Fair Use

[IamSpazzy]

Isn't fan subbed anime technically a derivative work and therefore protected under fair use?

i.e. It's legal to take licensed work and make a parody and distribute as long you're not making money off of it.

I watched the Naruto fansub from funimation last week, and a lot of the subs were inaccurate, and could be construed as a parody, so technically should be legal even if someone licenses it. Now a derivative work needn't be a parody.

Anyways, just wondering about the finer points of the copyright law.

[Mae]

We all WISH....

Somehow I don't think that would fly in the courts (at least not in the U.S.).

[Lefty]

When fansubers drop a series it's never truely about copyright law's. They just want us to support the company thats releasing it. Being sude by a big comglomerate company like ADV or Genon is rare at best.

[IamSpazzy]

I'd be more inclined with you if there was a company that just put out subbed anime without any dubbing and sold it cheaper. I saw Gundum Seed, and Witch Hunter Robin on the cartoon network and hated the voice overs, the fact that they cut out scenes, and the fact that they dropped off the op-ed.

[dormcat]

IMHO the easiest way is including English subs on R2 DVD, then we can import them and totally avoid legal issues while AonE staffs can take a long-awaited vacationi/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif, while licensing-only companies like ADV will lose more than half of their income.i/expressions/devil.gif

[Poiple Weezard]

I thought the fair use guidelines were only acceptable in very specifc circumstances. Among those are educational material, submitting a portion for critique or review, or parody. Most fansubs are merely translating, and therefore wouldn't fit under any of those. I've heard stories about them, but I still haven't seen any of the parody fansubs.

[complich8]

I'm not a lawyer, but back a little while ago I did a fair amount of research on the topic of fansub legality, and it basically amounts to this: fansubbing is illegal, get used to it.

lefty is half right here. When fansubbers drop a series, it is based on their decisions as people and as a group to abide by a certain set of beliefs or a certain set of principles. Often those principles are guided by the general direction of copyright law and a sense of ethical obligation. So it's not always dictated by copyright law, but copyright tends to stand on the side of dropping stuff.

Spazzy: something to be aware of is this: according to the dvd company representatives (at least from adv and bandai) it's not the subtitle track that sells an anime. It's the dub. Americans (and most other people, though not most other fansub-viewers I spose) won't buy a dvd for 5 bucks less that doesn't have the dub. Many english-speakers want to have stuff localized for them, so they don't have to spend any effort watching (keeping up with fast dialogue in subs can be fairly taxing on the old attention span, especially after a long day of work or school). But in any case, the licensors wouldn't like competition, and would much prefer their copyright-granted monopolies on titles. Which is part of the idea of authorship to begin with, and the basis of copyright. And is part of the terms of their license acquisitions, or so I'm told.

Dormcat: the big problem with that idea is this: japanese tv producers and marketers are notoriously bad at localizing things for markets that aren't their own. You think sub streams and dub tracks are bad now, think about how bad they'd be if the person doing the translation is speaking english at the third grade level. Granted, I think this is eventually where stuff will go (my theory is that fansubbing will end when tv stations globally simulcast with multiple subtitle options, but this is largely incompatible with the current production model for anime -- and tv too, incidentally). Of course, as usual, I could be wrong. That's just what I'd like to see.

Poiple: that's pretty much right. Fansubbing doesn't fall under derivative works, it falls under right of translation. Basically it says if you're watching it you can translate for yourself, but by distributing translations to others you're violating the author's (or in this case the licenseholder's) sole control of translation. It's in there under the berne convention, article 8. Fansubbing violates this right, since it is unauthorized translation that gets distributed publicly. Its public distribution breaks out of the realm of fair use into infringement.

Fair use could be extended to parody, so for example Live-Evil's sub of naruto 77 (I think it was that episode) was parody and not particularly serious translation, so they could probably defend it in a courtroom if they had to. On the other hand, the ANBU-AonE release of the same episode doesn't by any stretch fall into the realm of parody, is complete, isn't submitted for review of the original work (nor of the translation, incidentally) and isn't educational in nature. It's completely out of the scope of fair use, and could probably not stand up in a court room. But what it could stand up to is a felony charge, at least under copyright law as it existed a couple years ago (might have changed since then, I don't know). Felony charges require that the person being prosecuted infringed "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" -- meaning that if we sold this stuff for any price we'd all be felons. The arguments would go back and forth in a courtroom, but the license companies would rather just talk to us than sue is it seems (unlike the music and movie industries), and we're fine with that.

[IamSpazzy]

So, after a series is licensed it's also illegal to distribute the raw as well correct?

[Poiple Weezard]

I would think so. They licensed the rights to distribute the materials in the US. Anyone who attempts to distribute those materials would be infriging on their rights.