A couple of weeks ago, two of China’s top sources of fan-translated subtitles – most of them synced to match illegal TV and film torrents – went offline simultaneously. But while one of them, Shooter.cn, seems to be gone for good, the other has already risen from the ashes.
The site, Yyets, went offline for content scrubbing, and while it hasn’t exactly come back online, visiting its old URL now redirects to rrys123.com, a different-looking site that seems to offer the exact same service. It is almost certainly run by the same people; rrys appears to be an acronym for the site’s Chinese name, and according to Techweb the site’s official Weibo once asked followers what they would think of a name change to Rrys.
At present, this reincarnated version of Yyets doesn’t offer anything like the subtitle selection that was featured on the original site. Yyets has always relied on user contributions, and it appears that this new site went up with an empty database, so it may be some time before it offers a significant selection of subtitles. As of this writing, though, there are already subtitles online for popular American TV shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
As before, the site does not actually link to pirated content, but it does list popular international torrent sites where users can download the video to go with the subtitles. How long that can last now that the site has obviously caught the eye of Chinese authorities is anyone’s guess.
See: Killing China’s subtitle sites won’t stop movie piracy. Here’s what will.
Editing by Mary-Anne Lee, photo by Robert Pittman
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