Why do people stop after getting a c&d notice?

[Darklord Rooke]

Just now, Scorp said:

Correct in what? I told that piracy is not fan translation and should be considered as separate case. 

Piracy and translation are both considered copyright infringement and are tried in the same manner. They don't have to be the same to be tried the same. If pirates can be tried for copyright infringement, creators of derivative works sure can as well. I should point out that proving damages in a case where an English version isn’t released in the West is incredibly hard. How can a fan-translation have caused damage to a product if that product isn't available? That being said, proving damages for a game planned for, or already released in the West is easier. That’s probably why only products planned to launch in the West tend to get C&D’d … in most cases. Because you have to prove damages. And the 'Fair Use' excuse is a long shot.

Machine translation of copyright pages ... how is a product damaged in any way if you view it through a machine translation?

[Conjueror]

One thing to note is that it's illegal to publish a translation, not to merely translate something for personal use. If that wasn't the case, even stuff like making backups of files would become piracy.

This adds a whole new level of complexity to proving who did what, and actually puts those hacking engines and compiling the text into more risk than the translator. What if a translation I was doing for personal use was stolen and leaked to the internet?

In any case, no VN company in the world has enough funds or patience to chase and sue people overseas, especially when there's nothing for them to gain from it after the translation was already released. Spending half your budget on making an example of a fan that spent hundreds of hours translating your game out of love doesn't sound like the best business plan, lol. It's much more likely they'll rather ask to buy your translation for an official release instead.

But you should stop anyway if your translation is so shitty not even the company that bothers to send a C&D wants to touch it.

[Scorp]

5 hours ago, Rooke said:

Machine translation of copyright pages ... how is a product damaged in any way if you view it through a machine translation?

This is not important, as you here is speaking not about reality, but about possibilities. Machine translation of a web page is copyright infringement (as it was not authorized by original author, like you told before). What is the difference? As if go by the book - this is copyright infringement.

[Darklord Rooke]

6 minutes ago, Scorp said:

This is not important, as you here is speaking not about reality, but about possibilities. Machine translation of a web page is copyright infringement (as it was not authorized by original author, like you told before). What is the difference? As if go by the book - this is copyright infringement.

The most obvious difference is, once again, how it damages your product or your business. To bring someone up on a lawsuit for copyright infringement, you sue for a monetary value, that monetary value is determined by the damage cause to your product. So, all you need to do is prove that google translating that web page damages you in some way.

[Scorp]

1 hour ago, Rooke said:

The most obvious difference is, once again, how it damages your product or your business. To bring someone up on a lawsuit for copyright infringement, you sue for a monetary value, that monetary value is determined by the damage cause to your product. So, all you need to do is prove that google translating that web page damages you in some way.

Not really. Just your sophistry is too complicated  My point (from the start) was like - you made a text-only translation, put it on website. What is the difference between this and between google translation of a webpage? Looks same for me (apart the quality and time involved, of course).

Also see Garejei or Conjueror blogs for example, who have portions of Dies Irae translated. So they have a copyright infringement materials on their blogs, as Light was not authorized them to do anything like that, by the logic? 

People here like Darbury told from beginning, that no matter if you got any money or if company was damaged (really now, company could always tell it was damaged, because they do not like your translation and it gives a negative image for them => resulting in poor sales, damn fan translators, that's the cause! Sue them!) - this is against the law. So why imply things like "damage", it is not really needed, like see that Pokemon company case - they were against unauhorized use of their IP. With such case anything unauthorized could be considered as money loss - like "your fan TL promoted your blog, you got money from Adwords => we lost money", "your fan TL damaged our company image, it was not accurate enough and your were not followed the guidelines we have in our company", "your fan TL could be applied to pirated ISO files, so you are supporting piracy => money loss", etc.

And this is only things I can think of, I believe professional lawyers immediately find tons of other things, patents, etc.

[Darklord Rooke]

4 minutes ago, Scorp said:

Not really. Just your sophistry is too complicated  

Not sophistry at all. The purpose of a lawsuit isn't to punish a victim in a court through prison sentences, the purpose of a lawsuit is to claim compensation from the defendant after a wrong they've suffered. In terms of copyright infringement the person who brings the suit will claim the defendant damaged their product in some way and claim some compensation, with the compensation being proportional to the damage inflicted - that is the purpose. Once more, if there are no damages then there is no purpose in bringing a lawsuit here.

So the difference between a webpage and a book is the author or developer would seek to SELL that text for money vs a website, which is often a tool to PROMOTE things for sale. Therefore, providing a translation of a book or VN for free has the potential to kill the market for a product (oh say, like by your latter example of offering a terrible translation) whereas providing a translation of a website is just spreading advertising or information which was meant to be available for free. Machine translate a book or something similar and you start getting into dangerous territories.

10 minutes ago, Scorp said:

Also see Garejei or Conjueror blogs for example, who have portions of Dies Irae translated. So they have a copyright infringement materials on their blogs, as Light was not authorized them to do anything like that, by the logic? 

I've mentioned this to you before - it's very hard to prove that a translation damages a product in a market where that product doesn't exist. Which doesn't take into consideration that it's not a full translation which means Fair Use could possibly come into play (Fair Use allowing for the limited use of copyrighted material without permission. The less a portion is used, the more likely it is considered fair. Gare translated only a few scenes of a very large story. What we're talking about are complete translations of the story, in the case of C&D's.) Also, the above point Conjueror made about Visual Novel companies being reluctant to engage in expensive legal battles. 

13 minutes ago, Scorp said:

People here like Darbury told from beginning, that no matter if you got any money or if company was damaged (really now, company could always tell it was damaged, because they do not like your translation and it gives a negative image for them => resulting in poor sales, damn fan translators, that's the cause! Sue them!) - this is against the law. So why imply things like "damage", it is not really needed,

Damage is very needed, because that is how punishment is decided - by how you've damaged that party. 

14 minutes ago, Scorp said:

"your fan TL damaged our company image, it was not accurate enough and your were not followed the guidelines we have in our company"

That would actually be a very real possibility, yes. If people got a terrible image of that product from an unauthorised translation, and because of this demand for that product is reduced, that is very much an argument they could use in court. Why shouldn't that argument be used?

[Scorp]

So, lets see. You tell damage is needed - okay. To have a damage market should exist where they sell it, I got you right? But most of C&D came from companies, who never ever want to go into western market, like Akatsuki Works or GIGA. What would be their argument? What you damage with your fan TL - their company image? But they sell for japanese market, so fan TL cannot affect their sales in negative way - more like in positive way, as more people would be aware and some western collectors would buy japanese eroge on internet.

Actually in most C&D there is nothing told about damage. It is usually just "stop infringe copyright or we will took legal actions". But by your words I do not really understand what sort of legal actions they could take in case of release fan TL (we do not speak about things like asking hoster to remove patch or sort of that).