Polish people arrested for publishing movie translations

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

A popular subtitle exchange community in Poland, Napisy.org, was in shock,
after nine of its members were accused of posting illegal translations of
movies and were held by the Police for questioning.

The Napisy.org community, that gathers approx. 600 000 users, allowed the
submission of translated subtitles for movies (especially from English into
Polish) for free. The translators did not get any money for their work.

The Polish Police had a common intervention in 6 cities of Silesia,
Podlachia, Cracow and Szczecin where they entered at 6 AM in some of the
translator’s homes and took them for questioning. According to the Polish
Police, 2000 CDs with allegedly illegal copied movies were also found
and 17 computers were seized.

Krzysztof Czerepak, the webmaster of napisy.org, contested the information
made public by the Police, explaining that he knows only about 6 persons (2
admins, 3 moderators and one translator) and denied the existence of the CDs
found by the Police. “The two admins had laptops with fully legal software,
while the woman-translator had a company-owned laptop” he added.
The webmaster also commented that ” most of the amateurish translations
appear long before a “professional” translation is prepared. It is also an
often omitted fact that a lot of “professionals” use (or steal, naming the
things) our translations to do their job. Nobody calls this a violation of
the law.”

The website that was hosted on a German server was shut down and the
Polish Police explained that it was a collaboration with the German
colleagues for this activity. The people held for questioning could be
accused of illegal publication of copyrighted works and could be sentenced
to up to 2 years jail time.

Poland: Nine people held by police for translating movies (17.05.2007)
http://polishlinux.org/gnu/poland-9-people-arrested-for-translating-movies/