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About movie copyright
Anonymous5 views4 answers
I have a chinese movie site, but web hosting is in the US, I want to post some movies which are from the DVD and some subtitles which are write and translate by myself. and I want to let people watch them online and they can download it. I just want to know if that is illegal and what should I do? Thank you!
It's illegal, and not only can you be sued, have the site taken down, and have your computers confiscated, but you can also go to prison. Find a different business.
I does not matter where your server is, nor that you added your own subtitles, this is 100% illegal, unless of course the movies you are showing are out of copyright (or never copyrighted) or you have a license from the copyright owners.
Streaming the movies without a license would be copyright infringement. Also, adding subtitles would be making derivative works of the movies, which would also be an act of copyright infringement. If you want to proceed, then you need to do so under license. Since the movies are Chinese, you would need to find out who owns the copyrights in the movies (presumably Chinese companies) and whether they have already licensed the movies exclusively to US companies. This can be quite complex. For more about movie licensing, see the following sites: http://www.mplc.org/page/channel-overview and http://www.reelclassics.com/Buy/licensing.htm (although these sites do not deal with the licensing of foreign movies).
