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9th Circuit Rules Netflix Isn't Subject To Disability Law
An anonymous reader writes with news that the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled that Netflix doesn't have to caption their videos. "A federal appeals court ruled (PDF) yesterday that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn't apply to Netflix, since the online video provider is 'not connected to any actual, physical place.' Donald Cullen sued Netflix in March 2011, attempting to kick off a class-action lawsuit on behalf of disabled people who didn't have full use of the videos because they aren't all captioned. A district court judge threw out his lawsuit in 2013, and yesterday's ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholds that decision. The decision is 'unpublished,' meaning it isn't intended to be used as precedent in other cases. However, it certainly doesn't bode well for any plaintiff thinking about filing a similar case in the 9th Circuit, which covers most of the Western US."
Surely the case should be against the film studios that made the films and not Netflix which is just distributing them ?
Yet another way in which illegal file sharers provide a superior product.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That would be like suing a book store for not having audiobooks and braille for all of their titles. Sometimes that little prick in a wheel chair causing trouble at the end of the day is just a little prick.
And living near San Francisco, there's streets my mother or grandmother wouldn't be able to climb. Even most locals won't walk in those areas. We can't control nature, but that's no excuse for not doing better than that when we can. Out of all the point of the ADA that could use fixing, you picked the one that makes perfect sense to complain about?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
They are being sued because a lawyer saw a chance to extort money from Netflix. AFAIK this lawyer didn't even have any plaintiffs.
For those that aren't aware we have a HUGE surplus of lawyers in this country. I'd wager better than half the law school graduates these days can't find jobs. What that means in practical terms is that we have a whole lot of lawyers trying to survive by launching lawsuits in "creative" manners. In plain English there are a bunch of sleazy lawyers trying to extort money from anyone they can using their law degrees. You see this in suits like this and the blatant extortion going on in the copyright trolling regime. It doesn't help that the legal profession seems to draw sociopaths to the career.
Expect to see these type of lawsuits all the time for the next decade at least.