Pending US legislation - SOPA & PIPA – is the wrong answer to the wrong question

The Internet is an unparalleled platform for innovation, activism and self-expression that creates opportunities, growth and jobs in the U.S. and around the world. In fact, without the Internet’s global access, robust architecture, and freedom of speech, the likes of Wikipedia, YouTube and the Arab Spring probably never would have happened, or would have been very different.

But all this is now at risk because of pending draconian legislation in the U.S. Congress – the ’Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA) and the ‘Protect IP Act’ (PIPA) – as the following video from Fight for the Future explains beautifully…

So on January 18, to protest against this misguided SOPA / PIPA legislation, dotSUB will join hundreds of other websites like Wikipedia, Mozilla, WordPress, Reddit, Twitpic, BoingBoing by going “dark.”  The dotSUB homepage will be black for 24 hours with links only to US Congressional representatives to show how constricted the Internet under these over-reaching ‘anti-piracy’ regulations would be. (Our full functionality, inside pages, embedded videos, plugins, APIs and the dotSUB Translation Content Management System used by our customers will remain available during the protest.)

As drafted, this legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet’s underlying infrastructure. What that will do is compromise Internet security, inhibit online expression, and slow growth and job creation in the technology sector. The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, provides a detailed analysis of how SOPA will hurt the Internet.

SOPA / PIPA are simply the wrong answer to the wrong question, is also how Tim O’Reilly, founder & CEO of O’Reilly Media, puts it. We agree. It is the wrong question because piracy will never be stopped by new regulations when innovative pirates can satisfy global consumer demand at much lower prices or for free, and those corporations that could legally supply those products and services will not. And it is the wrong answer because the innovations in technology and business models which the Internet fosters will no longer be feasible due to unlimited liabilities that would become possible with SOPA.

What can you do?

1. If you are a U.S. citizen, please contact your representative now to express your disagreement with the proposed legislation!

2. If you are in New York City on January 18 at 12:30pm, come join us for the Emergency Meeting of the NY Tech Meetup to protest outside the offices of U.S. Senators Schumer and Gillibrand at 780 3rd Ave.

3. If you are fluent in languages other than English, and passionate about open, public and global Internet sustainability, please volunteer to translate the short video ”SOPA / PIPA Break The Internet” from above. It is very easy to do, and this tutorial shows you how.

4. If you are a citizen of another country, check if similar legislation is being introduced, and make your voice heard!

Meanwhile, let’s protest these unwanted U.S. laws together on January 18!

David Orban
CEO, dotSUB

Come to a special discussion dotSUB’s Peter S. Crosby will be leading about the award-winning Sundance documentary “CONNECTED: An Autobiography about Love, Death & Technology,” directed by Tiffany Shlain, after the Monday 4:40p screening during its opening week at The Angelika / NYC.

“I’m honored to be asked to host the discussion about crowd-sourcing, multi-culturalism & interdependence based on both ‘Connected’ and the short film ‘A Declaration of Interdependence.’  It’s literally a demonstration of interdependence how volunteer translators from all over the world have added 54 language subtitles in just 22 days!”

It’s part of a fantastic line-up of speakers all week. Watch trailer and buy tickets.

Come support indie film! 

The use of online and mobile video continues to grow rapidly worldwide in the consumer market, as does the adoption of health related video by healthcare professionals.  Due to the complexity of the subject matter, the inherently visual nature of video is particularly well suited to communicate difficult concepts in this field. But while the need and desire for healthcare related video is high worldwide, the costs to create quality video content can be prohibitive, and much of the leading content is not available in multiple languages, making it difficult, if not impossible, for healthcare professionals and consumers to take advantage of it globally. This is most true in emerging markets, where often the need is highest.

Enter Publicis Healthware International (PHI) and dotSUB. Two entities on the forefront of digital media pooled their respective core competencies, and created Videum, to enable online users from all reaches of the globe to meet with one another. By utilizing dotSUB’s industrial strength online platform for captioning, translating, and subtitling video, and PHI’s global reach for content, creativity, and understanding of the Health 2.0 ecosystem, this new portal will provide unparalleled, universal access to quality healthcare content from multiple sources around the globe.

The partnership’s offering, www.videum.com, is a video portal where users will soon be able to access health and wellness video content in any language. Offerings of the site will include the ability for channels, 24/7 monitoring and maintenance and verified translations.

“Video on the internet is the most powerful, yet scalable medium to communicate passion, emotion, and high quality content. But its message must be understood by everybody”, said David Orban, CEO of dotSUB.

“Health related communication on a global level need specific solutions”, said Roberto Ascione, CEO of PHI. “We are partnering with dotSUB, to bring the power of online video in health and wellness to users worldwide”, he added.

A preview of Videum is featured on September 27th, at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco. A private beta of the portal will be revealed at Health 2.0 Berlin at the end of October and a full launch is planned for early 2012.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”                  ~ John Muir

Muir, a 20^th century naturalist, was certainly ahead of his time; before viruses were known, phones or radios used, even before U.S. National Parks – until he created the first one at Yosemite in 1899.  Muir knew “hitched-to-the-universe” experiences could come from sharing of nature.

It was a simpler time then; land was plenty, people few, and we didn’t really know as much about each other; we were still in discovery mode.  We could also claim ignorance to rape, famine, slavery, genocide, and even get away with it.

“We,” you say?  “’We’ could get away with it?”  “Not my problem, not my watch, nor my people,” most will exclaim, distancing ourselves from those “others.”

Yet now we can all see the earthquakes and hurricanes, feel the poverty and hunger, cringe at the Holocaust and Darfur, and who will forget 9/11?

By the same measure, we can celebrate Apartheid’s end and HIV’s decline, share the liberation of ‘Arab Spring” and the pride of a man on the moon.  We now know that human DNA is 99.9% the same.  And a new feature documentary film, Connected, by Tiffany Shlain explores this all brilliantly too.  So we get it; we’re related, connected, sometimes even reliant.

But could we go further?  Could humans connect more with each other?  Could we agree to truly universal basic human rights for all?  Could we actually become inter-dependent?

“In an interdependent relationship,” Wikipedia defines, “all participants are emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally self-reliant while at the same time responsible to each other.”

“Responsible to each other;” I like that; Response – able.  We sure respond to natural disasters around the globe well enough.

Except ongoing requests for food, water, medicine and equality require more listening, forethought and commitment.  “Proactive for each other” might be a bigger step in the right direction; Pro-Active interdependence.  Sounds nice, and how might we practice such interdependence – proactively?

Examples could be: car pooling, food coops, pot luck dinners, Wikipedia, Google Maps’ traffic updates using shared GPS signals, Ushahidi in Kenya maps civil unrest by SMS messages, Witness.org does it via user videos, and social media is rife with samples like Facebook, Twitter and Quora.

My favorite case in point, of course, is crowd-sourced video translation initiatives such as TED’s Open Translation Project, Adobe TV, Global Oneness.  Now dotSUB’s bold new “100 Translations Interdependence Challenge” will translate the inspiring short film A Declaration of Interdependence into a multi-cultural celebration of interdependence in action as volunteers from around the world translate the 4-minute film into as many different languages as possible. Apply here.

dotSUB’s translation process is fun, easy & rewarding for fluent multi-lingual volunteers.  Translators will be credited with their name on the websites of the Interdependence Day partner organizations including dotSUB, Connected – the film (opening September 16 in San Francisco, local US theaters thereafter), the Interdependence Movement, WE Campaign, Youth Now and other interdependent global organizations.

Projects like our 100 Translations Interdependence Challenge are dotSUB’s practicing of collaboration, connectivity and interdependence as a company, a team and as individuals who believe we are all an integral part of the universe.

“I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe,” writes Paul Coelho.

And now the 100 Translations Challenge is inside us too!

Internet consumers must be given experiences that are equal to, if not better than, the experiences provided when content was originally aired on television, is the new mandate included in the  July 13 report by FCC’s Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee on the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010.

So next January, advanced captioning for live and near-live programming must be online. By next July, all prerecorded programming “substantially edited” for the Internet must be captioned.  Carriers of Internet media must support closed-captioning and end-user display in terms of language, character color, opacity, size, edge, background and font.

“User settings are new to players which support Internet-delivered video, and will require time and effort to implement,” the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee report said.

The new rules allow for Internet delivery of the single standard interchange format now used for digital television. Distributors can transcode for various playout options — such as proprietary or browser-based players — as long as the captioning characteristics are maintained.

Media giants Time-Warner, CNN and Netflix have all been recently sued in City, State and Federal Courts for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by not providing the deaf with equal access or closed captions to “watch instantly” digital video, archived news and programming.

“The lack of captioned videos means that millions of people with hearing loss will continue to be denied equal access to video news content on CNN.com,” Anna Levine, the plaintiffs” attorney in the suit, said.

The Netflix lawsuit also states: “While streaming (video) provides more access to entertainment to the general public, it threatens to be yet another barrier to people who are deaf and hard of hearing.”

Consequences – legal costs, lost audiences, brand damage – for non-compliance seem serious now, and look like they are just getting started.

More Resources:

dotSUB’s General Overview: U.S. Accessibility Regulations for Online Video Captions

Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (October, 2010): Signed by President Barack Obama

Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee (July 2011): First Report on Closed Captioning of Video Programming Delivered Using Internet Protocol

Broadcast Engineering.com (July 2011): FCC sets six-month deadline for Internet closed captioning

KTVU.com (June 2011): CNN Being Sued For Lack Of Closed-Captioning Online

Paid Content (June 2011): Deaf Group Sues Netflix Over Lack Of Captions On Instant Viewing

National Association of the Deaf (NAD)

This guest post is by Robin Kent, Founder of The Fearless Group, an Advertising Consultancy, former Chairman & CEO of Universal McCann, and member of the dotSUB Board of Advisors.

If the purpose of advertising is to grab the consumer’s attention, how do you do this with over 48 hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every minute?

One way is targeting. It has always been important, but in this new overcrowded environment it is more vital than ever before.  The good news is there are plenty of techniques and data for ensuring advertisers get this right more often than they get it wrong.  Assuming advertisers get the targeting right, is that enough to ensure the consumer understands and acts upon the message?  Perhaps, but could subtitles ensure more consumers see and understand the message. That is a question worth exploring.

Let’s first look at the global world of advertising. In 2011 it’s estimated that $460 Billion will be spent on advertising trying to convince consumers to try new products, stay loyal to existing ones, maybe switch to a competitor’s brand or upgrade to a newer, better, faster version and in general just consume more.

Today only a small portion of this spend will go to video online, but it is never the less an important sector and one which is growing rapidly.  In 2011 digital video advertising in the USA is estimated to be worth $2 billion doubling to $4 billion by 2013.

Advertising is predominantly a local business.  By that I mean although the major global brands sell a similar product market to market, they are very much locally managed, often locally produced and packaged to account for local languages and laws.  Because each market is expected to be profitable from local sales, marketing budgets are also created locally and this often leads to locally produced ads.  In other words, Coca-Cola ads are not necessarily the same market to market. For example, in Spain it’s Coke Light and in the USA Diet Coke—same product, but a very different spin on the values, benefits and image portrayed.

Why is this?  We often hear today that as global consumers we have more in common than not. This may be true of certain brands such as Gucci, Patek Philippe, Porsche, Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, Singapore Airlines or Emirates Air. However, the majority of the world’s six billion people consume local brands or local variations of global brands. When little children from China visit America for the first time they’re shocked when they see a familiar fast food chain.  “They’ve got McDonald’s here, too?”

If we accept that the vast majority of consumers consume local brands (even if they’re often from global advertisers), then advertising should speak to them in their own language taking into account the local nuances and customs.

But good advertising can be expensive to create.  So can bad advertising, but that’s a discussion for another time.  For a TV or video commercial every second must count.  Actors, locations, directors and film crews all cost money. To shoot an individual commercial for every country is prohibitively expensive for most advertisers, even some of the biggest.  Just because the budget in the USA can justify a “Hollywood” style production, that’s most likely beyond the reach of markets such as Chile, Vietnam, or India.  But the brand’s values must be adhered to wherever the brand exists.

One solution is subtitling. For a small additional cost a video commercial could be made for, say, India’s official 22 recognized languages without losing the power film has over other forms of advertising—the ability to tell a story, using sight, sound, movement, drama and humor.

As an advertiser in the USA do you make a version in English and one for the fast-growing Hispanic population or use subtitles to reduce the cost?

Each advertiser must decide based on the many factors that define their brands, but I think subtitling should at least be considered.

This is a guest post by Kirti Vashee, VP Enterprise Translation Sales at Asia Online and member of dotSUB’s Board of Advisors.  You can also read Kirti’s blog eMpTy Pages, where he writes about  translation technology, localization and collaboration.

The phenomena of a crowd or community stepping forward and doing real translation work, often for no direct financial compensation is something that troubles many in the professional translation world. Mostly because they see this activity as work being taken away from legitimate professionals or they see it as a ploy to reduce prices.

While in some cases their fears may actually be justified, in the most successful uses of this approach I think it is clear that this is not true.If we look at some of the most successful examples of crowdsourced translation in practice, we can see that they have many if not all of the following elements in common.

A Crowd/Community That Is Invested

TED Open Translation Project – Volunteer translators are often inspired by the content and wish to share it with their friends and countrymen. June Cohen has said that the volunteer translators in general do better quality work than the many of the paid professionals, who in itially did a few translations to seed the project because of their passion for the subject. This effort has now enabled almost 20,000 translations into 80+ languages of really challenging material.

Facebook –  Users who wish to build and expand the friend community in their particular language group. This effort has enabled Facebook to grow rapidly in international markets and accomplish very rapid coverage across 60+ languages. Had they used traditional means to do this it may have taken them years to get to the same point.

Microsoft –  MVPs (top accredited reseller partners) who wish to make technical support knowledge about Microsoft products more easily and widely available in their markets. Their efforts are rewarded by lower support costs and also an increase in product sales as more and more users look for self-service knowledge base information.

Asia Online – Student users provide corrective feedback to continue to improve the translation quality of the Wikipedia and other knowledge content that is initially done by highly customized MT engines and paid translators.
The students themselves will be the primary beneficiaries of this content, and their efforts will enable them to access high quality educational information. The volume of this information will likely increase a thousand fold.

Yeeyan:  150,000 volunteers who translate tens of millions of words on a regular and timely production schedule because they view what they do as high social value.

Software Infrastructure That Facilitates Contribution & Participation

In all of the cases above the companies involved crowdsourced translation initiatives need to invest in software that enables tasks to be parceled out, evolve as tasks change, enable efficient administration, maintain quality, gather feedback, and build self-sustaining eco-systems. The tools developed by dotSUB, Lingotek, Yeeyan and Asia Online are all unique collaboration and translation workflow management tools that enable these kinds of initiatives, They make little or no use of industry standard tools like Trados and TMS because of the highly proprietary, rigidity and archaic nature of these tools. These new-generation tools are much more open and are designed to evolve with technical and process advances on the internet today.

The Importance of Engagement and Higher Purpose

It is interesting to note that translation is not the primary business of any of the companies listed in the examples above. In every case the goal and intent is to make more information available faster. Even for many of the corporations that are exploring crowdsourcing, the rationale is more about customer engagement than cost savings. It is also important to note that none of these initiatives could even be attempted without the use of automation and large-scale community support and they are enabling initiatives that would not be possible otherwise. This is also true for Facebook who still had to use professionals to translate legalese that their community was not interested in translating.  The role of communities is likely to increase in future as more of the world comes online.

As we move forward we will see much more video come online and already it is clear that the old approaches will not enable us make this new content multilingual in effective timeframes, crowdsourcing and automated translation will be necessary tools for an organization that seeks to communicate across the globe. As Clay Shirky has pointed out, the ‘cognitive surplus’ of the online population is a force that can be harnessed under the right circumstances and for the right purposes. It is likely that the professional translation world is going to see significant disruption in the coming years, as innovators figure out how to build sustainable models around community engagement, technology and organizational mission.

“I can’t wait to go home and read more!” is the feedback Brian King remembers from a participant in his user testing for Learning Media with captions added into online videos.

As WETA’s senior multimedia producer for Brainline.org, a program sharing information and creating support communities for people affected by traumatic brain injury, Brian is measuring first-hand how some media tools enable learning.

“User testing with people who have sustained traumatic brain injury revealed that many had a hard time fully understanding or viewing video content unless it had subtitles,” says Brian. ”The subtitles allowed them to focus on the task of reading, and isolate themselves from video content, which they sometimes found overwhelming.”

Launched in fall 2008, Brainline provides articles, interviews, expert webcasts, and multimedia “voices” on preventing, treating and living with traumatic brain injury. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) partnered with Washington, D.C.-based WETA to create Brainline.org. WETA is the third-largest producing station for PBS with co-productions including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, and documentaries by filmmaker Ken Burns.

“Many of our Learning Media projects receive federal funding, so making sure our video content has 508-compliant closed captions is critical,” Brian says. “Most importantly, we’ve been able to measure how adding captions dramatically increases both video viewership and the length of watching.”

In fact, 45% more people watched half or all of the videos tested when provided with captions as opposed to the same videos offered without. Users have also reported back to WETA that they really appreciate the captions.

“One reason is the quality of the captioning that dotSUB offers. it is far and above what we have had in the past,” says Brian. “And the dotSUB  team has been very responsive to dealing with the jargon-heavy scientific content we feature on some of our sites.”

WETA also ports dotSUB’s time-coded caption files over to WETA’s YouTube channel videos. This sync has also increased views on the captioned videos there. Brian’s team also believes using dotSUB’s interactive transcripts, which can bolster the ability to search for captioned content online, helps users find WETA’s videos online specifically because they are captioned.

“With over 2000 videos across our Learning Media department,” Brian explains, “we don’t have manpower to go through and tweak things by hand to implement captions.”

“So working with dotSUB made it much easier than imagined,” he continues. “Simply tagging videos to be processed “auto-magically” to then show captions saves us hundreds of hours that we can devote to other projects.”

Other projects – like working with Brainline users first-hand to understand their traumatic brain injury needs – and to serve them even better.