121 One last thing

I forgot my favorite point. The fact of the matter is, laws don’t really touch the internet.

Hi, I’m serving tons of video content and making megabucks off it. Captioning? Nah, too expensive. What do you mean it’s regulated, and that I have to? Ohhhh, I see where you’re getting confused. See, my server isn’t in your country, and we don’t have those laws here. I’m not really doing business in the states; folks from the states just happen to use my site more than any other country.

There’s a certain pirating site where they’ve been doing this to get around things like the DMCA and such for years, and it’s incredibly successful because it’s easy and legally valid!

“Internet” laws and regulations are really just computer regulations. A given country has authority over the computers in its area and that’s it. Personally I like it that way. Please don’t change it, please don’t regulate it, because you’ll ruin the freest, most human invention before it ever gets its chance to shine. Laws are a black mark on humanity, demonstrating only that we are unable to control ourselves.

posted at 10:56 pm on December 2, 2008 by Zachary Hueras

122 Untitled

The article is making a big deal of the alleged difference between captioning and subtitling. In the UK – where closed-captioning was invented, by the BBC in the late ’70s – it has always been known as subtitling. As far as I know it’s only the US (and presumably Canada) which has this definition of the difference, and there’s no particular reason that the US definition should be the one the internet takes on.

Otherwise, the idea of every video online being captioned is lovely, but unrealistic. In an hour, one person can produce an average of six or seven minutes of reasonable quality block subtitles, so the number of man-hours that would be needed to caption every video online is phenomenal.

posted at 03:04 pm on December 4, 2008 by Caz Black

123 Video subtitling is not just for deaf

Video subtitling is extremely useful to non-native speakers. I wrote an article on online video subtitling as a response to this post. I’ve explained why is subtitling important to the whole world of n-th language speakers, sketched the microformat for video subtitling and explained my vision of the subtitling microformat implementation.

posted at 08:03 pm on December 6, 2008 by František Malina

124 I have rights

Where is your discussion of rights? You propose a government solution to what you say is a problem, but you don’t even mention the concept of rights. Let me speculate why you don’t mention them. You acknowledge that non-governmental efforts to get in place what you want have failed. So, your solution is to force your desires on people. Acknowledging rights would end the argument.

Rights do not conflict. I have a right (well, in 19th century America, I might have had) to my life, which entails a right to acquire property. This legislation you propose conflicts with that right, because it draws on my resources. It therefore doesn’t represent a valid right. In your totalitarian little scheme, I’m not free to act, I’m constrained by d#$%heads that want to tell me how I am allowed to pursue wealth creation. I want you and a55holes like you everywhere to know just how much I hate you.

posted at 11:06 pm on December 10, 2008 by Brian K

125 "Deaf Singer"

Joe,

I’m not sure if you’re still reading comments, since they seem to have become a tit-for-tat discussion, but there is a giant hole in your entire argument. To be fair and to make sure I hadn’t missed it, I re-read the article and re-read every comment.

Which government institution will be responsible for monitoring, reviewing, reprimanding, and prosecuting the private institutions which create online video content? Should this new government entity actively seek out offenders or simply respond to submitted complaints? Will there be an approval process before video content can be displayed? Will compliance with captioning law be dictated by the size of the group that creates the video, the number of online views, the type of site (or channel therein) which hosts the video, or the legal status of the organization which creates the content? By extension, how will fines (or other criminal ramifications) be determined? Will there be rewards and/or incentives to being compliant? Who determines those incentives and how will they be paid for?

Let me be clear, captioning is a necessary step toward universal accessibility, but regardless of one’s particular political leanings, government regulation is an objectively terrible way to implement it. If universal accessibility is truly the goal, then regulating and requiring the implementation of CSS3 and strict code validation would go much, much further toward that end.

In your first screencap, Greg is described as a “Deaf Singer,” an obvious and slightly hilarious misspelling. Please describe the legal process required to force an update of the spelling and, if the offending organization was unwilling to change it, how they would be punished.

posted at 02:22 pm on January 5, 2009 by Ethan Smith

126

You rubbed me the wrong way when you started out saying that government intervention and legislation are good things for the internet. However, I do agree with you that better “features” need to be implemented to help the handicapped.

posted at 02:20 am on July 2, 2009 by hostgatorcoupon

127 wow. i am still reading but i had to say

wow..

great

but : may i suggest – one more ->

standard for login and captcha – should have a finite set of twists ..

cheers
olga-nesher-lednichenko

posted at 02:38 pm on March 21, 2010 by olgalednichenko

128

thanks a lot for that useful post. i was not look from caption side before…

posted at 06:43 am on March 24, 2011 by Saç kaynak

129 we need a government, just not the one we have now

For real, thank you for posting this article. It does illustrate the lack of centralization in the industry. I think it’s because of basic competition and the numbers game, companies need to cater to the largest audience possible, that’s where profit is, unfortunately this causes many issues. I can see that standards are finally being used, but sadly, there is much left to do and few willing to invest in getting it done.

posted at 09:39 pm on July 26, 2011 by web design nutcase