NAD Files Comments on Copyright Exemption for Captions
By Shane.Feldman
Friday 03/02/2012
On February 10, 2012, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) took
the lead, and was joined by several other consumer groups, in
submitting comments in support of a petition filed by
Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., Gallaudet
University, and Participatory Culture Foundation requesting an
exemption for certain classes of work from the anti-circumvention
provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Two of these
exemption requests relate to closed captioning – one for IP based media
and the other for fixed-disc based media. These exemptions will allow
third parties to add or improve closed captioning on video programs
without having to get permission from the copyright owner.
As many of our members know, there is a vast amount of video programs
that are neither captioned nor required to be captioned. For instance,
DVDs are generally not required to be captioned, and there also are
large gaps in the new rules requiring captioning for IP based video
programs. While we will not rest in our advocacy efforts to expand the
coverage of captioning laws, the NAD wants to make it possible for
third parties to voluntarily add or improve captions any video
program.
We have learned that some schools wanted to add captions to videos
shown in class and were not able to do so due to copyright concerns. We
also have seen volunteer efforts such as http://www.universalsubtitles.org
which add captions to permissible online videos. Additionally, these
exemptions will allow third parties such as volunteers or even video
program distributors to improve the quality of captions. For instance,
this will allow them to fix captioning errors or even adjust the timing
of mis-timed captions so that deaf and hard of hearing people can
better follow the program.
We believe that Copyright law should not be used to inhibit
accessibility.
Click here to download the NAD Comments on Copyright Exemption for
Captions.
http://www.nad.org/sites/default/files/2012/March/NAD%20DMCA%20Comments%20FINAL.pdf
Source:
http://www.nad.org/news/2012/3/nad-files-comments-copyright-exemption-captions