Petteri Pyyny
15 Sep 2017 8:14
In Sweden, a long-running court case against local subtitle download site has finally finished. Court decided that distributing subtitles to movies and TV series, even when the subtitles have been made by fans for free, is in deed, illegal.
Case was brought against Undertexter.se back in 2013 when police seized site's servers and case was filed against the site's owner Eugen Archy for breaking the copyright legislation.
Court had to decide on a case where the subtitles the site distributed, weren't actually ripped from the original DVDs, but rather, made by fans of the movie / TV series. Defendant claimed that the artwork called "movie" consisted just the audio and video tracks, but court didn't accept that. Court found that converting the audio track to written form, even when translated, still carried original movie's copyrights. Thus, distributing such material, breached the copyrights of the movie studio.
Archy has to pay 217'000SEK (about $28'000 or €22'800) in damages to the copyright holders.