Why do the clips of classic films on youtube usually have foreign subtitles? I presume it has something to do with copyrights. But if certain images+sounds are kept from youtube because of copyright, why does the presence of foreign subtitles then make them ok to post?
They’ve been posted by non-English-language speakers. It has nothing to do with copyright. The subtitled versions have the same copyright status as the non-subtitled versions.
Are you sure about that?
If an American film is released with different restrictions to a foreign market whose own copyright laws are different and one of their citizens posts to a Youtube affiliate in their country… whose copyright laws apply?
The copyright laws that apply on YouTube are the copyright laws of the US, because that’s where YouTube is based.
That. And in some cases, the material being posted isn’t even the subtitles from whomever distributed the movie in that country (if it was distributed subtitled), they’re from the person posting it. This is specially common for material which was not previously translated (you see it a lot on songs, or on movies or series which are very big in the original culture but a cult phenomenon in the translator’s). In that case, the copyright for the subs themselves may belong to the subtitler (in Spain it does, since the work was not comissioned, but copyright laws are very different from that in the US; I’ve had people there refuse to make a second copy of a picture I had and whose copyright I owned because it was stamped with a Spanish developing lab’s brand) but you also have the question of whether he had the right to perform that subtitling or not.
Then why does it seem to be so common? My impression is that most people posting to youtube are English speakers.
It isn’t that common. American movies that do have foreign subtitles are overwhelmed by the number of them that don’t. (I spend far too much time on YouTube).
I suspect your impression is wrong. What leads you to believe that most YouTube posters are English speakers? Is it because of the titles and descriptions of the videos you search for? Are you perhaps searching for English words? It seems logical that if you search for English words on YouTube, you will get mostly videos with English titles and descriptions. And it seems logical that people who post videos with English titles and descriptions would speak English. Since all you’re searching is English, the presence of all the non-English videos (and thus the non-English users) goes largely unnoticed by you.
Almost all the major countries of the world conform to the Berne Convention so copyright restrictions are similar in most countries.
The original content is protected by American copyright, if it’s created by an American company and posted on a site based in the U.S. Subtitles of movies are created by contract with the original company and so are controlled by them. If you do your own translation and post your own subtitles, then they are copyright to you, but that would hardly protect you from a takedown notice if you stole the original content.
YouTube is used by zillions of non-Americans, many of whom speak or write enough English to post titles or descriptions. Just like the SDMB, as a matter of fact.
Just because the internet is filled with stolen content doesn’t make the stolen content any more legal.
I would wager that the RIAA (or whatever copyright group involved) is eager to throw cease&desist orders to American users, but either reluctant or facing resistance from ISPs when they try to do so with overseas users.
Either that, or YouTube itself is bolder when the stuff it hosts comes from abroad, though I wouldn’t subscribe to that vision - based on my experience, YouTube will can a video of your own cat licking the water faucet rather than have any hint of legal trouble with any named company whatsoever.
This is irrelevant, since YouTube is (to my knowledge) based in the US, and its servers are located there. When an overseas user uploads a video to YouTube, it gets hosted in the US.
Anyway, I’ve never known the RIAA (and MPAA, etc.) to be reluctant to throw cease and desist orders. They tend to take a shotgun, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach to their copyright enforcement measures, happily issuing angry letters (and not uncommonly lawsuits) to foreigners, toddlers, 90-year-old great-grandmothers, fictional characters, and people who have never violated a copyright in their life. Just browse the archives of various tech news sites and blogs and you’ll see examples of all of these.
The answer is two-fold. First, with an American IP address, if you upload a bunch of videos, even using separate accounts, that IP may be traced and you get in trouble. This is much less likely in other countries. This is especially so if you don’t upload to YouTube in the first place (see below).
Second, YouTube is rarely the first place a particular video has been posted. In places where copyright is enforced, it seems the people who actually buy DVDs are much less likely to want to share them with everyone else for free. It’s usually people who have watched it for free themselves who want to share. They often got their videos off Bittorrent or foreign websites from the people mentioned above.
That’s why TV shows and movies shown on TV are less likely to have subtitles, since, even though people pay for cable or satellite, TV is perceived to be free content.