Movie Subtitles Illegal?

June 12, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

Although one may say “what kind of question is that?” we just might be facing a new debate here, especially since a guy running a subtitle file-sharing website was recently scoped by the law.

The website in question is Norsub.com and it used to provide subtitles for movies and TV shows. Apparently, a Norwegian court of law decided that the portal comes in conflict with copyright laws.

As such, it ruled that the owner must shut the website down and pay $2.500 for copyright infringement, a TorrentFreak report explained. This case gives us a view on how the U.S. treats movie and music studios subtitles as well.

For the American entertainment industries subtitles are falling under copyright laws, being regarded as movie scripts. We should mention that movie subtitles in the file-sharing community often come as text files.

What’s worse is that user-generated subtitles are considered to be infringing content, just as any type of BitTorrent content nowadays. This means that if you’ve decided somehow to translate a movie in a given language that’s not available, you’re a pirate and could face a lawsuit, although these cases are reported to be rare.

A similar case actually reached the U.S. courts, so better think twice before translating a movie.

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