Die Hard: with a Venegance!

Call me paranoid, but the timing of my virus couldn't have been worse. I finally hitting my stride on the HR-3101 issue and suddenly I'm shut off from the net. They can't silence me!

All kidding aside, let's get serious for a moment
 Mr Szoka of the Los Angeles Times! I salute you not only did you story here show you delved into a topic your probably not qualified to write about. Your own newspaper proved our point! on the front page of the January 27th online edition there was a video of a bomb scare  

In this day an age of technology and terrorism, this is an absolute vital piece of information to a citizen, especially late breaking and up to the minute. Now Mr Szoka please proceed to turn off the volume or cover your ears and watch the video and then report how much information you successfully obtained from it.

Information is worthless if it cannot be conveyed across channels. We Deaf citizens simply lack audio channels. Our point is not to force companies to foot the bill or to drag down business. I gave huge compliments to Google Auto-Captioning of youtube videos on my twitter feed. Interestingly enough if you did your homework, Ken Harrenstien the lead engineer behind Google's Auto-Caption is in fact Deaf himself. I wonder how long we would have had to wait for this technology if we had not taking matters into our own hands?

I don't mean to sound militant. but here's another cold hard fact!

Netflix!
According to Tech Crunch blog post

Netflix ended the fourth quarter with approximately 12,268,000 total subscribers, a 10 percent jump compared to end of the third quarter of 2009. Net subscriber change in the quarter was an increase of 510,000 for the third quarter of 2009.
The company earned $30.9 million, or 56 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2009. That compared to $22.7 million, 38 cents per share, in the same period of 2008.

The title of the post? "Nearly Half Of Netflix Subscribers Now Watch Streams Online"

That's super, cool,  awesome if your hearing! You see, Netflix doesn't provide captioning and or subtitles that are actually already on the commonly rented DVD. They claim it's difficult to produce, furthermore it's due out this year after much protest from the Deaf community.

This is what HR 3101 wants to guarantee us the creaters of the original ADA act of 1990 probably never imagined 6 million people watching movies on their computers.

Requires every provider of Internet access service and every manufacturer of Internet access equipment, unless it would be an undue burden, to make user interfaces accessible to individuals with disabilities. Requires that apparatus that receives or plays back video programming and has a picture screen of any size be capable of decoding closed captioning, transmitting and delivering video description, and conveying emergency information.  (Source)

Earning 30 million dollars in one quarter, does adding closed captioning or subtitles to their streaming content qualify as an undue burden? 

Now Mr Szoka, Like you I can type a long winded rant. Unlike you I make sure my facts (if any!) makes sense and are not just industry centered!


Have a good one you all !

Joey