German and Polish police have arrested several administrators and translators for a popular Polish site that archives user-generated subtitles for use on foreign DVD titles on grounds of copyright infringement, reports ars technica.

The site, napisy.org, appears to be down at the moment, and police announced that they seized a number of computers in the raid.

Polish subtitles are a big issue because the official Polish translations often do not become available for some time after the release of major films. Many Poles do not want to wait this long, so many download subtitles, which can be played back on DVD players when paired with DVD rips.

The source of those ripped title might well be films that were legally purchased, but the movie industry is bound to claim that the subtitles are so popular because they are usually paired with pirated copies of films – a claim that might well be true and that will soon be tested in court.

Under Polish law – and that of many other countries – translators need to get permission before setting to work on copyrighted materials. This prevents US publishers from translating and publishing the work of Polish authors without their permission, for example, but the head of napisy.org claims that "the idea of the service is noncommercial" and might therefore fall under some sort of fair use right.

Story filed 20.05.07