over at torrentfreak there's a really good response/commentary to the fan subtitling issues i brought up the other day
Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers
the issue at hand is not that people are not willing to pay for their movies, but that the crowdsourced subtitles areable to satisfy viewers much quicker than the corporations are able to provide the language specific content.
"We could be killing, we could be stealing. But no. We choose to disseminate culture. The subtitles we make are not what makes DVD sales fall, it’s their abusive high prices.
The long delay between the airing of a series in its country of origin and the rest of the world is the number one reason why people choose to download - the wait for the series to reach non-cable TV can take years!
Years to find out what happened with: The island people! Jack Bauer! Hiro Nakamura! Michael Scofield! True fans always try to buy the original products and many series owners got to know about these through the Internet. Today they are collectors."
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As part of a number of fan communities with fair use issues (although not the fansubbing community; I'm not that caught up on my anime viewing), I have to agree with the defense that these sorts of copyright infringements are actually probably helping the copyright owners in the long run. In the 1980s there was a brisk international trade in fan-recorded videos sent back and forth between the US and the UK; US viewers would trade Star Trek tapes for The Professionals and Doctor Who. And who do you suppose were the first people lined up to buy the DVDs when they finally came out?
ReplyDeleteexactly. i think that the suit and tie bean counters who are behind all fo the litigation of things like this are so far removed from the people actually line their coffers, that they actually think that they're doing a good thing (trying to defend their copyrights from marauding internet pirates) when in reality they're incensing them to the point of turning them towards piracy.
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