Polish Fans Held By Police For Movie Translations 204
michuk writes "Nine people involved in a community portal Napisy.org were held for questioning by the Polish police forces this Wednesday. They will be probably be accused of publishing illegal translations of foreign movies (which is forbidden by Polish copyright law). Napisy.org website was shut down immediately afterwards by the German forces (since the servers were located in Germany). The service was the most popular Polish on-line portal where users were free to submit translated subtitles for popular movies. 'According to Polish copyright law any "processing" of others' content including translating is prohibited without permission. The people held (aged 20 - 30) were questioned on Wednesday and Thursday and then allowed to leave. In case of being accused of illegal publishing of copyrighted material, they can spend in jail up to 2 years (in the worst case).'"
Wiki.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Illegal thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
to a certain degree, this makes sense. witness the 2003 illegal translation of harry potter and the order of the phoenix. it was so bad that the quality of the content was dramatically reduced... at one point the translator even wrote "Here comes something that I'm unable to translate, sorry."
so, the idea of having 'approved' translators can be necessary to preserve the integrity of the content.
my source for this is here [bbc.co.uk]
Anime fansub (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Uh... okay... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Illegal thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Things Haven't Changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Illegal thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
>>in form of translation wouldn't need permission from the copyright holder:
>>I could translated Harry Potter into swedish and sell copies as I saw fit
>>since JK Rowlings wouldn't have anything to say about it...
You are comparing apples and oranges. These Polish people were creating Subtitle files to be added to a movie. In other words, people could theoretically go purchase an English-speaking movie, then rip it and add the subtitles. There is^H^Hshould be nothing illegal about translating a movie. They are adding TEXT to FILM. People pay for the FILM--or the content--and the TEXT helps them understand what's going on. This is additive, without taking credit for or copying the main content.
With a BOOK, however, the text *is* the main content. If you translate it for yourself, that's fine. If you read it to someone else while translating, that's fine. But if you SELL a *copy* of the book, that's wrong. Now if there was a way to *add* a translation to the book, so long as the person receiving the translation had already purchased a copy, there would be no problem.
Re:Illegal thing... (Score:1, Interesting)
I think it speaks of the translator's ethos not to brush over the difficult parts, but to leave it to others to fill them in. In the subtitles scene this happens all the time. If you didn't get a line or don't know how to translate a word, just mark it with ??? or *** and the next one will hopefully do something about it. Whereas with legal/commercial translations, they have to be 100% done by some narrow deadline, and after that they're set in stone, no matter how bad they are. The most horrible translations I've ever read were legal. And it's a crime to correct them. Copyright actually protects bad translations.
And these Chinglish subtitles that are always good for a laugh - they're mostly automated "translations", they're not meant to be watched but as a guideline for a real translation by a human being.
Re:Illegal thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
So what if you've waited anxiously for this release for ten years, and this is the result? You want to see the movie, but you want to get the best possible experience. Luckily, I waited for the European release (not by Dreamworks) which more than made up for it, but if I had bought the American DVD, I would've ripped the DVD and downloaded a proper sub. I realize that that has to be illegal because it is inherently incompatible with the idea of copyright, but I can't exactly say
I would feel guilty about it.
My question is (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What you should understand about Poland (Score:2, Interesting)
That is not true! There are 3 guys, one does most of the documentaries and two other read the vioces on other movies. All of them have similar voices. Anyway it sucks...
"Every good thing that happens in this country gets shut down."
After 20 years of living here you get used to it
The worst part is that there is no law forbidding downloading or even sharing movies. However FOTA and ZPAV (local MPAAs) claim that it is completly illegal to download movies. They tend to "help" the police by explaining what is right and what is wrong. Also there are prizes called "Zote Blachy" (Golden Badges) for the policemen who caught the most "pirates" according to ZPAV. So why should policemen chase bad guys that can hurt them if instead they can raid some people at 5 in the morning and not only raise their stats but also get a shiny prize.
The best illustration of how differently movie corps understand Polish law was the sentence of against Warner for publishing false info on DVD covers saying "all kinds of sharing movies is illegal". They were forced to change it and stop misinformation.
Re:What you should understand about Poland (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless... you know... THEY CAN READ. The fact that one guy does voice overs (not dubbing - that's a whole other industry, limited mainly to children's movies.) doesn't mean 95% of movies in the theaters are subtitled and you can buy thousands of movies that are, again, subtitled with neither a voice over or dubbed audio track. So let's put the myth of a single controlling body that allows or blocks foreign media into Poland away.
(the average salary here is about 300$US a month or 5zl an hour so their parents don't have much to give them)
The official average salary in Poland as of December 2006 was 2031PLN net - $726/month take home pay. Calculate in the high number of dual-income households in Poland, along with the HUGE gray market, and suddenly it turns out families are making $12-15k/year in a country where my 550 sq ft flat in Warsaw costs me $200/month, all utilities+internet included. Of course, students are broke in Poland - they're broke everywhere. But a full time student goes to school for free and night school students (weekend students) usually work. And almost nobody leaves school after 5 years (the standard route in Poland is a 3 year batchelor's degree nobody cares about and a 2 year masters) with their family in debt (unlike the US).
Please don't quote me official unemployment rates and moan about students not being able to find work - in every industry I know people are SOL looking for employees, even those that are marginally qualified. Those rates are bullshit, just like the $300/month salary you quoted. There are help wanted signs in every other window in Krakow and Warsaw. Although you probably live in Lodz... but comparing Lodz to the rest of Poland is like going to Detroit and being amazed at how poor the USA is.
They need to think about their labour laws and how much people are being paid (in an EU country, no less!), but instead they worry about some young people doing the people of Poland a service by writing subtitles for those who don't know English (or Turkish, or Greek, or Hindi).
If you had read any of the articles in the Polish media, you would've known that the copyright holders filed an official complaint that the police had to act upon. It's the copyright holders right to do that, and the police's responsibility to execute the law. Is the law imperfect? Sure, but put the blame where it needs to be placed: with the studios that went after the site.
And please don't forget, nobody was downloading subtitles to watch their legally purchased movie.