SubCentral.de - Hochwertige Untertitel für TV-Serien

ALIS, Israel’s
answer to the MPAA, has moved aggressively against a site which
provides translated subtitles for movies and TV shows. Three
individuals who work to provide free subtitles on Qsubs, one of
Israel’s most prominent subtitle providers, have been ordered by ALIS
to pay $264,000 each in damages and issue a public apology.




Translated
subtitles are a wonderful tool for those who either can’t read the
official language of a movie or TV show or are suffering from deafness.

Big Media attacks on those who provide these subtitles have been documented regularly here on TorrentFreak. From WikiSubtitles in Spain, to a broad assault on many outlets in Greece, threats of legal action are commonplace.

Of course, those who rely on translated and home-made subtitles can
be very passionate about the enjoyment they can bring, so when
anti-piracy groups moved against Legendas subbing group earlier this
year, hackers were motivated enough to take their revenge.

While Legendas argued that fansubbers aren’t thieves but avid customers, anti-piracy outfits clearly don’t agree.

One such group is ALIS, Israel’s arm of the MPAA. In late 2007 it assisted in raids
on the admins of three sites known as ‘xvoom’, ‘MYakuza’ and ‘Donkey‘
which carried Hebrew subtitles for US movies. In the end ALIS reached
private compensation and closure agreements with the owners of two of
the sites and took legal action against a third.

Now in 2009 ALIS is again active against creators of subtitles. Targeting Qsubs,
one of Israel’s best translation groups, ALIS is threatening legal
action against three of its members after sending them cease and desist
letters last week.

ALIS is demanding that Qsubs, which has dozens of translators, stops
their activities and is ordering the three translators to pay damages
of around $264,000 each. They also want the individuals to issue a
public apology for creating subtitles. ALIS believes that the three
individuals it has identified are administrators of Qsubs.

In addition to copyright claims over subtitles, ALIS lawyer Eran
Presenti says that there are further infringements on Qsubs such as
movie and TV artwork along with various screenshots.

While the legal ramifications are digested by the Qsubs team, its subtitling activities have been suspended.

According to intellectual property lawyer Ran Camille, movie and TV
show scripts are considered “dramatic creations” and therefore subject
to copyright law. Article 16 of the Copyrights Act states that only the
primary copyright holder has the right to distribute any part of a
finished product, subtitles included. However, it is unclear how this
legal position is affected by subtitles translated from another
language.

“We have been doing this for years and never got a dime for our
services, everything was done for free,” Qsubs spokesman Amit told
TorrentFreak. “We have a lawyer already which is costing us a lot of
money that comes out of our own accounts,” he added.

Although Qsubs can finance their lawyer right now, they need further
funds in order to mount their defense or sadly they could be forced to
close down and pay huge damages. Anyone wishing to contribute can do so
by pressing the PayPal donation button on the Qsubs site.
Quelle: http://torrentfreak.com/israeli-mpaa-goe…ng-site-090913/