Forum - View topicAre fandubs illegal?
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sailorsarah08
 Posts: 471 Location: Houston, Texas |
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In my high school tech class we are doing voice over in this particular unit, and the girl I’m partnered with also likes anime. We have an assignment to do voiceovers and write scripts for the project, and all the teacher is supplying us with is a few Peterbilt truck videos. Because we are both good students he says if we can find another video to dub over, we can use it.
We thought it would be fun to pick an anime show, and dub that, because it would be much more interesting than watching trucks be assembled. The show in question, Magical Witch Punie-chan, is a sub only disc. I own this disk, so I paid for the product, it’s not like I’m stealing, but is it within my right to change the audio track? I do plan on keeping a copy the audio and video, and maybe showing it to few close friends, but I do not intend to publish it to the internet in any way, shape, or form. Would this be illegal? EDIT: It would involve me downloading a raw of the video from a shady site, but I'm not sweating about that, because, again, I own the DVD. |
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GeminiDS85
Posts: 391 |
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Your proposed fandub would fall under the doctrine of Fair Use, which is a legal gray area. Is anyone going to come after you for making a fandub for educational purposes, no. Have some fun and I hope it is a good experience!
Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24131 |
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I'm not a lawyer, but I think that in practical terms, about the only time you could get into doo-doo for altering a work without permission is if you exhibited it publicly - and especially if you found a way to make money from said exhibition. Mind you, I plan on ratting you out to the FBI, so...
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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If it's for educational purposes and not for distribution, I don't think there'd be a problem. But as you say this assignment is specifically for "voiceover", I think you'll find dubbing anime may not be what the teacher is after. It sounds like he wants something like documentary commentary.
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sailorsarah08
Posts: 471 Location: Houston, Texas |
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He cleared the idea. He doesn't exactly like grading 50 projects that are identical. He knows I can work the mic and edit video, I help him with giving demo's for the other students. He just needs a project grade, and he was amazed that seniors second semester got excited for a project.
So this is fair use, phew. Blood, if you call the FBI on me, I'll alert the Center for Disease Control about your contagious backlog disease. 
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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I wish we did something like this in tech class, we just made shirts and CO2 cars. I'd love to see the final results of this, but then it wouldn't be fair use anymore *sigh*
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EricDent
 Posts: 997 Location: Georgetown, TX |
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As long as you don't use it as part of a portfolio (IE to promote yourself for a job) then it should be good to go.
BTW I thought there is supposed to be a Puni-Chan dub in the works, since they are re-releasing it...or maybe that was some other Magical Girl Show. |
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vision1
 Posts: 30 Location: Charlotte NC |
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Fandubs are not illegal in and of themselves, regardless of whether you use it in a class or not. The only time it becomes illegal is if you attempt to sell copies, or show it to a group for a charge- OR at a place where people paid money to get in (such as a club or convention with tickets or a door charge)- those situations are crossing the lines of legality.
This goes for fandubs of anime- or fandubs of ANYTHING in visual media. Sports, movies, reruns of TV shows all apply. Muting the dialogue and replacing it with your own with friends is a bit silly, and would be considered a bit childish unless it's very well done, and in that case, just be careful that nobody pays money for anything and there is nothing to worry about. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Actually, if you distribute it, for profit or not, you can still face criminal charges or a lawsuit. Using material for your own use, such as say, recording TV on VHS to watch later, or making a mix tape/cd from your cd or legally downloaded mp3 collection is perfectly fine, but once you upload it to the Internet, it becomes a problem. I think she had it right the first time- so long as she keeps it to herself, and shows it just to friends, it's perfectly fine, but once you make it into a big project, advertise it online and put it up on bittorrent or Youtube [whicb btw, does involve someone making a profit off of it, just not you or the original creator], you could end up in trouble. Parodies are legal btw, but if you use a part of the original work it might cause a problem. That's why parodies often involve reworked designs, new animation/art and different voice actors [Robot Chicken does this elegantly- you're obviously not watching the real thing, and they don't use any of the original work. And where they do, they probably pay the composers to do so, or hire the original voice actors], and also why Wierd Al only releases parodies of songs he's gotten permission to rework. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Just a comment that "educational use" per se does not imply a "fair use." The "substantiality" clause also comes into play. In Sarah's case, overdubbing the entire video rather than just a portion might, in theory, raise questions about whether this use is "fair." In practice, no one's going to care as long as the copies aren't distributed.
I only raise this point because it's a common misunderstanding of US copyright law to think that all educational uses fall into the "fair use" exemption. If that were true, teachers could distribute photocopies of textbooks rather than the books themselves. |
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sailorsarah08
Posts: 471 Location: Houston, Texas |
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I think thats Dokuro-chan... I could be mistaken. Well, right now, said fandub sounds slightly better than the Sailor Moon dub... only slightly. Nice to know what I'm doing isn't illegal. This is suprisingly hard, but it's really fun. It's be a profession I'd enjoy. It's a three man show right now, and we may have changed the mascots gender... I'd get so much hate if this went to the internet.
Thanks for all the feedback, confirming my suspecions that this is legal gray area. |
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