Copyright and Other Dilemmas

Image from Donnapie @ Tumblr

When I graduated from college ten years ago with a degree in English, I only knew one thing: I wanted to spend the rest of my life working with books. So far, I’ve managed to do it—but with each passing day, it becomes less and less clear whether my industry will still exist by the time I’m ready to retire. And two reasons why book publishing is on such shaky ground are the erosion of copyright enabled by the digital revolution, and the lack of respect it breeds for the services my employer and I provide.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that I’m torn when it comes to fansubs. On the one hand, I love them—they’re for the people and by the people, and often far, far superior to the official subtitles. (See, for example, my fawning discussion of the differences between the subtitles on Coffee Prince’s DVD and the ones created by WITH S2.) On the other hand, I see why the networks and their sanctioned international outlets don’t appreciate fansubs. They’re companies just like the one I work at, and they need to make money to survive. When fansubs are easily available, the dramas’ makers lose control of the product they’ve invested in and are less able to recoup the money they’ve spent.

And when that happens, everybody loses: When you can’t find a decent book to read in ten years because everyone’s self-publishing unedited crap on Amazon, don’t come crying to me. I’m going to be too busy working swing shifts at McDonald’s and falling out of America’s ever-dwindling middle class.

But my sympathy for the makers of Kdramas doesn’t mean that I wasn’t horrified to realize that two of my favorite Kdrama sites disappeared earlier this week: MySoju and DramaTic (z”l). There’s some interesting discussion of what happened on last Friday’s Dramabeans open thread (see the posts starting at 35). Presumably, both sites fell victim to complaints about the legality of their subtitles. (Here’s a site that confirms that Drama Fever filed a cease and desist suit against Google, probably as owner of YouTube.)

I’m as guilty of watching illegally streamed video as the next person, but I only do it when I want to watch something that’s not available from a legitimate source. I happily pay my Drama Fever annual fee (a bargain at twice the price) and am also about to pony up so I can use Hulu Plus on my Roku.

Because I’m a mental midget when it comes to techy things like getting subs and video from different sources and making them work together, watching downloaded dramas isn’t the slightest bit of a temptation for me. This means my relationship with DramaTic has largely been as a reader of commentary—he kept me real. It’s easy to get lost in fangirlish OTP obsessiveness and lose light of things like a show’s objective quality and actual, qualitative merit. DramaTic never did that, and although our opinions differ on a lot of fronts (e.g, I ♥ trendies), the context and sense of history provided by that site have made me an infinitely better, more informed viewer of Korean drama.

I can see filing copyright complaints against My Soju: it is to Kdrama what crack dens are to the real world. But DramaTic? Its owner was only posting translated text files, not video. The ugly truth, though, is that both the words and images that make up our dramas belong to their copyright holders, and they can file suit about abuses against either.

The question is, Why should they? A rising tide lifts all boats. Thanks to fansubs, these dramas reach passionate international viewers the television networks themselves aren’t prepared to exploit—and those international viewers do things like buy DVDs, soundtracks, and ridiculous tchotchkes. (You certainly would not find a replica of the necklace Jun Pyo made for Jan Di in my jewelry box. No, you certainly would not.) When someone fansubs a show, it’s a giant advertisement for not just sixteen (or twenty or a hundred) hours of television—it’s an advertisement for an entire genre. Maybe even an entire nation.

This crackdown on grass-roots support for their product is even worse in light of its fundamental hypocrisy: Guess who subbed the show I’m watching on Drama Fever right now? That’s right…WITH S2. That fansub site is credited at the beginning of each and every episode of 9 Ends 2 Outs—and a lot of other shows that Drama Fever continues to stream. They’re benefiting every day from the efforts of some fansubers, yet they turn around and file copyright claims against others. On what planet does that make sense?

In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the state of American popular music in the early 2000s. As that point, it seemed likely that peer-to-peer file trading would wipe out traditional record labels, and maybe even the music industry itself. But after a lot of regrettable fighting against the people they should have been courting—music lovers around the world—the music industry was saved by one thing: the convenience and accessibility of iTunes. Back in the day, I used Napster and Limewire and Pirate Bay just like every other college kid. But now that it’s so incredibly easy and affordable to buy from legitimate sources, why would I bother to download things illegally? 

With the help of its sales network, the music industry made itself indispensable not by crushing the people who loved their product, but by finding a way to work with them. That’s what Drama Fever should be doing right now: providing a service so good, universally accessible, and complete that fansubs wouldn’t be necessary.

As an English-speaking North American viewer, I know I’m incredibly lucky: Korean networks will do practically anything to get their dramas into my hands and on my TV. The potential market here is huge, and just like the purveyors of Kpop, they want a piece of that pie. But for that to happen, they need to realize that biting the hand that feeds them isn’t going to help.

Imagine how much time someone like DramaTic’s webmaster invested in the many, many hours worth of subs he made available at his site. Instead of having websites like his removed from the Internet, the Kdrama Overlords should thank whatever God they pray to every day for their dedicated fans. 

I honestly believe there’s a way for everyone to win here—why not find it?