I am a lawyer but probably not in your country, so my comments are by necessity rather general and should not be taken as a legal opinion you can rely upon. Speak to a local lawyer if the matter is important enough for you.

When we only look into the narrow issue of renaming files, I do not think this is illegal except when the contract under which you have bought or downloaded the subtitles forbids you from doing so.

Renaming the files and then selling (or even giving them away for free, even when you keep no copy for yourself) may be more of a problem as it may touch issues of copyright.

Writing a program that renames the files will be no more illegal than the act of renaming the files itself and if you want to protect yourself against any claim, you can add something like this to your documentation:

Before using this program you must make certain that renaming subtitle files is not illegal in your country. The author of this program makes no warranty whatsoever in that respect. User's discretion is advised.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

My blog: Imperial Deltronics

In reply to Re: Is this program I want to make legal? by CountZero
in thread Is this program I want to make legal? by Stefany

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.