The FCC should rely on companies’ voluntary efforts...
The FCC should rely on companies’ voluntary efforts to caption video clips on the Internet rather than requiring it through regulation, said NCTA staffers in a meeting last week with staff from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, the Media…
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Bureau and the Office of General Counsel, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1l13kBy). “We urge the Commission to proceed cautiously to avoid consumer harms that could flow from unnecessary and burdensome regulation,” said the filing. If the FCC does adopt captioning rules for clips delivered via IP, they should apply only to clips from video aired by a video programming owner and available on that same VPO’s website or app, that last longer than 15 seconds and that use the same audio and video as the captioned original, NCTA said. “VPOs may have little control over where clips of their television programming ultimately reside online and therefore cannot be held responsible for compliance with any online captioning obligation beyond clips within their immediate control aired by a video programming owner,” said NCTA. Requiring captioning for other clips would “require expenditure of significant resources and could result in programmers posting less video content online,” NCTA said. The association also said Congress did not give the FCC authority to regulate video clips on the Internet, the filing said.