Enlarge / How Soviet-era Russia looks inside Atomic Heart , at least at the beginning. (credit: Mundfish / Focus Entertainment)

Ukraine's Digital Ministry has said it will ask Steam, Microsoft, and Sony to remove Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms in Ukraine, and possibly elsewhere, pointing to its retro-Communist aesthetic and reported "Russian roots."

As reported by the Ukrainian tech news/job site Dev.ua ( Google translation ), Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation (which also provided a statement in English to PCGamesN ) writes that Atomic Heart "has Russian roots and romanticizes communist ideology and the Soviet Union." The Ministry cites the game's "toxicity," "potential data collection of users," and use of funds from the game "to conduct a war against Ukraine." The statement asks for an outright ban on the game in Ukraine but calls on other countries to consider "limiting distribution" of the game.

The Ministry also cites "media reports" regarding development funds coming from Russian enterprises and banks under sanction and "systematically important for the Russian government" (according to Google translation).

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Enlarge (credit: Primate Labs)

We review a lot of hardware at Ars, and part of that review process involves running benchmark apps. The exact apps we use may change over time and based on what we're trying to measure, but the purpose is the same: to compare the relative performance of two or more things and to make sure that products perform as well in real life as they do on paper.

One app that has been a consistent part of our test suite for over a decade is Geekbench , a CPU and GPU compute benchmark that is releasing its sixth major version today. Partly because it's small, free, and easy to run; partly because developer Primate Labs maintains a gigantic searchable database spanning millions of test runs across millions of devices; and partly because it will run on just about anything under the sun, Geekbench has become one of the Internet's most-used (and most-argued-about) benchmarking tools.

"I'm really glad that people seem to have latched onto it," Primate Labs founder and Geekbench creator John Poole told Ars of Geekbench's popularity. "I know Gordon Ung at PCWorld basically calls Geekbench the official benchmark of Twitter arguments, which is the fallout from that."

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If you’re a movie buff, chances are you might have used subtitles to watch movies that are unavailable in your native language. The debate between subtitles and dubbed is eternal and never-ending. A lot depends upon users’ personal choices whether to watch a dubbed movie or add subtitles to movies and TV shows.

There are several websites on the internet offering subtitles in multiple languages for movies and shows. Most of the subtitles available on such websites are fanmade or ripoff from copyrighted content. The process of generating subtitles by fans is called “fansubbing.”

The term is quite popular amongst anime lovers. The role of a fansubber involves translation, subtitling, and distributing the subtitles. Since subtitles are not generally offered by the copyrighted content owners, they fall under the category of pirated content.

If you’re wondering whether subtitles are illegal to use, we have provided you a answer to it.

Are Subtitles Illegal? Apparently, Yes.

According to a court order passed by the Amsterdam District Court in 2017, subtitles are illegal unless created and distributed after obtaining permission from the original content holder. Anyone generating subtitles without obtaining the required permission could be punished under copyright infringement, as per the court order.

Similar legal barriers could be in place in other regions as well. Thus, subtitles are illegal and could land you behind bars, or you’ll need to pay a fine for using illegally generated subtitles.

For a long time, fansubbers have received harsh criticism from anti-piracy groups and copyright content creators. BREIN, an anti-piracy group hailing from the Netherlands, has been at the forefront of the fight against fansubbers and subtitles. The group has forced several subtitles creators to shut down their shop.

However, in 2017, a group called “Free Subtitles Foundation” (Stichting Laat Ondertitels Vrij – SLOV) decided to fight BREIN in the Netherland court against its campaign targeting fansubbers.

Surprisingly, the court sided with BREIN and issued an order stating that subtitles are illegal if generated/circulated without permission from the original content creator.

After the decision, BREIN director Tim Kuik said, “With this decision in hand it will be easier for BREIN to maintain its work against illegal subtitlers and against sites and services that collect illegal subtitles and add movies and TV shows from an illegal source.”

Everything is not gloomy though, Netflix and Youtube encourage publically sourced subtitles to make it easy for deaf users and those who are keen on watching foreign language shows and movies.

But, the order by the Dutch court very well means that subtitles are indeed illegal and it could have implications for fansubbers around the world.

Via: TorrentFreak

The post Are Subtitles Illegal? Here’s What Court Says About Using Subtitles appeared first on Fossbytes .