Re: Roll-up captions in WebVTT

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>
> The fact is that roll-up captions are a standard means in which TV 
> captions have been provided in the past and that publishers want these 
> replicated in exactly the same way on the Web. This is why YouTube had 
> to develop this feature, too. Since we are making WebVTT a universal 
> format in which all existing captioning from TV can be represented on 
> the Web, too, we have to support this case.

WebVTT is definitely _not_ a format "in which all existing captioning from 
TV can be represented on the Web".

The Web is its own medium. We shouldn't be adopting all the mistakes of 
past mediums.


> Captions are a legal part of a video - if you want to present a video on 
> the Web identically to how it has been authored, we need this support, 
> otherwise it's not the same artistic object and sites run into copyright 
> issues.

I don't buy that for a minute. If you can get the permission to publish 
the content in the first place, you can get the permission to publish it 
using the Web's technologies.


> It doesn't matter if what is presented is aesthetically more pleasing 
> than an alternative presentation - we don't change the content of a 
> movie for display on the Web either just because we don't think a part 
> of it is not aesthetically pleasing.

Yes, we do.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 29 November 2011 00:03:18 UTC