Petitions for Reconsidering IP-Video Captioning Rules Draw Several Oppositions
Advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing pushed back against a CEA petition for reconsideration that sought to change some IP-video closed captioning rules that the FCC adopted to comply with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). At the same time, media industry groups and a CE manufacturer opposed a petition for reconsideration the same advocates had lodged that would expand the types of video covered by the rules. And media groups also opposed a petition for reconsideration filed by TVGuardian, which makes a “foul language filter” for TV programming. Other parties lodged oppositions to various petitions for reconsideration earlier last week (CD June 8 p17).
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The FCC should not take up CEA’s arguments for exempting from the requirements devices such as videogame consoles that were not solely designed to play video, a group of advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing said (http://xrl.us/bna938). “CEA has failed to explain how it is possible for manufacturers to design apparatuses with the capability of playing back video programming, yet not intend those apparatuses to be used by consumers to play back video programming,” they said. Additionally, the groups opposed CEA’s request to exempt removable media players such as Blu-ray and DVD players. They also asked to FCC to affirm that the Jan. 1, 2014, deadline for complying with the rules refers to when manufacturers make devices available for sale, not the date they are made. “Alternatively, we encourage the Commission to consider labeling requirements and other retail policies to minimize consumer confusion."
NCTA urged the FCC to maintain its conclusion that full-length programming be captioned but video clips need not be, it said (http://xrl.us/bna996). Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and others had argued in their petition for reconsideration that the commission lacked the authority to make such a distinction. But the CVAA does not “require all video programming to be captioned online,” NCTA said -- just video programming that was shown on TV with captions after a certain date. “Video clips are created separately for online distribution, in some cases even before a full-length program has aired on television with captions,” it said. And in some cases such clips included video that is never shown on TV, it said. “If there were any ambiguity in the statutory language, the legislative history makes clear Congress’s intent that, at this time ’the regulations apply to full-length programming and not to video clips or outtakes,'” it said, citing the floor discussion in the Senate and House reports on the act.
Broadcasters took a similar position (http://xrl.us/bnbaaa). “Broadcasters and non-broadcast programmers airing programming on television generally do not even air clips and excerpts,” NAB said. “The notion of short segments available for viewing is very much a product of the Internet ecosystem; there is no easy corollary in the traditional television world,” it said. Moreover, the sort of short-form promotions and public-service announcements that do air on TV are exempt from captioning rules, it said.
Public TV stations also opposed the accessibility advocates’ petition. “Reversing course from the Commission’s decision that the CVAA’s scope does not extend beyond full-length programming could have the unintended effect of discouraging some small public television stations from voluntarily captioning their on-air programming,” the Association of Public TV Stations and the Public Broadcasting Service said in a jointly-filed opposition (http://xrl.us/bnbadb). Stations with annual gross revenue of less than $3 million are exempt from the closed-captioning rules, and some public stations have raised concerns that their voluntary captioning of online TV programming and clips “could have the unintended effect of making it impossible for them to continue to voluntarily caption their on-air programming,” they said. “To avoid triggering the IP captioning requirements for their video clips -- a burden that stations with annual gross revenues less than $3,000,000 simply cannot bear -- these stations might unfortunately be forced to avoid publishing or exhibiting their video programs with captions,” they said.
The Mitsubishi Electric Visual Solutions America also opposed aspects of the accessibility advocates’ petition and TVGuardian’s petition. The requirements for synchronizing captions and video programming shouldn’t be put on receivers, Mitsubishi said (http://xrl.us/bnbad6). “It seems most likely that any noticeable timing issues are related to the content itself,” it said. “Some of the mechanisms for captioning produce a significant delay between the audio and the caption display. It is simply not possible for receivers to ameliorate this delay,” it said. Furthermore, the commission was right to conclude that the way HDMI connections carry captions satisfies the law, it said.