The core purpose of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is the following quote:
"The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (“CVAA”) requires the Federal Communications Commission (“Commission”) to revise its regulations to mandate closed captioning on certain video programming delivered using Internet protocol."
The following responsibility of the FCC I do not like because this could be a political tool as a way out of providing closed captioning because of "undue economic burdens" and this often is what I consider subtle discrimination:
"..while ensuring that our regulations do not create undue economic burdens for the distributors, providers, and owners of online video programming."
Anyhow what is NPRM asking for?
Proposed rules:
Requiring video programming owners to send required caption files for IP-delivered video programming to video programming distributors and video programming providers along with program files;
Requiring video programming distributors and video programming providers to enable the rendering or pass through of all required captions to the end user; and
Requiring the quality of all required captioning of IP-delivered video programming to be of at least the same quality as the captioning of the same programming when shown on television
Hey, these proposed rules seems to be on target for what most deaf/hoh want.
Proposed schedule of deadlines:
All prerecorded and unedited programming subject to the new requirements must be captioned within six months of publication of the rules in the Federal Register
All live and near-live programming subject to the new requirements must be captioned within 12 months of publication of the rules in the Federal Register; and
All prerecorded and edited programming subject to the new requirements must be captioned within 18 months of publication of the rules in the Federal Register;
"Craft procedures by which video programming providers and video programming owners may petition the Commission for exemptions from the new requirements based on economic burden".
On the preceding quote: I hope that the FCC will be very strict and not grant exemption all too easily; grant only when the provider will bankrupt because of CC (hell, if it were up to me, I would let them bankrupt because non-captioning videos have no value for me
I am not sure what to make out of the following quote. Soothsayers of legal jargon, can you tell us in a layman's term what this means?
"Decline to treat a de minimis failure to comply with the new rules as a violation, and permit entities to comply with the new requirements by alternate means"
By alternate means, I hope does not apply to electronic voice to text because it is not perfect by any means.
The following quote definitely is good; just hope that procedure to file complaints is easy and does not require first having to contact network provider or TV show, etc, before filing complaint with the FCC. With regular TV, it is a nightmare to file complaint against TV show provider or network provider.
"Adopt procedures for complaints alleging a violation of the new requirements."
As always your comments are most welcome if do it with respect.
eyes open & thumbs up,
Ed Bosson
