SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Eugen Archy, the Swedish operator of a site that hosted "fansubs" but no copyrighted audio or video, is facing prosecution and possibly prison [torrentfreak.com]:

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 [torrentfreak.com] 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 [torrentfreak.com] earlier. "It is difficult to say where the exact line is. Subtitles need to be considered on their own merits to make an assessment."

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