In almost every restaurant I’ve gone to, there’s been a TV. However, the volume is at the lowest setting and subtitles are turned off. I looked closer at one of the tvs, and there was a sticker that said something like “It is a copyright infringement to turn up the volume on this TV.” Is the subtitle thing for the same reasons? Why?
Thanks,
Fallom
Well, the reason for the sign is that using the TV in a setting like a bar or restaurant, where it is part of the ambience and people are paying, in part, to be there and see it, could be considered an illegal rebroadcast. So, by cutting the sound out, they aren’t really carrying the whole program, just the video. My guess is that the closed captioning/subtitling would in fact be considered equivalent to carrying the audio, but that’s just a WAG. Any IP lawyers or ASCAP reps in here?
I’ve seen captioning used from time to time in a variety of restaurants. (Technically in restaurant bars visible from where I’m seated. I’m not much of a bar person so I don’t know whether bars are different in this regard.)
They’ve become more frequent in recent years, so much so that I’ve wondered why all restaurants don’t use them. I’m not sure I buy pldennison’s explanation for why, though.
Pldennison is correct that restaurants and bars would be obligated to pay royalties for presenting television and radio programs to the public. I’m sure that Gold’s Gym and other such places are paying such royalties. Whether this is the reason that restaurants leave the sound turned down, I don’t know.
I used to eat at a Taco Cabana with two televisions that always had the closed captioning turned on.
My take: The RIAA is one group of bad a** mothers. A restaurant cannot play a radio without paying a sizeable fee to one of those royalty collection services. If they play TV and a song is played (theme music, jingle, whatever) then this kicks in.
Commercial TV stations, OTOH, are probably much more cool about things. Audience is audience, who cares where they are sitting? Although I suspect pay channels like HBO probably do care.
One of the side effects of RIAA’s greed is that so many places avoid playing music altogether to avoid the fees that artists are not getting anywhere near the royalties if fair fees were being charged. (Cf. a Cafe thread a couple months ago about how generic songs are being substituted on WKRP reruns. So the original artists get zip now.)
Wasn’t there a staff report or some such about radios and restaurants?
It’s true that restaurants can be charged for playing music from radio stations to their customers (one reason why so many of them used canned music packages, which also leave out the annoying talk and commercials).
But I’m still having trouble on how and why this would apply to closed captioning. I don’t think that this issue, which is what the OP referred to, has been answered yet.
But it’s certainly becoming more common.
From http://www.nbcsandiego.com/closedcaptioning/
From http://www.cinetyp.com/captions.html
From http://www.procap.cc/left_side_links/closed_captioning_users.htm
Well in bars it’s usually left on the sports channel. So the sound isn’t vital. When ever I’ve asked them to turn up the sound I’ve never heard a bar owner mention it. Besides if you are showing a hockey game without the sound would you really be getting around rebroadcast rules? I mean you are seeing the game, that would be one big loophole. Ditto “Miss Fitness USA” type things, the sound off enhances those shows.
I think the sound is off because if you are not actually watching the sound is annoying. I bet they don’t turn on subtitles because their TV is too old or they haven’t thought of it.
There’s actually a provision in the Copyright Act of 1976 that originated in a 1976 Supreme Court case, Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken. It’s commonly known as the “Aiken Chicken Shack” principle. Basically, if you set up a stereo in a manner that you might at home, then it’s not considered a public performance that would infringe on copyright holders’ rights. However, most sports bars have an audio and video setup that far exceeds the kind of equipment most people would have at home.
Given the advances in home theater these days, they might want to revisit that. 
Oh, being deaf I can take a stab at this. Closed captions aren’t turned on because they dont know about
them (Assuming their tv has them, not all tvs do, just those after July 93 & more than twelve inches).
So, I just ask them to turn on the captions & they are more than happy to do so much more than
they are that I ask for a specific channel.