On 17th February, Warner Bros. entertainment France SA sent a mail to the administrators of the main French sites of fansubbers. Fansubbing consists to translate and write subtitles for TV series or movies. Typically, it results in a file with extension .srt that can read with most players such as vlc.

Clearly Warner indicates that subtitles are protected by the copyright laws.

En effet, est constitutive des délits prévus et sanctionnés par les articles L.122-4 et L.335-2 à L.335-10 du Code de la Propriété Intellectuelle (”CPI”) toute reproduction, représentation, mise à disposition du public, adaptation, traduction et/ou transformation d’œuvres protégées, sans autorisation des titulaires de droits.

What is the reaction of these sites? The site all-abou-subs has decided to favorably answer the request of Warner. But, they just removed the fansubs of the series mentioned by Warner in its mail. Other sites, such as sub-way, Forom, SerieBox or Subbers In Black do even not mentioned Warner’s threat.

Will Warner France escalate its threat with more legal actions? Is it worthwhile? It is rather easy to find TV series with French subtitles on the P2P networks sometimes even the day after the first broadcast (sometimes with broken translation :Happy: )