Hi Dylan
Some people just don't understand how closed captions work, i.e. that
you can show or not show them, contrary to open captions that are
burned into the video, and thus always show.
In my experience, though, once you explain the switching off
possibility, even the most stubborn narrow-minded "cinephiles" who
object to captions "distracting them from the visual content" usually
relent: particularly if you ask them if they object to DVDs offering
closed captions too.
But yes, I've occasionally asked for permission for subtitling even
spoken videos, when the copyright situation was obviously complex, as
for " Namaste - Le voyage d'Alexandre Jollien - Terre des hommes"
<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJb2PwOXq8>: though the video was
commissioned - and posted on YT - by the humanitarian organization
Terre des Hommes, its copyright belonged to the film maker. So I made
the French and English subs privately on DotSUB, then sent them to
Terre des Hommes, asking if they'd add the subs to the YT original, if
it was OK with the film maker - which they happily did.
Yet I think Shelly's remarks don't only or mainly stem from an
exclusive concept of author's rights. More as an expression of
irritation against caption requests from hearers who could darned well
learn to understand what is signed if they're so curious / nosy.
And at times we hearers can be bloody indiscreet. Thinking of the
Italian TV RAI's video about empowering intitiatives for / by the deaf
community, <
http://www.amara.org/en/videos/88c5jDgFcy2t/info/lintervista-in-diretta-al-presidente-nazionale-giuseppe-petrucci/>.
In the first part about the Bologna bar where Italian Sign Language
(LIS) is the official language, while someone is saying something in
spoken Italian to the journalist, and is interpreted in LIS in the
small window, the camera wanders off and picks up fragments of signed
conversations between customers. I mean, for hell's sake, RAI
journalists would not dream of thus publishing the audio of private
spoken conversations!
Best,
Claude