Consumer groups representing the hearing impaired would support a one year phase-in period for rules requiring the captioning of online video clips, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association for the Deaf and others told FCC staff from the Media Bureau, Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureau and the Disability Rights Office in a meeting last week, according to an ex parte filing released Tuesday. “The record in this proceeding plainly establishes that extracting and repurposing captioning data is possible using readily available and easy-to-use software. No substantive evidence on the record supports the conclusion that performing that same extraction and repurposing is intractably difficult for video clips,” said the consumer groups. “Technical difficulties that remain in captioning video clips are unlikely to be overcome unless and until the Commission requires clips to be captioned.” The groups also responded to NAB complaints that captioning clips could be a burden for broadcasters “by noting the continued availability of economic burden exemptions under the CVAA and the Commission’s rules,” the filing said. NAB’s contentions are “devoid of specific economic data,” the consumer groups said.

Raditaz changed its name to CUR Media and completed a private placement offering of its stock, raising $9.6 million, it said Monday. The company had set out to raise $4 million to $7 million as part of the alternative public offering, said CEO Tom Brophy in a news release. It now has a “large and committed investor base,” and plans to introduce a new business model to “serve an unmet need in the streaming music industry,” he said. The company is developing CUR Music, a hybrid music streaming service for mobile devices and the Web that it said “blends the best” of Internet radio services such as Pandora with on-demand services including Spotify. CUR plans to launch its Web and mobile applications in the October-December range this year, it said. Revenue from streaming and subscription music services soared 51 percent in 2013, demonstrating “clear market demand for these offerings,” said Brophy. Despite that growth, the existing players are “challenged to continue innovating and demonstrating upside,” he said. CUR sees “significant opportunity to pick up where music innovation has left off and deliver new offerings that appeal to a broader set of music consumers,” he said. The company started testing its service in early 2012 as Raditaz, an Internet radio service for iOS and Android devices, said CUR. The company didn’t say why it changed its name and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Broadcasters are asking the Supreme Court to “confine consumers to outdated equipment and limit their access to lawful technology in order to protect a legacy business model,” said Aereo in a response brief filed with the high court Wednesday. Because Aereo’s broadcast streaming is “available only to the individual user who created that recording, the performance is private, not public,” Aereo argued in the 100-page filing. Broadcasters “have no right to royalties at all for retransmissions of their content within the original broadcast market,” Aereo said. “Petitioners’ analysis flows from a false narrative about Congress’s intent.” In a released statement, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said the case against his company was an attack on cloud computing. The Cablevision remote-DVR decision at the heart of the Aereo case “has served as a crucial underpinning to the cloud computing and cloud storage industry,” Kanojia said. “The broadcasters have made clear they are using Aereo as a proxy to attack Cablevision itself. A decision against Aereo would upend and cripple the entire cloud industry.” Amicus briefs supporting Aereo are due April 2.

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia filed an emergency motion with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold YouTube in contempt for failing to comply with a decision by the 9th Circuit last month, according to court documents (http://bit.ly/1j3KFZa) filed Tuesday. The court ordered Google-owned YouTube to remove all copies of Innocence of Muslims -- a film associated with the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya -- from the video streaming site (CD Feb 28 p7), after the court found that Garcia had an “independent copyright interest” in the film. Garcia initially asked Google to take down the video once she began receiving death threats due to her minor acting role in the movie. “Google has failed to comply,” said the filing, and the video was still available on YouTube, as well as in Egypt, where the Islamic fatwa or legal opinion was issued for Garcia’s execution.

Disney’s $500 million buy of YouTube content network Maker Studios may help the acquirer grow online, said analysts Tuesday, a day after the deal was disclosed (http://bit.ly/1dsFGBs). Maker has more than 55,000 channels and 380 million subscribers on YouTube, with 5.5 billion views per month, Disney said, describing the company as “the top online video network for Millennials.” Disney CEO Robert Iger said in a statement: “Short-form online video is growing at an astonishing pace and with Maker Studios, Disney will now be at the center of this dynamic industry with an unmatched combination of advanced technology and programming expertise and capabilities.” Analysts said in notes to investors Tuesday the deal makes some sense. It shows Disney’s commitment to delivering content on new technologies and developing more short-form online video options, said Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker. “Maker Studios will have access to Disney’s valuable intellectual property,” and that lets Disney expand its “Internet presence and capitalize its IP across multiple entertainment platforms,” said Moody’s.

A draft order that would prevent joint retransmission consent negotiations by broadcasters would keep Univision Television Group from negotiating on behalf of smaller broadcasters even when asked to do so by pay-TV providers, Univision told Commissioner Ajit Pai and staff from the offices of Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O'Rielly, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1iZYZlb). Univision acts as an agent in negotiations on behalf of broadcaster Entravision Communications, and the two companies own non-top-four stations in some of the same markets. “Entravision has elected to engage UTG as its agent in order to have access to the human and financial resources UTG can make available in concurrent negotiations with multiple MVPDs,” Univision said, saying one of the nation’s largest multichannel video programming distributors -- which it didn’t name -- had asked Univision to negotiate on behalf of Entravision. Because the stations share markets, the draft order would have the FCC adopt a “negative presumption” to some of those negotiations, Univision said. Entravision would be “put in the position of having to negotiate separately for a small subset of its stations, with the loss of efficiencies that would entail,” Univision said. The commission should address the “anomalous situation” by creating an exemption from the negative presumption for “group-wide negotiations by one broadcaster on behalf of another that involve a subset of collocated non top-4 rated stations,” Univision said. “Alternatively, we proposed that this sort of unique circumstance be deemed sufficient to overcome the negative presumption."

Clear Channel Outdoor is starting a worldwide mobile advertising platform, called Connect, said a CCO news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jCE0TZ). The platform will integrate out-of-home and mobile ads, CCO said. “We are bridging the online and offline worlds by combining our outstanding audience reach with personal engagement through mobile devices,” said CEO William Eccleshare. The company said that by June it expects the mobile network to reach 175 million consumers monthly across 23 countries on five continents.

Prohibiting joint retransmission consent negotiations among broadcasters is “an important step” in reforming retrans negotiations as a whole, pay-TV representatives told FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly and staff from Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel’s office in meetings last week, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1lhhEMg). Charter, Dish Network, the American Cable Association, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV all participated in the meetings. Such arrangements are “starkly anticompetitive and harmful to consumers,” the ex parte said. The commission has received “empirical evidence” showing that retrans fees can be “up to 43 percent higher for jointly negotiated ‘Big Four’ stations that elect retransmission consent than the average fee paid for separately negotiated ‘Big Four’ stations,” the ex parte said.

The FCC shouldn’t compel multichannel video programming distributors to provide buttons or icons for every auxiliary function of closed captions or to provide information about captioning options on product packaging, said several industry associations in reply comments to a rulemaking on user interfaces and program guides Thursday. “Flexibility should be afforded to industry members,” said the Telecommunications Industry Association, echoing NCTA, the Entertainment Software Association and CEA. The associations also argued that the 21st Century Video Accessibility Act doesn’t give the FCC the authority to impose additional requirements for accessing closed captioning on manufacturers. A coalition of consumer groups representing the hearing impaired, including the National Association for the Deaf, said the FCC does have the authority. However, the consumer groups said they would be satisfied if access to the display settings for closed captions were available in the first level of a menu. ACA said the commission should mitigate the impact of any new rules for small cable operators.

Disney’s new privacy policy does not comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), said the Center for Digital Democracy in a Thursday letter to the FTC (http://bit.ly/1d4khhn). “Specifically, the notice about information collection practices is insufficient in several ways,” said CDD, a digital privacy advocate. “Also, Disney continues to allow third party advertisers to collect children’s personal information in violation of the revised COPPA rule.” Disney changed its privacy policy, the letter said, after CDD originally filed a complaint to the FTC about the company’s website, Marvelkids.com, alleging the site was not COPPA-compliant (CD Dec 19 p15). Disney countered CDD’s original complaint, arguing it had “robust processes in place” to ensure COPPA compliance, calling CDD’s allegations “inflammatory and inaccurate” (CD Dec 20 p16). In CDD’s letter Thursday, it asked the FTC to investigate “in light of this new information.” A Disney spokesman said, “In short, there is simply no truth to any of the claims made by the CDD.” The letter represents an “all too familiar and disappointing pattern” from CDD, which “once again seeks to garner headlines at the expense of the facts,” said the spokesman via email. “Disney’s privacy policies and practices respect and protect kids and parents and our websites are specifically designed to easily and effectively arm parents with the information they need to keep their kids safe online.” The FTC didn’t comment.