上世纪70年代末，改革开放后，中国放下之前与西方的恩怨，试图寻求和解。当时，西方政府认为，他们也许可以通过“软实力”来化解与中国之间的意识形态冲突。出于这个原因，他们决定向中国免费提供一些电影。
Beginning in the 1990s, however, the West gradually lost its enthusiasm for providing free content, and instead started hounding the Chinese government to do something about the rising tide of piracy.
但是，从90年代开始，西方却逐渐不愿再提供免费内容了，反而开始敦促中国政府采取行动，打击日益猖獗的盗版之风。
Well, for one thing, they'd started to realize that the growing influence of Western culture on Chinese people was not producing the political results the countries had expected. For another, a developing China was increasingly seen as an important market, rather than a backwater.
一方面，他们开始意识到，中国人群体中日益兴起的西方文化影响并不能达到他们期望的政治效果。另一方面，发展起来的中国在他们开来愈发是一个重要市场，而不再是一个穷乡僻壤了。
By that point, however, piracy was already a widespread phenomenon. In the 1980s, pirating was mainly limited to re-recording and sharing videotapes among small circles of cinephiles. In the 1990s, video compact discs grew in popularity.
然而当时，盗版已经是一个很普遍的现象了。80年代，盗版主要还局限于一小群电影爱好者翻录或是分享一些影碟。到了90年代，VCD越来越流行。
Many Chinese cinephiles have fond memories of foraging for disks at their local music and video store. There's a case to be made that, without piracy nurturing a rich and diverse culture of cinephiles, today's booming Chinese film market might be considerably more impoverished. Filmmakers like Wang Xiaoshuai, Guan Hu, and Jia Zhangke all grew up on pirated content.
许多中国电影爱好者都有着过去在他们当地的音响店淘碟的美好回忆。可以说，没有盗版在中国孕育了丰富多元的电影爱好者文化，今天蓬勃发展的中国电影市场可能要乏味的多。许多电影人，比如王小帅、管虎还有贾樟柯，都是在盗版内容中长大的。
In the 2000s, officials began cracking down on DVD piracy. By 2008, piracy had largely moved online. In response, subtitle collectives, some with hundreds of volunteers, emerged to become a key conduit for piracy in China. Subtitle groups offered far more accurate translations, as they were motivated not by a desire to turn a quick profit, but by their passion for film and TV. Some even went out of their way to do research and add annotations.
2000年，官方开始打击DVD盗版。到了2008年，盗版大幅转向线上。相应地，字幕组开始兴起，成为了中国盗版的主要渠道，有的字幕组甚至有上百个志愿者。他们提供的翻译要准确得多，因为他们的驱动力不是赚点快钱，而是出于对影视的热爱。有限甚至不计成本地做研究、加注释。
One of the defining characteristics of the knowledge economy is reproducibility. The more people accessing a piece of knowledge, the greater its influence, and thus its value. This is at odds with the logic of the current property rights paradigm, as extending copyright or patent protections to immaterial products like knowledge limits their reproducibility, while allowing the exclusive owner of these rights to profit from their scarcity, and not their success.
知识经济的一大根本特征就是可再生性。越多人获得知识，它的影响就越大，价值也越高。但这和当下产权范式的逻辑是矛盾的，因为针对像知识这样的非实体产品推行版权和专利保护会限制它们的可再生性，让这些权利的独家所有者从其稀缺性中获取利益，而非其成功性。
The debate in China over whether amateur subtitle groups deserve to be shut down originates in this contradiction between the value-as-scarcity paradigm enshrined in our current property rights regime, and the belief that sharing knowledge can create greater value. For many Chinese, the gray zones on the periphery of intellectual property law have long been a source of color in their lives. The piracy scene embodied by YYeTs.com might be on its last legs, but the rich cinephile culture it helped stimulate, the intercultural discussions and exchanges it sparked, and the up-and-coming creators it inspired aren't going anywhere.
中国关于业余字幕组是否应被关停的讨论源于当前知识产权制度中“价值等于稀缺性”的范式与分享知识可以创造更高价的观念之间的矛盾。对许多中国人来说，知识产权法边缘的灰色地带恰恰是生活精彩的来源。以人人影视为代表的盗版风波也许已经走进尾声，但是其催生的电影爱好者文化、它引发的跨文化讨论和交流以及它所激励的那些大有可为的创作者却尚不知要去向何方。返回搜狐，查看更多