IP Clip Closed-Captioning Rules Slated for July FCC Meeting Vote, Officials Say

An order requiring video clips on the Internet to be closed captioned is planned to be part of the agenda for the FCC July 11 meeting, agency officials told us Tuesday. Chairman Tom Wheeler said as much during a speech last week at the M-Enabling Summit (http://bit.ly/1p18o0D), said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Executive Director Claude Stout. Though several FCC officials confirmed that an IP clip closed caption rule is planned for the meeting, they said no prospective rule has yet been circulated, and with extensive recent ex parte filings in docket 11-154 (http://bit.ly/1lwfbOo) from NAB, NCTA and others, it’s not yet clear what form an eventual rule would take. The Media Bureau under Wheeler has been thought to be working on an order for a vote this summer (CD March 7 p5).

"We're confident that the final item will follow the letter and the spirit of the” 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act “and vindicate the civil right of people who are deaf or hard of hearing to access video programming on equal terms,” said Blake Reid, an assistant clinical professor at the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic who has represented TDI on captioning matters. The clinic is at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Wheeler and fellow Democratic commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn are all seen as supporting rules requiring captions for online clips (CD March 7 p5), while Republican commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai have yet to take an official position on the matter. The majority of industry commenters have opposed rules for captioning online clips and challenged FCC authority to impose them. In a filing posted in the docket Tuesday, NAB and NCTA have outlined a blueprint for possible rules (http://bit.ly/UJ3RDK).

In response to a request from commission staff, according to the ex parte filing, NAB and NCTA said the rule should apply to clips where a broadcaster or pay-TV provider “both airs the program on television with captions and exhibits clips from that television program on its own website or app.” For the rule to apply, the broadcaster or multichannel video programming distributor would have to have the rights to air the program on TV and its clips on the Internet, the associations said. “Any other approach would impose significant administrative and compliance burdens."

The associations also want the rule to apply only to clips that last longer than 15 seconds and are “straight lifts” -- clips using the same audio and video as the captioned original, they've said in ex parte filings. NAB has also asked for an exemption for advance promotional clips, and argued in a recent filing (http://bit.ly/UJ435S) that a proposed rule to require such clips to be replaced with captioned versions within 24 hours would be untenable. “Should the Commission delineate between ’time sensitive’ clips, such as breaking news and other advance clips, we strongly urge the Commission to allow a longer time frame for advance clips,” NAB said. Many stations should be issued waivers of any new clip captioning rules until an automating technology for captioning is developed, NAB said (CD June 17 p13).

Restricting clip captioning only to clips on broadcaster and MVPD sites could mean other services showing those clips wouldn’t be required to pass those captions through, said a joint filing from TDI and other consumer groups representing the hearing impaired (http://bit.ly/1yf97hs). That could exclude Amazon, Hulu, Google’s YouTube and news blogs like the Huffington Post from falling under the rule, the consumer groups said. Websites owned by non-video producers could be given more time to comply with IP clip caption rules, the groups conceded, but added that there is no reason for an “arbitrary” limit of 15 seconds.

Time-sensitive clips should have a grace period of no more than an hour before receiving captions, the groups said. “Consumers who are deaf or hard of hearing have a right to access clips -- particularly important and “time-sensitive” clips with widespread appeal -- on equal terms,” they said. “We are working closely with the Commission and our industry colleagues to resolve some contours of the coverage,” the groups told us.