Dark Translations served with a DMCA notice

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

Surprised no one has mentioned it here yet.

Dark Translations has been served with a DMCA notice - by Pixy-Soft I think - to cease and desist with their unofficial English translations. It would appear the site has taken down all their projects for the time being, to collect their thoughts and see what their next steps (if any) will be.

Pixy-Soft has a history of being vocal about piracy and unauthorized spreading of their media, so I’m honestly not surprised overall, though somewhat… intrigued… at the whole situation. As we all know, fanlation is a huge gray area… Dark Translations charged for it’s translations service, so that made it even grayer. Can’t really blame Pixy-Soft, for protecting their IP’s… it was completely within their right.

That being said: it makes me wonder why Pixy-Soft would care if a non-Japanese entity was releasing translation patches for their products. Three immediate assumptions (and purely only that):

#1: They felt Western piracy was somehow influencing Japanese piracy: which make sense, given the whole P2P deal… although completely futile for the same reasons.

#2: They didn’t like someone else making profit off/charging extra money for their products… which let’s be honest here, DT was doing…

#3: Pixy-Soft is considering to release their own translations (or is using a third party).

Incredibly doubtful it was related to the renewed Rapelay thing by CNN… DLSite English still carries their stuff, if I’m not mistaken.

In any case, DT is being very professional about it, informing the netrage visitors, to be polite and respectful of the DMCA.

It’s amazing how many people are telling them to simply ignore the DMCA… which means they’re telling DT to break international Laws. “They won’t sue you, because they’re from Japan and you’re not,” rhetoric. Which might be true… then again, it would suck for them to prove that wrong… also it changes the scheme and mood of what DT was doing. From merely being a gray operation, into transforming into an officially illegal activity. IMHO, it’s not worth pressing their luck against…

I wonder if people will get their money refunded for unfinished projects… meh… none of my business…

#2

I can’t feel any sympathy at all for DT. Charing money for poor unauthorised translations is rather unethical to say the least.

#3

What has me glued to the computer currently is the drama with minori and TLWiki.

#4

My money’s on this one. What Dark Translations is doing has always seemed shady to me, though of course I understand why a person that goes to all the trouble of translating a game would want some sort of compensation. But from the company’s perspective, it’s simply illegally profiting off of their own hard work.

#5

This is rather ridiculous. Why would a legitimate company go and edit spam a community Wiki? It doesn’t make any sense, because your identity can’t be verified. All they had to do was send a notice by email to the TLWiki Admins. Don’t companies like minori have PR people are at least semi-competent?

#6

Well… at least we know that minori IS because of the Rapelay thing. They’ve got that digital isolationist policy. :expressionless:

It happens though. Amazon had that spat with Ann Rice years back…

#7

Although I don’t completly agree with the way Dark Translations did their translations I have to say I’m a little disappointed that the translation for Devils Devel Concept might not be finished.

#8

Verifying the identity of a random poster on a wiki is as easy (and fault-prone) as verifying the identity of an email. According to minori, they did send an email out beforehand, but I’m guessing it wasn’t to TLWiki but to the project itself. Although, minori also said that they clearly posted their reasoning when they made the edit, but that wasn’t until a few hours later in the second edit.

#9

Eroge companies aren’t known to be the most professional.

Anyway, the authoritative, mock-righteous tone and style of rhetoric (which shouldn’t be taken seriously - you know, all that about laws and ethics) is totally nbkz Sakai! I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the man himself.

#10

Wait, was Dark Translations actually charging money for their translation patches? What exactly were they doing?

#11

I don’t follow their activities closely, but my understanding is that they work on a donation basis as a form of “motivation”. People request certain games to be translated, and then the ensuing donation determines whether work progresses. I can’t remember if they aim for fixed sums or if they require on-going donation to guarantee completion (i.e. if donations run dry while only 50% of the game has been translated, work stops there). I suspect it’s the latter.

Patch downloads are free.

#12

I’d be rather optimistic about this. It’s not the end of all days. This game already got commissioned to a certain extent so Neprhinn will probably continue translating it.

#13

Oh yeah, that does sound a bit suspicious. Not even fansub/scanlation groups require money to work on any particular titles. If they wanted to avoid being mistaken for actually profiting off of others’ works, requiring commissions isn’t exactly a good idea.

If they needed money to maintain the site, a simple “Donate Here” button on the side would have probably attracted a lot less suspicion, as opposed to asking for “commissions” on each of their translation works.

#14

Apparently minori decided they don’t like NNL either, as they supposedly sent them a cease and desist. They in turn have a poll up asking if they should release ef anyway. Considering they are being told to stop by the copyright holders it wouldn’t exactly be prudent to take the advice of fans, especially when doing so could land them into legal trouble.

#15

Considering how small and short on money eroge companies tend to be, do you really think they would be able to actually sue anyone, much less someone outside of their home nation? International treaties may exist with regards to copyright and all, but these C&Ds don’t really hold any teeth because if they wanted to pursue legal action, they’d have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to hire lawyers to assist in any “lawsuits”, hiring interpreters to overcome the language barrier, as well as actually travel over to a foreign country that doesn’t have any friggin’ clue as to who they are.

And all for what? Some college kid with no income, living in a dorm making fan-modifications for no financial gain? I know eroge companies aren’t made up of the most logical people out there, but I highly doubt even they’d lose sight of the concept of comparing costs to the benefits.

Even if legal action were to occur, no judge would sympathize with a company that doesn’t even operate within the confines of their own jurisdiction. I mean, how many instances do you ever hear of US companies successfully suing Chinese companies for ripping off their intellectual property?

#16

I agree that it’s highly unlikely that minori would wind up doing anything due to the excessive cost for little to no gain. Of course if it did go to court minori would have no trouble winning the case, no matter how much a judge might not respect them for doing it they would still have to rule in minori’s favor. On the other hand, as far as I know China doesn’t respect ANY IP laws. Therefore as long as the people doing it keep it in China nothing is going to happen to them, regardless of outside pressure.

#17

The fan translations always were illegal. There is no legal grey zone here at all, and there never was.

However, there IS a legit case that this wasn’t harmful to the Japanese companies. (Not without controversy - I mean, obviously, these Japanese companies disagreed) in which case there is a huge ethical grey area. But when the people who legitimately own the copyrights actually contact you and formally demand that you stop - then that ethical grey area disappears as well.

I mean, saying “Hey, we know you can’t afford to put your money where your mouth is, so we’re just going to do whatever we want” isn’t acceptable in the fansub world (you can ask Anime Junkies about that). Why should it be acceptable here? So to me, if Pixy-Soft formally demands that the translations be stopped, then they should be stopped.

But Pixy-Soft only controls their own games - and in fact, to properly serve a DMCA notice, you have to certify you legitimately own the copyrights in question. Therefore, the DMCA notice would only affect Pixy-Soft games, and there’s no reason to close the site altogether.

#18

When in Rome, and all that.

Don’t ever make the mistake of operating as if you were under the rule of Chinese courts, unless you live in China. They have a very different (and much more corrupt) system of justice than the American courts. Sure, in China, there’s no respect for IP. In America, there is huge respect for IP, and the courts aren’t subject to being gamed nearly as much.

It’s a pretty open-and-shut case that these patches are an unauthorized derivative work. You would have to try to hide behind fair use, which is always a crapshoot and very expensive to argue. (And in the Dark Translations case, their “commission” system would work against them in court, as it would easily be portrayed as profiting off the work.) If the Japanese company really did decide to file suit, then the individuals running these websites would be in very deep trouble.

#19

Hence the advantage of knowing how to read the language of the country that has no respect for Intellectual Property :lol: . (albiet, I’m a little rusty from little to no practice b/c I’m virtually an ABC). Anyways, I could still read Eden in Chinese when I get up to speed with my Chinese literacy. What kills me is the exorbant prices of some of the official T-Time tls of some VNs, like 12Riven, and Remember 11.
:frowning:

#20

Via encubed: http://novelnews.net/2010/04/24/minori- … #more-1483

So at the very least, minori asserts they’re willing to take this to court. Why they’d be willing to go to such lengths to stamp out gaijin interest in their games is beyond me. They’re certainly not making any friends by harassing fan translators when they’ve shown no interest in localizing their products. Even as a publicity stunt, it’s full of fail–it just draws more foreign attention to the industry, and people outraged by games like Rapelay don’t give a damn how well contained they are–they believe the very existence of the games is a human rights violation.