Fansubbers Are Not Thieves, But Avid Consumers

[nsane.forums]

On February 1st, action by Brazil’s IFPI and MPA-affiliated Antipirataria Association Cinema and Música (APCM), led to the Legendas.tv fansubbing site being shut down. APCM, which represents the interests of Universal, Warner, SonyBMG, Disney, Paramount, Fox and others were quickly disappointed as the site returned, with hackers even taking revenge against an anti-piracy site.

Now, in response to continued attacks against communities that offer subtitles, the prominent fansubbing group InSUBS has launched a campaign to show the anti-piracy groups and their movie and TV industry bosses that the people they target are avid consumers.

The campaign is called “Queremos Cultura” (translated “We Want Culture”) and is linked from the InSUBS site, which is not currently engaged in subbing activities, largely to avoid the same fate suffered by Legendas.tv in February.

Those running the campaign are asking fansubbers and those that use fansubs to upload pictures of their original DVD and Blu-Ray collections to this Flikr album to show that they are far from being thieves or criminals. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic consumers who pay their way. At the time of writing there are already 570+ photographs showcasing some pretty healthy collections totaling some 10,000 products - everyone is encouraged to upload their own.

This campaign is trying to show that the problem lies with Hollywood. In some countries, people have to wait months, sometimes even years, before their favorite TV-show or movie becomes available. Some of the most dedicated fans can’t be tortured this long - it’s unethical.

The campaign video is in Portuguese, but we’ve added our own ‘fansubs’ at the end of the post.

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.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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[SacredCultivator]

Man.. I've been fansubbing for nearly 3 years now... And it's something I love doing... And I honestly don't think it hurts the people that produced the content UNLESS they release it WITH subs... Cause if they release a box set without subs.. People aren't gonna buy it if they can't understand it... BUT if they do provide subs then MOST fansubbers remove that content from their site... Otherwise we are helping them by exposing their work to the world to understand the media.

But yup I hope that for the stuff I sub along with the stuff I watch don't get shutdown or anything.

[ShEsHy]

This is absurd. There isn't a single anime available in my country (I could buy them over the net from web shops around the world, but I'm not crazy to pay more for the shipping fees than for the product itself) so I don't have a choice.

It's true that my country only has 2 million people, but if we led the EU for 6 months, we could at least get an anime dealer :s.

The availabiliy of anime worldwide absolutely sux. You've basically got 3 choices; a) learn Japanese and move to Japan, :P wait for an American company to buy the license, sub it and then buy it from there, and c) watch fansubs.

Every normal person would go for c), since you can sometimes watch them almost hours after it's airtime in Japan.

[SacredCultivator]

This applies more to Anime's for sure, becuase MOST Anime gets licensed and subbed, on my end, I suualyl deal with Live-Action Drama's / things that close to NEVER have subs.

So I'm happy I'm not into Anime, but now you got yourself Crunchyroll which has come a long way since they started as they have llicensed Anime BUT those copnies are their affiliates and alow them to stream it.