as far as I am aware those precedents set in the 80s still stand to this day. So until they don't, you're only half right.

>Sure but then Netflix and Universal stealing translated subtitles from these "pirates" and including it on their commercial content is also piracy.

Umm, no. It may be unethical but the "pirates" have no copyright protections for a movie dialogue unless they wrote the movie.

They would have copyright for the translation if it weren't itself illegal - §103 of the US Copyright Act. But this may be different in other jurisdictions.

Two wrongs does not make a right. Translations are derivate works which means the new author has copyright, but they cannot be distributed without both the author of the original and the author of the derivate allowing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work