Eugen Archy, the Swedish operator of a site that hosted "fansubs" but no copyrighted audio or video, is facing prosecution and possibly prison:
The operator of a site that hosted fan-made translated movie subtitles has been prosecuted in Sweden. Undertexter.se was raided by police in the summer of 2013, despite many feeling that the site had done nothing wrong. That is disputed by the prosecutor who says that the crimes committed are worthy of imprisonment. [...] For ten years Undertexter ('subtitles' in Swedish) provided a somewhat useful service. Faced with what they perceived as a dearth of subtitling in local language, members of the site made their own translated subtitles for movies and TV shows. These were made available to all via the site. However, in the summer of 2013 everything came crashing down. Under pressure from powerful Hollywood-based movie companies, police raided the site and seized its servers.
[...] Soon it will be up to the court to decide whether distributing fan-created subtitles is a crime in Sweden. Experts have already weighed in on the case with Sanna Wolk, an associate professor of civil law at Uppsala University, noting that the devil could be in the [details]. "The core issue is whether the lyrics count as independent works or pure translations. If they follow the script, it's a copyright violation to distribute them without permission, but if they're self-published, it is not," Wolk noted earlier. "It is difficult to say where the exact line is. Subtitles need to be considered on their own merits to make an assessment."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:08AM
So? Lyrics are copyrighted too. Have we learned nothing from the old days before lyrics licensing, when lyrics sites were outright illegal? Apparently no, we don't learn, ever.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jimshatt on Friday May 27 2016, @10:18AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:24AM
You still trying to comprehend why Grooveshark is gone, bro?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:26AM
Don't enhance the MAFIAA's shit.
Music artists are already starting to break away from the MAFIAA. It's just a matter of time before film becomes democratized as well.
That's right. The MAFIAA are enemies of democracy.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:35AM
Oh dear holy shit, you are a naive twat.
Have you ever heard of United Artists? Yeah, it was supposed to be exactly what the name suggests. Artists united against film studios. MGM owns United Artists now. That's right, United Artists is a fucking film studio. Democratization doesn't last, you moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:47AM
Neither does the oligarchy. In the end, there will be a revolution again. Usually those are bloody.
All this is just the endless turning of the wheel, as soon as the powers win, chaos will erupt.
Neither side understands this well. Perhaps some do, but still to few to avoid the eventual cataclysm.
All that is left is to decide on which side of the line you fight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @11:00AM
Revolutions don't happen unless rich people are sufficiently dissatisfied to justify paying an army to fight that revolution. Poor people whining that they're not getting movies for free aren't going to do fucking shit. If you want bloody, feel free to spill your own blood, nobody will notice.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @01:53PM
Who is naive now.
Its the digital age. Fighting is no longer done by armies. Any kid can take up arms these days.
You think only Islamist can cause trouble? Wait until they piss off the poor man enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @05:30PM
The average poor man still haven't learned how to set the time and date on his old VCR...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 27 2016, @12:42PM
BTW, let's for a moment imagine a copyright-free world.
Artist A comes up with a tune.
Before A is able to make 10 people associate his name with the tune, which is the only way for him to play in some venue, the overlords in corporation B will have shot a videoclip and put a shitty overcompressed version that trends in all media stores thanks to paid clickers.
I am not advocating copyright, I am advocating against its absence with no replacement in current society. In current society, media conglomerates will exist even if they don't make a dime, they are not there to make profit, they are there to make propaganda AND making you pay for it.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @01:09PM
There has to be some middle ground between eradicating copyright and perpetual copyright. I think 7 years sounds about right.
We could even divorce attribution from distribution. Let's give distribution rights 7 years. Attribution can be much longer, perhaps even perpetual. 640 decades should be enough for anybody.
(Ok, ok, I'll take a century or so, but I had to go for the bad joke.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 27 2016, @03:50PM
Nice to try for a compromise, but I think copyright can and should be abolished. We have other means of compensating artists. Copyright is fundamentally unfair to us all, a great theft of our culture, coupled with the chutzpah of the thieves then daring to accuse all of us of actually being the thieves, stealing from them! For instance, most Disney movies are adaptations of earlier works. Today, copyright blocks the coming of the digital public library. Imagine if the entire Library of Congress was available online, for everyone. Our entire culture, more available and searchable than ever! We have the technology to do that now, but it's not legal, thanks to copyright. Another very bad feature of copyright is that it is too great a concentration of power. At any time, the law can be changed to instantly yank back years of works that have already entered the public domain. That has been done, and more than once. In their zeal to protect the profits of a few corporate owners, the lawmakers didn't trouble with such details as a grandfather clause. Shows where the public rates. Monetization rates, the public interest doesn't rate. That such a thing can be done at all is nuts, and another reason copyright should be abolished. Perhaps the biggest crime of all is the propaganda that has many people more than half convinced that to copy is to steal.
Of course this use of the Internet is highly disruptive, and the losers have done all they can to delay that day. In an environment in which everything is freely available online, immediately, the private book and record store is toast. Crap like the DVD region encoding, the practice of milking the impatient by first releasing an expensive hardback version of a novel to be followed by cheap paperback a year later, and of course the album with only one good song, is also history. Indeed, it was the bad music album that helped drive Napster's popularity. We don't have other business models fully developed, and they bear some blame for that. I'm okay with gradually sunsetting copyright to give more time for these other means of compensating artists to improve. But not too much time, don't want these copyright bandits to try to extend the sunset period into eternity. They would deal in bad faith, seize on such as just another way to gain more time to continue business their preferred way.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @01:34PM
Before A is able to make 10 people associate his name with the tune, which is the only way for him to play in some venue, the overlords in corporation B will have shot a videoclip and put a shitty overcompressed version that trends in all media stores thanks to paid clickers
Which is how it works now. The overlords control the channel. Sure some indies get a limited fanbase on their own, only to sign with the overlords once they reach the levels of popularity that make the overlords take notice.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday May 27 2016, @10:30PM
Without copyright, you are left with "moral rights".
In the example outlined, Artist A can sue corporation B for violating the integrity of their work with a "shitty over-compressed version".
Moral rights also include the right to attribution: so that any fans can look up other works by the same artist.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @10:19AM
Det var en annen gang, Brakebein ville drikke
mer mjød enn alle.
"Kjør på! Sagt dei andre trollene
då sie müssen..."
Trinken som em jævla tørst elefant om sie will
overgå alt og alle andre som flyte rundt her i trollandbyen.
Det finnes mer enn nok mjød her
omkring så du får bare tag sammen spisa litt
salt og hella nedpå.
"Kjør på! Sagt dei andre trollene
då sie müssen..."
Trinen hardt undt trinken mer. Trinken vel, fyll
nå ditt etahål mit.
Trinken, troll! prost mit mein freunde Trinken,
troll! Prost mit mein freunde. Trinken, troll!
Det gikk jo så det måtte gå, til slutt kunne han
ikkje stå. Men det går jo fint å lage helvete
for det. Ein kan krypa rundt og bita eller sparka
rundt og le.
Henf med mens me krype rundt og jakte på
mere å drikka. Me bite og gape opp og så komme.
Trinken, Troll! Prost mit mein freunde!
Trinken, Troll! Prost mit mein freunde!
Trinken, Troll! Prost mit mein freunde!
Trinken, Troll! Prost mit mein freunde!
Trinken, Troll!
Brakebein krype rundt undt bite sånn at alle
sammen slite med å holde på trinken. De søle og
Brakebein tar ølet. Seier! Sagt Brakebein, nå får
eg drikka sjøl om eg ligge på brakken...spy!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday May 27 2016, @09:01PM
I see we have another Trollfest fan.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @11:07AM
Something good may yet come from this lawsuit, if Sweden gets a DCMA out of it, with safe harbor protection for fan sites that accept user submitted content.
Oooops, I almost forgot that it's not permissible to suggest that the DMCA was a good thing for the USA. Oh well. Mod me to oblivion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @11:48AM
I'd say that the DMCA was, on the whole, more positive than negative. However, the problem is the lack of enforcement. Remember the part about perjury for false DMCA notices? That has never been prosecuted, because the legalese was so artfully crafted it would be impossible to win. That's why you see companies (and people!) abusing DMCA to censor criticism, bury competitors, or just robo-shotgun hundreds of irrelevant links.
For details, see: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=dmca+abuse [techdirt.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @01:39PM
> Remember the part about perjury for false DMCA notices?
No I don't. Because its literally not perjury. Its only perjury if they do it again in response to the counter-notice.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Friday May 27 2016, @04:39PM
Simple solution for websites: always send counter-notices with phrasing along the lines of "any secondary false notice is considered perjury under the DMCA."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @12:28PM
You have a rather peculiar definition of good as if it is impossible to get something good without eating a handful of shit first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2016, @02:34PM
That's like saying Hitler is a nice person because he once patted a dog.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Sunday May 29 2016, @05:50PM
I don't think the DMCA is a bad idea either. The main problems are:
1. Companies and individuals don't follow the law when issuing takedown requests, and there's essentially no penalty or repercussions for file false claims.
2. Companies such as Youtube (aka Google/Alphabet) don't follow the law either, but don't lose their safeharbor status.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Friday May 27 2016, @02:50PM
This shows how Hollywood values control over money. The availability of subtitles would mean more people viewing the movies. It would mean more revenue. The fact that Hollywood pushed for the raid and prosecution shows that the motivation is not revenue. Instead, it is all about control. Hollywood values control higher than revenue.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Friday May 27 2016, @06:30PM
This was also my first thought. But then I wondered: given modern distribution methods, how would you show fansubs with a legally acquired movie? I guess you would basically need to rip a DVD to do it; certainly it's non-trivial with streaming content. Of course it begs the question of why they aren't harnessing the fansubs somehow, because after all, it's a free translation service, but then you run into the fact that the content's owners and distributors are different people with a tangled mess of motivations and contractual rights.
I think you're right though that it's mostly about control, because we saw the same thing with lyrics sites, where the industry was providing almost no alternative. Really, like I'm going to buy a whole songbook (if there even is one) to find out how the chorus of that pop song goes? Or what if I heard the chorus on the radio and wanted to find the song so I could buy a copy (before Shazaam existed)? Yeah, many actions of copyright holders seem to run counter to the profit motive.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Sunday May 29 2016, @10:55AM
The server will be gone perhaps. But the service won't. Unlike the mafia, this kind of crowd learns with a vengeance. It will just show up in another form.