The Dutch Just Declared Anime Fan-Subs Illegal

Fan-subtitling is the process in which foreign films or shows are translated by fans into the native language, instead of by companies or professionals. When it comes to anime, fan-subs are rampant, and a major way for many fans to experience shows in their native tongue. This week, the Dutch government has declared that it fan-subs are now illegal, which is terrible news for Dutch anime fans.

The Netherlands based anti-piracy group BREIN, went to the Dutch court to clarify whether creators of movies and television have the exclusive rights to create and distribute the subtitles to the film. The court ruled in their favor stating the following:

"That subtitles can only be created and distributed with permission from the rights holders, and doing so without permission is copyright infringement, and thus punishable with either jail time or a fine, depending on where you live."

This ruling is going to be a huge problem for anime fans. Fan-sub downloads are hugely popular in the Netherlands because many franchises don't have official translations from Japanese to Dutch. Many are angry about the decision, and the fan-subbers are upset because they believe that they are doing a service with their work. The loads of fans who are able to watch shows only because of fan-subs are angry that they are going to be unable to watch their favorite shows because of the greed of big companies.

BREIN, however believes that the subtitles downloaded from fan-subs are mostly used by people who download the media illegally. Therefore the organization believes that that fan-subbers are not themselves doing something illegal, however making piracy more likely and therefore damaging the market. Tim Kuik director of BREIN stated:

"With this decision in hand it will be easier for BREIN to maintain its work against illegal subtitlers and against sites and services that collect illegal subtitles and add movies and TV shows from an illegal source."

It seems unreasonable to make something illegal because it is not illegal in nature but rather has the potential to promote something illegal. Not only that but it will be a very difficult policy to enforce as fan-subbing in the anime community is so established, and has been going strong for decades. Many argue that a better solution to the issue would be for the creators of the content to make more officially subtitled content simultaneously, so that fan-subbing would not be even needed. Anime fans in that speak languages not normally included in the official translations, what do you think?