Third Party Captioning and Copyright (G3ict Policy White Paper)

The past 70 years have brought a renaissance in the delivery of video programming. Accordingly, the need for third-party captioning has grown exponentially. Third parties are increasingly interested in adding captions to video programming to which they don’t hold the copyright. However, they also face potential liability for infringing the copyright of video creators. A G3ict Policy White Paper | Author: Blake E. Reid | Published March 2014, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This paper aims to take stock of this critical moment for captioning. It begins with an overview of closed captioning laws and regulations. It then turns to the potential legal conflicts between captioning and copyright law. It considers potential drivers behind the conflict, closing with an analysis of potential solutions including contracts, fair use, and legislation.

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