martab ciarin chantilla
Cándida Jolie
The internet offers a unique challenge: how do we ensure that all of our digital products, services, and communications are accessible to people with disabilities? What are companies required to do to accommodate such users?
Federal disability laws still await comprehensive updates to keep pace with the digital world. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was set to receive input from the DOJ in 2018. However, such plans were dismissed in 2017 by the Trump administration and the DOJ indicated it would not give official guidance regarding website accessibility under the ADA.
Aside from direct amendments to the laws, or lack thereof (in the case of the ADA), disability case law has played a major role in setting precedent for how the ADA applies to the internet. One landmark case comes the mind:
NAD v. Netflix.
In 2015, more than half of all Americans watched Netflix. In 2020, there were 203.67 million Netflix subscribers worldwide. Because of its widespread use and popularity, the video streaming service must be made accessible to deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
The outcome of the lawsuit sent a strong message to video creators and distributors that the ADA may apply to your online content. This has far-reaching implications for other entertainment companies that stream video online, like Hulu or HBO Max. It can also affect how the ADA is interpreted in cases of educational videos, such as the closed captioning lawsuit against Harvard and MIT.
In the years since this case, Congress passed the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), which applies FCC closed captioning rules to any online video content that previously aired on American television with captions. This erased any doubt that TV shows streamed online require captions.
DISCLAIMER: This blog post is written for educational and general information purposes only, and does not constitute specific legal advice. This blog should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.
The Information Technology Act, 2000 governs the technological aspect of OTT platforms. As OTT platforms qualify as intermediaries under the IT Act, they fall under the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, that define the due diligence framework for publishing content online. The Delhi High Court clarified in its order that provisions of the IT Act pertaining to publication or transmission of obscene/sexual/illegal material in any electronic form would apply to OTT platforms. Moreover, the Supreme Court directed the Central government to take charge of the digital content showcased on these mediums; however, there was confusion regarding what regulatory authority controlled the online content.
Firstly, the moot point is to define what party would be held culpable for any obscene, profane, or seditious content made available to the public. For example, millions of peoples express their opinions on varied topics on Youtube. Now, any seditious or illicit comment can be expunged by the Ministry, and the platform, i.e., Youtube, will not be responsible as it is a free medium that does not own the content published there.
Thirdly, monitoring content 24*7 will be a humongous task for the government. Lastly, such unchecked regulation and amendments made without prior permission would violate the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression as enshrined under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. One such example is ALT Balaji, wherein the Madhya Pradesh High Court held that impugned episode depicted simulated copulation that cannot be outrightly stated to be not obscene. The court emphasized that unwarranted restrictions on content by the government would violate Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution, but at the same time, if the content is against public decency and morality, then freedom of content should be subject to reasonable restrictions.
The issue of content regulation on OTT is crucial because the content made available to the 2 million users daily resonates with the nature of Indian society in terms of religion, caste, societal norms/behavior, economic status, caste, and language. Therefore, the regulation of OTT by the State is governed by how it affects society. In times of fast-changing entertainment media, the government and other stakeholders must come together to bring a proper framework that will balance the freedom of expression and necessary restrictions for the sake of law and order.
To conclude, the cautious and piecemeal approach followed by the portability regulation might soon be contradicted by a much broader attempt by the Commission to revisit the principle of territoriality through the enforcement of EU competition law. In this respect, in January 2014, the Commission started a formal antitrust proceeding to examine territorial licensing agreements concluded by several US film studios with the largest European pay-tv broadcasters, which may result in an unlawful partition of the Internal Market under Article 101 TFEU.14 While investigations are still underway for Canal Plus, Sky Deutschland, DTS and Sky Italia, in July 2015 a Statement of Objections was sent to Sky UK and six major US film studios for putting in place contractual restrictions aimed at creating an area of absolute territorial exclusivity in favour of the British broadcaster in the UK and Ireland.15 If this attempt were successful, copyright holders and service providers would no longer be entitled to lawfully restrict access to such services to individual customers residing outside the territory covered by their exclusive license.
The extension of such a decision to the online environment would allow for a generalised cross-border access to online content services and pave the way for an accelerated end to the era of copyright territoriality in the EU digital market. In other words, consumers would be entitled to access online content services available in member states other than their country of residence if they found such services appealing in terms of content offerings and easily accessible with regard to languages, translations and/or subtitles. For instance, in the case of Sky UK, this outcome would be beneficial not only to British and Irish citizens residing in Spain or Italy on a permanent basis wishing to access the same TV services and films made available in their own language to their fellow nationals in London and Dublin. It would also allow Spanish and Italian viewers with adequate foreign language skills residing in Madrid or Rome to access the same content packages in English.
7 According to Article 5 of the proposed regulation, right-holders are entitled to require the service providers to make use of effective means to verify the country of residence. At any rate, authentication tools have to be reasonable and not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the purpose of the regulation.
Giuseppe Mazziotti is Professor of intellectual property law, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. Felice Simonelli is Research Fellow in the Regulatory Affairs research unit at CEPS. CEPS Commentaries offer concise, policy-oriented insights into topical issues in European affairs. The views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated.
I have the same problem. Internet signal good. When I go to settings and network, it indicates a green check for internet and wireless. I can use the internet on my laptop. In fact I am typing this on my laptop now. But when I try to use any of the Roku apps such as netflix, AmazonPrime, YouTube TV, I get messages like "failed to load content", or "no internet connection." I have unplugged and plugged everything multiple times. We have two Roku devices on different TVs. Same problem on each. I swapped out one Roku for an Apple TV box and had the same problem. I see that no one actually helped the prior writer. Has anyone had the same issue. Any ideas?
Didn't work for me. 3 devices, nothing changes, did all the steps. Internet went out and now I feel like I'm back to square one looking for a streaming device. Really need on call customer service, feel like searching through this page is pointless because of so many issues.
Greetings from the Roku Community, and thanks for keeping us posted!
We'd love to investigate this issue further. May we know how far your Roku device is from your network router? Did we recently make any changes to your network or network provider? How many devices do you have connected to your network right now? (e.g., TV, mobile phone, laptops, computer) Do you have cellular data so we can try connecting your device to your hotspot?
I have made no changes to internet services, no new equipment and have had Roku for about 4 years. There is a "not connected" error message. This has never happened before. The TV and modem have not been moved. There hasn't been a problem until 2 days ago. We have rebooted everything - router and Roku - Roku more than once. There are 2 bars out of 3 on the internet connection on the laptop - which has always been enough to stream in the past (I can stream Prime directly from the laptop). Have there been changes with Roku that require more speed now than last week? Do I need to upgrade the internet service speed?
A warm welcome here in the Roku Community!
We will be more than happy to take a closer look into this issue that you're having. Could you provide us with the serial number of your Roku device? What troubleshooting steps have you taken so far?
We have reset Roku probably 3-4 times, turned power off and on a few times, shut down the modem/router, reentered the PW on Roku, moved the TV around - but there was no reason to think that would help, as modem and TV have been in the same place relative to each other since before we had Roku. Perhaps the Roku model is just old and we need a new one.
90f70e40cf