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Comment by jahewson | Hacker News Reader

This is highly questionable. In the US at least "fair use" tends to cover non-commercial endeavours that only reproduce a small portion of the work - and the text of a film is a very small portion indeed. If the text is also contained only within specially formatted subtitle files then the work is "transformative", allowing a significantly different use from the original (especially when there is no commercial alternative). If a work enhances accessibility then this is generally well looked-upon when deciding if it is transformative and thus fair-use.

It's important to note that a subtitle file and a screen play are two very different things, as the former is almost certainly transformative.

I'm not sure how any of this works out under Sweedish law.

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The studios could probably claim the audio, script dialog, or subtitles as a work of their own, meaning the derivative is not sampling a "small portion of the work".

As I said, it's important to note that a subtitle file and a screen play are two very different things, as the former is almost certainly transformative. It does not matter if the screenplay is a work in it's own right. Both are covered by copyright and both are subject to fair use.

In order to claim fair use we must show that a subtitle file != screenplay. If I sell you a screen play, do you get subtitles on your screen? No. If I give some actors a subtitle file can they perform the movie? No, they don't even know who's reading what line. So, even if the screenplay were being sold as a work with value, which it's not, we can see that the subtitles file is still only a portion of the screenplay (and one which renders it useless as a screenplay), the very essence of "transformative". Likewise for the audio, you're missing everything except for a transcript of what was said, and one designed to be read by a computer at that, and which fails to label who is saying it, so it's a portion of even a transcript.

In a nutshell, they've taken something large and commercial and turned it into something small and non-commercial. Not only that, but worthless without a copy of the genuine movie! I'm not saying that the move studios don't have a copyrighted work - of course they do, but fair use trumps that, and should do in this case.

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