Comment Re:Fansubs are cool. (Score 1) 972
It's late, so this isn't going to be as complete as it could be, but here's a start.
Anyway...
Why not let the viewer buy the regular untranslated DVD and just download the alternative subtitles or soundtracks they want and let the player synchronize everything. ...
I don't see how THAT could be considered illegal.
Still illegal. The Berne Convention provides for the International Protection of copyright, which includes the right to translation. There have been groups that do actually release DVD Subfiles to, as you said, synchronize with the DVD and be burned back off for later use (WeSuck Fansubs). The problem herein lies with the "immoral" pirate releases commonly referred to as HK DVDs. There frequently are only three indicators of an HK DVD when you see it: Region 0 or 255(Free), Chinese Subtitles, and crappy editing. Providing these files removes quite a large part of the process for these groups. Furthermore, despite what others have posted here, Fansubs are more than capable of having extremely competent editing, superior to a professional domestic release, even (the comparison of Rice-Box Fansubs' "Dust Chute" vs. the domestic releaser, Geneon's "Trash -Shoot-" comes to mind). Again, this gives the illegitimate HKDVD releases superior quality without any added difficulty. While this may be good for the people buying these DVDs, it certainly isn't good for any potential licensor. If people buy the HK DVDs and they have competent translation and editing, why would they go out and purchase a legitimate domestic release? Would they even suspect it wasn't a legitimate release? It's possible the naive might not.
Moving on...
I know a lot of people that'd be interested in alternative soundtracks of some movies just to remove the foul language and things like that.
Fansubbers, at best, have access to the original soundtracks which provide the background music, and maybe to some vocal songs. They do not have access to the raw dialogue audio stream. Elegantly "blipping" words out would be near impossible. Sure, you could just not say the word in the subtitles, as well. But then why not just phrase it in a lighter manner?
Looking ahead...
It's not hard to create a control file that tells the movie to blip out words or even skip frames (that might have nudity or whatever)
Sure, creating a control file isn't that hard. Back before these modern days of MPEG-4 technology with XviD and DivX 5 codecs (tools for video compression and decompression), we used to use "ECFs," Encoding Control Files. While these files were used to control the amount of data given to each frame, the concept here is similar. Instead of running it through at encode time, you'd attach it to the RIFF headers of a .avi file post-encode. Maybe we don't care about the elegance of the censoring, to simplify the example (and also because it's how it would have to be to be dynamic, anyway). The file would layout "naughty frames" (video) and "naughty cells" (audio) Okay, so now we have this control file that says what not to play if not desired. Now, you would run these files through.... Oh, wait, you know what? There's no implementation for this. The closest thing you have to this is DVD spidering per parental guidelines on DVD players, however there's no specification for a normal PC file to do this. Fansubbers would have to come up with an implementation for this device. Hmm, yes. "It's not hard," indeed.
Plugging along still...
Get a big pro-family organization to fund the legal battle to protect these rights.
Such rights, quite simply, do not exist. I agree the DMCA oversteps the boundaries that copyright holders should have, but the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no legal standing ground here to "protect these rights" for others to edit copyrighted material. While the DMCA has no actual use here directly, in the case of DVD editing, it could. However, more direct is the basic copyright laws. All rights are reserved to the copyright holder until such a time as they choose to license them off.
Anyway...
Why not let the viewer buy the regular untranslated DVD and just download the alternative subtitles or soundtracks they want and let the player synchronize everything.
I don't see how THAT could be considered illegal.
Still illegal. The Berne Convention provides for the International Protection of copyright, which includes the right to translation. There have been groups that do actually release DVD Subfiles to, as you said, synchronize with the DVD and be burned back off for later use (WeSuck Fansubs). The problem herein lies with the "immoral" pirate releases commonly referred to as HK DVDs. There frequently are only three indicators of an HK DVD when you see it: Region 0 or 255(Free), Chinese Subtitles, and crappy editing. Providing these files removes quite a large part of the process for these groups. Furthermore, despite what others have posted here, Fansubs are more than capable of having extremely competent editing, superior to a professional domestic release, even (the comparison of Rice-Box Fansubs' "Dust Chute" vs. the domestic releaser, Geneon's "Trash -Shoot-" comes to mind). Again, this gives the illegitimate HKDVD releases superior quality without any added difficulty. While this may be good for the people buying these DVDs, it certainly isn't good for any potential licensor. If people buy the HK DVDs and they have competent translation and editing, why would they go out and purchase a legitimate domestic release? Would they even suspect it wasn't a legitimate release? It's possible the naive might not.
Moving on...
I know a lot of people that'd be interested in alternative soundtracks of some movies just to remove the foul language and things like that.
Fansubbers, at best, have access to the original soundtracks which provide the background music, and maybe to some vocal songs. They do not have access to the raw dialogue audio stream. Elegantly "blipping" words out would be near impossible. Sure, you could just not say the word in the subtitles, as well. But then why not just phrase it in a lighter manner?
Looking ahead...
It's not hard to create a control file that tells the movie to blip out words or even skip frames (that might have nudity or whatever)
Sure, creating a control file isn't that hard. Back before these modern days of MPEG-4 technology with XviD and DivX 5 codecs (tools for video compression and decompression), we used to use "ECFs," Encoding Control Files. While these files were used to control the amount of data given to each frame, the concept here is similar. Instead of running it through at encode time, you'd attach it to the RIFF headers of a
Plugging along still...
Get a big pro-family organization to fund the legal battle to protect these rights.
Such rights, quite simply, do not exist. I agree the DMCA oversteps the boundaries that copyright holders should have, but the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no legal standing ground here to "protect these rights" for others to edit copyrighted material. While the DMCA has no actual use here directly, in the case of DVD editing, it could. However, more direct is the basic copyright laws. All rights are reserved to the copyright holder until such a time as they choose to license them off.
