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University of California, Berkeley, To Delete Publicly Available Educational Content (insidehighered.com)
In response to a U.S. Justice Department order that requires colleges and universities make website content accessible for citizens with disabilities and impairments, the University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts. Officials said making the videos and audio more accessible would have proven too costly in comparison to removing them. Inside Higher Ed reports: Today, the content is available to the public on YouTube, iTunes U and the university's webcast.berkeley site. On March 15, the university will begin removing the more than 20,000 audio and video files from those platforms -- a process that will take three to five months -- and require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them. The university will continue to offer massive open online courses on edX and said it plans to create new public content that is accessible to listeners or viewers with disabilities. The Justice Department, following an investigation in August, determined that the university was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. The department reached that conclusion after receiving complaints from two employees of Gallaudet University, saying Berkeley's free online educational content was inaccessible to blind and deaf people because of a lack of captions, screen reader compatibility and other issues. Cathy Koshland, vice chancellor for undergraduate education, made the announcement in a March 1 statement: "This move will also partially address recent findings by the Department of Justice, which suggests that the YouTube and iTunes U content meet higher accessibility standards as a condition of remaining publicly available. Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from 'pirates' who have reused content for personal profit without consent."
When it's mandated that everyone must be a winner, everybody loses.
Make no mistake: this isn't "deafies" ruining a good thing, it's the government.
A government gone berserk with the only power it has: to make laws.
Free stuff should be exempt. Putting a cost (for the provider) to a free thing (for the public) will usually make that thing not free (for the public) anymore.
In the name of equality, we remove this from you!
This is not because of the government, this is due to a complaint:
"The Department opened its investigation of UC Berkeley based on a complaint"
Today, the content is available to the public on YouTube, iTunes U and the university's webcast.berkeley site. On March 15, the university will begin removing the more than 20,000 audio and video files from those platforms -- a process that will take three to five months -- and require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them.
Ok, but how does that relieve them of the requirement to make such things available to people with disabilities? Do they have some sort of "no cripples" policy when it comes to accepting people as students?
Those who makes the laws creates the politics, and ultimately rules the power.
Except that it was a law championed by President Bush, and signed by him. Actually, the first version was signed by Bush the Elder, and the revision was signed by Bush the Younger. So, you know, two Bushes.
The idea was that it's wrong to make handicapped people unable to participate in society.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Its freaking Berkeley. You can bet those leftie loonies were pushing hard for that law. Guess they don't like their own dog food.
They should use the capitalist approach to the problem. Move the servers offshore, and transfer the ownership of the content to a non-US based corporation, so that the law no longer applies to them.
In order to protect minorities again the majority suffers. It will make everybody equally stupid. It will deny learning for the clear majority. Congratulations Berkeley!
Liberals -- explain yourselves. Come on, I'm waiting. This is a law only a liberal would think to pass and this is basically the perfect Soviet style result.
There is a high school state champion wrestler in Texas who would like to point out to you that "liberals" are not the only people who write laws with unintended consequences.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'd love to chalk this up to unintended consequences but the prohibitive cost of all this disability run amok has been pointed out numerous times.
The point is moot in this case as Berkley will find that instead of violating both the ADA and the IDEA they will now only be in violation of the IDEA for providing their hearing students but not their deaf students access to this educational material. That doesn't materislly improve their position with the DOJ...
It seems this Vice Chancellor is not worth her compensation.
Is closed captioning the only thing causing this decision? Youtube will automatically close-caption uploaded content, simultaneously eliminating any hosting costs.
The letter from the Department of Justice goes into ten pages detail on this; take a look at it: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-c...
The statement with respect to youtube captioning was:
"Examples of barriers to access on UC Berkeley YouTube channel content included the following:
1. Automatically generated captions were inaccurate and incomplete, making the content inaccessible to individuals with hearing disabilities."
However, in response to your question, no, close captioning was one barrier mentioned, but not the only barrier mentioned.
I also forgot the obvious part:
-Layoff workers in the US and vote bonus to executives for having such a great idea.
You! You and your facts! Get out of here with those!
Textbook publishers seem to have the ability to provide all of their stuff with ADA compliance for the starting cost of only $100 for cheap stuff and hundreds more for high quality stuff. When the Open Educational Resources (OER) stuff starts to eat their profits, they fight back by pushing for laws that hurt small free alternatives. Seems like it should be cheaper and easier to provide ADA compliance.
If there are no subtitles (music videos included), OUT YOU GO.
This is not because of the government, this is due to a complaint:
"The Department opened its investigation of UC Berkeley based on a complaint"
This is not because of a complaint, it's because of the government's response, which should have consisted of a bureaucratically-worded version of "...and?...so what, it's free?" instead of the present myopic, pigeon-holing, thinking-strictly-within-the-box, easily-predictable, and all-too-typical bureaucratic mess of unintended consequences whenever big government gets involved.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Thank you for proving that the Bushes were not conservatives, but actually liberals.
In which case, I assume any student can go to the appropriate university services department and get the video transcribed accordingly, like any other educational material.
The difference would be that it's an on-demand transcription, which would presumably cost a lot less than mandated transcription of all the videos regardless of demand, just because they're public.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from 'pirates' who have reused content for personal profit without consent."
Every time I learned something in school, it profited me, at least in the sense that I knew more than before. The whole idea of education is that people benefit from it. If you make something available to world+dog, do they need to get your permission to actually personally profit from it in some fashion? Of course not.
The way print media such as books get around the obligation to provide access for handicapped people is that copyright allows for 3rd parties that specialize in services to the blind, etc., to make copies of non-dramatic works (written, audio, etc) without having to seek the permission of the copyright owner. Seems to me all the uni should have to do is appeal, and point out that there is already a legal remedy that exempts publishers of copyright non-dramatic media from having to comply with the act, given that the law shifts that right and responsibility to authorized 3rd parties.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Big government Republicans aren't really a different party form the Dems, though - they're the two faces of the Uniparty.
When looking at laws, we should care about results not intentions. The result here was to remove educational content from the public domain that was useful for 99% of people, because one guy complained. Net detriment to society.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
DOJ: "Your free online course materials are not accessible to blind people. Make them accessible."
UCBerkeley: "Uhhh... how about we just make them inaccessible to everybody?"
DOJ: "That's fine."
In what world does this logic compute? DOJ absolutely does not care about accessibility... just look at the result of this travesty of an order.
This is 100% about reducing public access to information. No other interpretation even makes sense. DOJ and the rest of Washington should be ashamed of themselves for the serious and ongoing damage they inflict upon our society.
Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from 'pirates' who have reused content for personal profit without consent
With this argument, the content can't possibly ever come back in any publicly accessible form. A sane university shouldn't serve the poor and stupid people such as myself. Everybody knows this.
Yes, signed them. Everyone seems to forget the bills originated in the 101st congress which consisted of a senate with 54 democracts vs 45 republicans and a house with 251 democrats and 183 republicans -- overwhelmingly liberal. This was not something that was politically attractive to fight, so he signed it.
So now NO ONE can have access to this material.
Yeah, that makes sense.
In that case, what they should do is re-upload anything that the on-demand transcription service has in fact transcribed.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is a law only a liberal would think to pass and this is basically the perfect Soviet style result.
Maybe you should have googled who was president in 1990.
Bureaucratic Messes are usually related to poorly written laws.
Or laws that did not anticipate the future.
What's to explain? The usual administrative types didn't want to play fair, so they decided to pout, and go whining home, blaming others for their weakness.
Take this case. Now your average person would say, why not hold the hearing in a better location, but the courthouse just didn't want to do that, so they fought incessantly to avoid having to make accommodations.
And they still do. Just try going into a court without being able to hear.
So am I surprised that somebody else did the same? Nope. Not a bit.
This is one of those ideas that sounds great on paper, but in reality has these sorts of side effects. No one should be discriminated against, and I'm sure they had very good examples of where/why this should be done. But then you have this on the other end where a university was doing this gratis (or call it advertising/PR if you want), but to comply with the law is ridiculous so the result is they have to pull it all.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
figure out all those Tool lyrics
Why are your hands covered in sheep blood and gum?
"It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
There's something frustrating and sad about this article but I'm afraid I can't remember what it is. Felt like a doozy though.
Thank you for proving that the Bushes were not conservatives, but actually liberals.
Trump is neither Republican nor conservative, and, until a few short years ago, was a Clinton Democrat.
...and of course it was introduced into the senate by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).
Doesn't matter. He signed it, so it's his baby. He could have vetoed it.
It's just like Clinton signing the law overturning the Glas-Steagal Act, and causing the 2008 mortgage meltdown. Clinton apologists keep trying to put all the blame on Congress, but Billy signed it, so it's really his fault.
This is an unfunded federal mandate, requiring schools to spend money that they can not afford.
Try this tool on your website to see how accessible it is(nt).
The first one was written by Tom Harkin a Democrat from Iowa. He was a congressman from 1975 until 2015. That's forty years! He is a great example of why we need term limits.
Yeah, yeah, the "no true Scotsman" bullshit. Go fuck yourself, though I guess that you already do that because you're a fucking beta incel cuck.
Thank you for proving that the Bushes were not conservatives, but actually liberals.
Next you'll be telling us they're not true Scotsmen either.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The DOJ findings are ridiculous. I've been reading through that PDF and it seems totally unreasonable. Here are a few samples.
"Stacy Nowak, a member of NAD, is a professor and PhD student at Gallaudet University and she is deaf. Ms. Nowak would like to avail herself of what she believes is the increasingly frequent use of video and audio-based scholarship. Ms. Nowak teaches communication courses at Galludet, including Introduction to Communication and Nonverbal Communication. She would like to use numerous online resources related to communication in her classes, including the UC BerkeleyX course, “Journalism for Social Change,” but cannot because they are inaccessible. If UC Berkeley’s online content were accessible, she would take courses and utilize the online content in her lectures."
What right does she have to reuse someone else's copyrighted materials? Just because the lectures are distributed online free of charge does not mean that you have a right to take content from them for derivative works and derive revenue from them.
"Approximately half the videos did not provide audio description or any other alternative format for the visual information (graphs, charts, animations, or items on the chalkboard) contained in the videos. For example, in one video lecture, a professor pointed to and talked about an image and its structure without describing the image, making it inaccessible to individuals with vision disabilities."
Because details aren't provided here, I can only assume this was a recording of a lecture given in person to students. If so, the primary purpose of that lecture is to accommodate the students who are in the room, taking the class at that time. If there are students with vision disabilities in that class, the instructor would reasonably be expected to accommodate those students. However, most instructors don't design content to be accessible unless there's a specific need for it at that time. It is typically the responsibility of students to notify the instructor of disabilities, so the instructor can provide appropriate accommodations. I don't see why there should be an issue with posting a recorded copy of that lecture online. I suspect that part of the reason for removing the content from being publicly available is so they can limit access and follow the typical procedure where students with disabilities notify the instructor for the need of accommodations.
"Finally, UC Berkeley has not established that making its online content accessible would result in a fundamental alteration or undue administrative and financial burdens. As indicated below, the Department would prefer to resolve this matter cooperatively."
This seems remarkable given the volume of content. That the content is now being removed suggests this finding is completely false. That's particularly odd, considering this text, also in the report: "In December 2015, UC Berkeley reported that its YouTube channel had about 9,600 hours of course video and 4,200 hours of events and other video content on its YouTube channel. Its iTunes U platform had 10,400 hours of course video, 800 hours of events video, 18,000 hours of course audio, and 225 hours of events audio. About 75 percent of the same video content on YouTube is also available on iTunes U. In May 2015, UC Berkeley informed the Department that for “budget reasons,” beginning in the Fall 2015, UC Berkeley would limit access to new online content on YouTube and iTunes U to enrolled UC Berkeley students taking specific courses."
"To remedy the violations discussed above, UC Berkeley must at least take the following steps: [...] 6. Pay compensatory damages to aggrieved individuals for injuries caused by UC Berkeley’s failure to comply with title II."
Huh? There are actual damages because free content was deemed to be insufficiently accessible? This is bizarre.
fallacy: No True Scotsman
What you're advocating is that the government ignore the law and do what is effectively legislating from the bench. Everyone wants what when the laws are stupid, no one wants it when the laws are clearly sound. The trouble is few people agree precisely on which is which.
It's still astonishingly stupid though.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just in case anyone is unaware, UC Berkeley has over $4 billion.
The law was proposed by a democrat, but the vast majority of congress critters both republican and democrat voted for it. A republican president then signed it into law. Basically both sides liked it, so you'll have to find someone else to hate for now.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Since the content is currently freely available, could they not offer an easy download option? I would hope that universities in other countries without such burdensome laws would be happy to host it instead. Maybe not even universities but e.g. wikimedia or some non-profits.
How the fuck are you blaming this on Republicans... Its not Republicans that force people to comply with things like this its the democrats.. the democrats that are trained in schools like Berkley... and then Berkley won't comply with those laws.. you are so far off base here just because your head is up your ass so far that everything has to be a republican's fault.. HA.. you voted for people that made these laws.. NOW YOU WON'T COMPLY TO THE LAWS YOU WANTED ENACTED..
This is social justice at its finest. No sight for the sighted unless the blind can see.
I mean, is spending taxpayer money on education in the first place a Soviet style result?
It isn't government, it's Berkeley. They're throwing a passive aggressive temper tantrum hoping that the PR will deflect public anger at the government instead of them.
Someone start the archiving process! Then setup website with said data. How much data could this be? Few TB's?
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw
its such Bullshit... this might be a great law.. I know people with low vision and who are legally blind that use the internet for many reasons. Having course work out there so they can learn is a great thing.. BUT BERKLEY IS COMMUNIST CENTRAL .. they should be the first ones to comply with these laws as an example.. BUT THIS IS HOW LIBERALS ARE.. force laws on others.. and don't comply yourself.. It is always like this.. Its an example of the last 8 years of Obama look how bad our cities have got.. look how they stole trillions that was suppose to go to infrastructure.. The newest report is that Fanny and Freddie was emptied out by Obama in his last 2 years to prop up Obamacare and that is how the bank meltdowns started.. Under Liberals all their friends get rich but the country goes bankrupt. you can see it in every city run by a liberal.. they are just destroyed ..
If someone is in need don't blame them because some day eventually if you live long enough you will be one of those people unless you expect to die early from your own hand.. its not their fault and once standards are set new video should go up in the new standard and old ones should be converted by the teaching assistants or student staff. Its just an example of a Liberal School not wanting to help people in need.
Well done
Well done
Congratulations
so you'll have to find someone else to hate for now.
They'll both do just fine, thanks.
You have zero knowledge of US history, but I am not surprised. ADA was a brainchild of Reagan. The act was established in 1990 (Reagan/Bush ruled as president from 81-92).
AFAIK, blind activist Patrisha Wright and representative Tom Harkin (Dem who has a deaf brother) were the brainchilds of the ADA. Reagan was against it and he may of actually precipitated it by threatening to revoke Section 504 of the (American) Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (which was opposed by Nixon and Ford, but passed by Carter) when he was in office.
However, after the Reagan era, Bush1 signed the ADA in 1990... and Bush2 signed the amended version in 1998...
I am a liberal and I wouldn't pass this, and any thinking individual would understand that. .....I didn't know the term until I met the FAA in 1980 and found them full of rules they made us submit, adhere to and support without their help.
Unfunded mandates are not the exclusive domain of liberals.
The law was proposed by a democrat, but the vast majority of congress critters both republican and democrat voted for it. A republican president then signed it into law. Basically both sides liked it, so you'll have to find someone else to hate for now.
Because elected officials were willing to be known as "that guy who hates people in wheelchairs and expects them to drag their bodies up the steps of a building with just their hands"...?
Come on, this is the Social Justice m.o. -- Terrible law which has no business being passed gets passed because every official who votes for it gets to virtue-signal as being Caring and Pro-Diversity and Forward-Thinking, because "if it only helps one person this {128374-page law with 4 billion in bureaucratic overhead and hundreds of billions in compliance costs to ever man, woman, child, and business in our society} will have been worth it!"
Well, 40 years into the Progressive Revolution and we've long passed the point of diminishing returns, where now each new "right" for each new sub-sub-subgroup is actively depriving the majority of people from looking at a damn website, because the ability to look at a website that other people might not be able to look at is cruel and heartless and a tool of oppression by the white male heterosexist ablist hegemony.
Let's repeat that again -- the federal government has established that the simple act of people looking at a website is trampling on the equal-protection rights of a victim class. LOOKING AT A WEBSITE.
You're not Rosa Parks; this isn't the 60s; nobody is siccing dogs on you or firebombing your home, they are LOOKING AT A WEBSITE.
OH NOOES!
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Here's a better approach...and one that is more likely to actually happen. Anyone who cares to preserve the material will band together to download it all from Youtube, and upload it to TPB. You have 9 days, pirates. Arrrrrr!
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Considering that CA is a one-party state and UCB is funded from Sacramento, please let us know which Republicans aren't funding it.
When Obama's DOJ mandated that all university buildings needed transgender washrooms, the university eliminated all their transsexual students. "It was cheaper to expel the deviant perverts", said a vice chancellor at the time.
So Republicans pass laws they don't mean, or what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You missed that "Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990" part in the summary?
I mean, you're right, UC Berkley is wussing out here, they've basically said "screw you guys I'm going home" because they don't want to spend $ to make their content accessible to people with disabilities. But are you saying that the government is wrong to try to enforce the law here, or that this law shouldn't be a law in the first place?
By its nature the complaint was demanding some form of change. They just didn't expect this one.
How is he supposed to know if they ride Harleys?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or they could give it away instead of "providing" it.
Everything they say is a carefully crafted excuse except for this. "Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from 'pirates' who have reused content for personal profit without consent."
No longer UC's property, no longer UC's problem. And still available to whoever may wish to view it.
Also before anybody points it out, I think it's fair to call a polite letter from the DOJ requesting co-operation "enforcing the law" -- because everybody knows what's next if they don't play ball.
Fags? I believe the preferred term is LGBTQID, you insensitive clod.
Spoken by a true gamma excel cucko prong. Quit intercalating
You missed the expansion of it that allows uninterested parties to to be rewarded for catching these atrocities? Now we have lawyers using Google Earth looking for pools that do not have wheelchair elevators that no one uses.
Well, at least you are willing to own up to your utter stupidity by name.
You either think that Obama was in office in 1990, or have no idea how time works.
Probably a case of malicious enforcement intended to get the free content removed. You know for capitalizoum.
If at all, this should only affect new content.
There's no way this should apply to stuff that's already there.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Laws are generally badly written. Governments seem to take a perverse now in writing laws that need to have their meanings fully understood in the courts.
Partly because they don't want people to game them, partly so the government can game them.
Bush II wasn't even the President until 2000...
A perfect example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Millions will lose access to valuable content, and it's unlikely that any of the people who couldn't access the content would agree that this is the right thing to do. If you're hearing impaired do you really want to screw over millions of people who aren't just because you can't access something? I doubt it.
Skip building a single F-35 and you could could pay a team of 1000 people to do whatever it takes to make the content accessible to people with disabilities, but noooooooooo, we gotta have that fucking airplane.
The government should pay for to make it accessible (or at least help) since they were the ones that decreed it had to be accessible. But again, noooooooo, we gotta build that fucking wall or give tax breaks to millionaires or train 10,000 extra ICE agents to round up families and deport them (at our expense, of course).
Our priorities are fucking stupid.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Deafies shouldn't be allowed to ruin good things like this for everyone else.
Found the Trump supporter.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
What you're advocating is that the government ignore the law and do what is effectively legislating from the bench.
No.
I'm saying the government should not be making so many laws covering so many things, so that similarly-stupid scenarios/occurrences are not so common. That government that governs least, governs best, and government that is closest to those people whose laws they affect, governs most equitably.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Hold on a sec. Maybe eventually they'll find volunteers or resources to assist in the conversion. In the shorter term they don't want to be sued so they are taking it down.
Our org is facing a similar issue. We publish older statistics for the public, but due to ADA-related issues, we are planning on pulling it off our site, instead adding a contact number for those wanting copies.
I do agree that ADA needs some practical adjustments, though. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath-water. ADA has helped a lot of injured veterans.
Table-ized A.I.
Fuck you Zippy the braindead. Did you miss the party where this was free? Are you going to provide the money to pay these people to do that work? You're just another asshole thinking you're entitled to something extra just because you're disadvantaged. Now nobody can use it.
It's odd that the right wing has the reputation for personal responsibility, because my experience is the opposite. A bunch of right wingers voted for it and a right wing president voted for it, but blame, blame, blame everyone else. Never every admit to any responsibility.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Wah wah wah, just screaming "lefties" doesn't validate your point.
Yes. What you're claiming you said is not weekday you said.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We need to show them how equal they are by a good old fashioned tar and feathering. F'ing retards; what did they think was going to happen? I am 100% behind rescinding it and replacing it with nothing. Raise the dam money yourself or get volunteers to quality caption the youtube videos.
First, you must learn to spell Berkeley. Not Berkley.
Second, you have never been here so you know nothing about the city.
Third, you don't know what the word communist means, so shut up
if half the bloody electorate wasn't working hard to make sure government didn't work because it's so convinced government doesn't work. Seriously, this is what happens when you put people in charge who are doing everything they can to hamstring the basic functionality of government (and no, Obama is not, was not and never will be 'in charge'. He had a few months with a congress full of DINOs).
You elect people who want to tear down the government and the complain it's been torn down. Sheesh!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
a. The content is valuable to the public.
b. We don't want people with disabilities excluded from society.
c. We properly fund public education so that the material can be made accessible to them.
Seriously. In all the talk about how awful it is this content will get pulled nobody once noticed the reason: The law was written with the assumption that we properly fund education in a country where we've been cutting that funding for 40 years. Hell, the right have a name for this: Starve the Beast. But ya know, I like some Beasts. Like my dog that scares off thieves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Even now people of courage are downloading this data and it will be made public. Will the powers that be stop this? Can they stop this? I am an anonymous coward so I am not a party to this. Kids play safe and don't forget Aaron Schultz or Snowden.
Thank you for proving that the Bushes were not conservatives, but actually liberals.
With an axiomatic statement like that, there is no fucking way to respond to it.
But I'll try. See, the political center has gone so fucking to the right that Reagan would be considered a commie by today's standards. That is why only stupid people use labels like "liberal" or "conservative" in absolute terms.
So... don't be stupid. Leave the dogma aside, travel the country and the world and talk to people with views different from yours, be them to your left and right.
You'll find your dogma to be quite narrow-minded in short order.
Crab mentality- "If I can't have it, neither can you."
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Because elected officials were willing to be known as "that guy who hates people in wheelchairs and expects them to drag their bodies up the steps of a building with just their hands"...?
Lots of elected officials have no problem opposing any restriction on gun rights, even to the faces of those who lost their young children to deranged shooters.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Unintended consequences, eh.
Seems like this would apply to libraries as well - all books that don't have an equivalent "accessible" version would be in violation of the ADA.
The opponents of the law pointed out things exactly like this would happen and were told that was nonsense.
Rah rah States rights! Except the ones we disagree with. Which the federal government should override!
... please... after the Republicans destroy it...
something bad happened, a republican must be at fault somehow.
From "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut:
"In the year 2081, amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, radios inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.
One April, 14-year-old Harrison Bergeron, an intelligent and athletic teenager, is taken away from his parents, George and Hazel Bergeron, by the government. They are barely aware of the tragedy, as Hazel has "average" intelligence (a euphemism for stupidity), and George has a handicap radio installed by the government to regulate his above-average intelligence.
Hazel and George watch ballet on television. They comment on the dancers, who are weighed down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to hide their attractiveness. George's thoughts are continually interrupted by the different noises emitted by his handicap radio, which piques Hazel's curiosity and imagination regarding handicaps. Noticing his exhaustion, Hazel urges George to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weights locked around George's neck. She suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but George resists, aware of the illegality of such an action...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
I find the intentions of the ADA to generally be a good thing. I really doubt keeping free educational material out of the hands of the public was the intention of the authorship. However, as with anything done by the Congress critters I doubt all the angles were considered and exceptions for freebies being one of them. For what ever reason it seems the Gallaudet people had a chip on their shoulder and as a consequence ruined it for everyone.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
They rejected your application did they?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
It's ridiculous the people trying to pawn the problem off on the ADA, politics, politicians, or the deaf people complaining. The problem is that universities jumped on this bandwagon of minimal effort, low production, record the classroom with a webcam bullshit as a means of advertising and it is biting them in the ass. Realize that universities aren't putting content online out of altruism, but as part of advertising and brand building.
All of that said, it's even more retarded bullshit that a university is going to pull the content when a cheap scalable solution exists: automated closed captioning and OCR of projector / blackboard material, which can then produce output for braille. There is a solution and it is cheap, why is this even a discussion? Will the output be buggy, sure, but in the intervening time before grad students can be enslaved to tweak transcriptions, it's workable.
On the other side of things, the universities know their legal requirements, and they already know from experiments like The Feynman Lectures on Physics to know that transcription is a huge chore. Easy fix: put the prof's notes online with the lecture.
How many injured veterans are there in the United States?
We could have saved millions wasted on ADA compliance (including the hidden cost of designs and software architectures made impossible as a side result) if we simply paid businesses for serving these veterans in person.
Tearing-down people makes nobody stronger. It's great the government wants everybody to participate in society (and in this case, education) but punishing UC Berkeley for not meeting the standard is pointless. It's ridiculous that US courts and corporate laws bury the past, frequently, when the rest of government holds people liable for years.
An important question is, why doesn't UC Berkeley implement ADA compliance already? As a big business they've been liable for many years now and the government is right to be angered by their disobedience.
A better question is, how can this be fixed? The owner (UC Berkeley) does not want to spend money on what are essentially gifts to everybody: The answer would be crowd-sourcing subtitles, written scripts and other content, wikipedia-style, with possibly a subsidy from the government to encourage volunteer workers.
That's all they care about is their bonus check
No, they're not fags. They're limp wristed asexuals. Too "Y chromosoney" to have a vagina, and too belittled, broken, and neutered to be worthy of a penis. Asexual, worse than eunuchs. Fags at least can, typically, get it up and be sexual. But Berzerkley types? Not a chance.
It's not just veterans. There are people born with disabilities, and also the elderly, being our senses often dim as we age. (I myself am not fond of the dim gray fonts the young whipper-snappers have been using of late on sites.)
But the economic trade-offs are certainly worth a closer look. Some solid objective studies would be nice. As I said earlier, the law probably should be tuned for practicality. It would be knee-jerk just to end them completely without careful consideration.
Many organizations put fashion and eye-candy ahead of accessibility. Unless they are in the fashion or art business, it wouldn't kill them to select readability over gimmicks.
Table-ized A.I.
"What you're advocating is that the government ignore the law and do what is effectively legislating from the bench."
That's a real thing, you know. It's called judicial activism. Yes, rather than backing out and saying 'fuck it,' Berkeley should _reasonably_ be able to assume that they could go to court and a _reasonable_ judge would conclude that while they are technically guilty the punishment is nothing because what Berkeley isn't violating the _spirit_ of the law. Maybe he attaches some conditions to it like 'Don't do it on any new stuff,' but you get the point. Some judges already do this, and it does exist as a real legal school of thought. Law gets made from the bench all of the time and is no less valid than statutory law.
Really? Seems it was started as George HW Bush started his Presidency, and that would be after Reagan. In fact, we find that "After taking office President Reagan established the Task Force on Regulatory Relief under the leadership of then Vice President George Bush. The mission of the Task Force was to “de-regulate” regulations which were burdensome on businesses. The Section 504 regulations were chosen for “de-regulation.” This news sent a current throughout the disability movement across the country, which quickly mobilized a multi-tier strategy to preserve the regulations." Reagan opposed the ADA or any expansion of such regulations.
Revisionist history really doesn't belong with supposedly smart people on /. - get your facts straight, and drop the talking points.
So the Maples formed a Union
And demanded equal rights
‘The Oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light
Now there’s no more Oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw
Because I don't know if they are gay. What I do know is that they are spineless, like most people who live in the San Francisco bay area.
Too bad Berkeley didn't send in the Black Watch to "explain" the situation to the complainant. I see they have since learned their lesson.
Is Stacy Nowak an idiot, or did some DOJ employee seek them out and selectively quote them without explaining the consequences? I can't believe any sane person disabled or otherwise would want this? Is this some DOJ employee trying to justify their existence?
Eh, it's just Berserkley. If I want to learn how to start riots with lots of violence and property damage, I can go play Grand Theft Auto or Just Cause instead.
So dead on!
Hmm, do I sign this into law, or do I veto and give every single person in the media the right to make tomorrow's headlines "BUSH HATES THE HANDICAPPED". This is a difficult one.
What's right and what's wrong is often overlooked today in favor of how the media is going to spin something, and for good reason - they can ruin lives on a whim, and don't have to retract their statements in anywhere near the manner they shout them.
At least this action is in full compliance with the "Americans With Stupidity Act".
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress both when the original ADA was passed in 1990 and when it was amended in 2008.
...automated closed captioning and OCR of projector / blackboard material, which can then produce output for braille. There is a solution and it is cheap, why is this even a discussion? Will the output be buggy, sure, but in the intervening time before grad students can be enslaved to tweak transcriptions, it's workable.
Will be buggy?! Have you seen OCR output or automated transcripts... currently they are god awful!!! Maybe with better AI they'll improve enough to be useable, but right now they suck. As if grad students would have time to review 24-36 hours of video and correct it, all the while doing their normal work. :P
its also berkeley deciding its cheaper to delete the content than make it available under various formats. these things operate for a profit, remember.
"6. Pay compensatory damages to aggrieved individuals for injuries caused by UC Berkeley’s failure to comply with title II."
The DOJ complaint is very unreasonable. And "compensatory damages'? WTF? Those "aggrieved individuals" can go fuck themselves. This is now how you build bridges in the community. The public suffer while one whining professor cashes out big time. FUCK THAT!
I voted for Hillary. Nice try though, faggot.
I thought of an elegant retort, but I think it's best if you were simply told to get raped with a fire poker.
You are adorably naive. Unfortunately politics are a little more complex than that.
No longer UC's property, no longer UC's problem. And still available to whoever may wish to view it.
You actually can't do this.
Trying to put something in the public domain to get out from under legal liability is the reason things like the MIT and BSD license exist: in order to attach a hold harmless clause, you have to assert Copyright, such that the only terms on which the content may be legally used is via agreement to the terms of the license.
It's unfortunate that there is not a blanket hold harmless exception for works placed in the public domain, but there's none. It's very difficult to make something actually public domain, these days.
How is a school complaint considered a government?
Who is the real blind person here. The student, or the greedy School management?
you are a faggot
No sir we do not. You are wrong. SAD!
If you think that about people that live in San Francisco.. you might be on the wrong web site. LOL
Aren't voice APIs good enough nowadays to automate transcriptions?
Bureaucratic Messes are usually related to poorly written laws.
Or laws that did not anticipate the future.
Well, that's why normally you don't make laws with retroactive effect. In this case, new materials would require adaptations for those who are not 100% able to use the course material, and the materials that already exist would remain unchanged.
To me this looks like theuniversity decided they've had enough of the Freemium model and decided to paywall their content. The law might be a good excuse, and they might rely on people not reading the fine print, or in my case, RTFA, to see if it is indeed a good justification.
This is not social justice.
This is behaving stupid intentionally to give the idea of"social justice" a bad reputation.
Looks like someone wants to redefine that term.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
I thought of an elegant retort, but I think it's best if you were simply told to get raped with a fire poker.
Feel free to include me in your repressed sexual fantasies if that makes you feel like a winner. I won't be the one standing between a wretch and happiness.
Bush is part of the alt-left.
You beat me to it. I mean, this short story is worth reading even apart from its mortifying applicability to modern times, similarly to Orwell's "1984". So here is my pitch:
"Harrison Bergeron" was a dystopian short story, not an instruction manual.
If things go on like that, we'll get our whole culture wrapped in that manner, like
"Swan Lake" was a dystopian ballet, not an instruction manual.
Sounds absurd now. But for how much longer?
This is Slashdot. The facts will show themselves the door for lack of company.
UC Berkely have had more than 20 years to do something about this. They haven't. Someone called them out. their response? "We don't want to play any more. We're taking our ball and going home." I call BS.
Can somebody back the database up ?
It's this. Yes, it does matter which party is in power. Studies have shown the economy does better under the Democrats. Again, it's not because they're Dems, it's because they're actively trying to govern instead of burning the whole place down.
And again, you're side stepping the issue I raised. Yes, large organizations (notice how I'm not using the loaded term "bureaucracy" like you did?) will have problems. But without them we wouldn't have gotten to the moon or had the bloody Internet you're posting on. More to the point (hey, I used that phrase correctly!) we can fix those problems if we try (as opposed to throwing our hands up like children and declaring it too hard/impossible).
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Wait a minute. Guns cannot be used by paralysed people. Therefore, according to the ADA, they are illegal!
It is unfortunate that some people have disabilities. Legally crippling the rest of us because of it is absolutely stupid and the ADA has to go.
I did a consulting job at a small store once that had 2 handicapped parking spaces out front by law. What's wrong there? Oh, nothing, except the store only had 4 parking spaces. Total. Driving to a big box store and seeing rows of empty handicapped spaces well out of proportion to the population of disabled people and thus mostly empty all the time is really infuriating.
And yeah, whiners, I might get disabled one day. I did once for a little while. I had surgery that left me unable to walk more than steps at a time for 6 weeks AND I wasnt allowed to use crutches or a cane for kinda stupid reasons. It was pretty depressing, not gonna lie. Anybody offer me 'special accommodations'? Of course not, that doesn't qualify. That meant (gasp) that there were things I couldn't do that other people could do. The horror! True, if it had been permanent I'd have had to work something out but I would have.
I don't expect the world to throw unnecessary obstacles in anybody's way. Ramps or cutouts on curbs are great design, and not having to step up to get into a building is a great idea that helps everyone. Requiring these things in new designs is fine. Not everyone has a new building though, and retrofitting ranges from pretty cheap to massively expensive. While the law purports to take this into account, in practice it does not. Being able to sue someone for lacking them when you weren't going to go there anyway except to sue them is ridiculous law and it needs to be abolished.
Why would I want to attend a university (much less be in a state) that legitimizes assault on anyone that doesn't toe the Party line (both conservatives and not)?
I'll let other people be railroaded by Title IX and be indoctrinated in INGSOCJUS.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Mod parent up please. This is exactly how it sounds. They wanted to go paywall and found a good sugar coating so the general public can swallow that pill.
This is Ultra Liberal UC Berkeley being utterly hypocritical on one hand, while making a common complaint of the Right on the other. UCB cares so much about everybody and their rights, but here they are saying, "screw the disabled". Why? Because the cost of complying with government regulation is too high.
From US DoJ letter :
"Title II mandates that no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity. "
UC Berkeley plans to remove some content that is properly closed-captioned and accessible. This is in response to the complaint about related, inaccessible content.
Legally speaking, isn't this denial of services by reason of disability? Especially if removal is so onerous it'll take months to execute?
I think UCB should step back and rethink. Take the DoJ letter for what it is -- a lawyer's note, not a judge's ruling. A hasty response to its more strident points (i.e. pay compensation to the two complainants) is likely to get UCB into more trouble, not less.
If it's a Republican victory, it's because the most liberal campus in the nation is complaining about the costs of complying with government regulations. So now the GOP can say, "See? This is what we've been talking about. Now you know how it feels to get burdened with well intentioned but exorbitantly expensive regulations. Maybe keep that in mind next time you get a bug up your asses about regulating something."
Oh, AC thinks he meant gay fags. That's not very nice Mr AC! Just because a person is gay doesn't mean he's a fag.
I see that you have been using automated transcription.
"His name was James Damore."
perfect application of the lesson in that episode
or a democrat depending on your inclination, gotta love that intellectual sloth
The relevant statute is Title 17, United States Code, Section 121: Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction for blind or other people with disabilities. It begins as follows:
Found the crooked Hillary supporter.
Has anyone made a mirror/torrent of the content yet? If so, reply with a link and I'll seed it.
looks like it's been happening around the country but with smaller schools https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr...
Bullshit, just bullshit. They could just put them on youtube, and someone could learn something.
Instead those in charge need a real education.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
goddam phone.
Yes, anyway, what you said is not what you claim you said.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Americans with Disabilities Act? That fascist, right-wing nonsense about ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities? Oh, how horrible!
1998 was Clinton dude.
There's always a way to spin it into being the fault of those god-damned liberals, huh? You're so fucking ignorant that you won't even consider the possibility that it is just a fucking unintended consequence, will you?
Even more incredulous is that the Feds are forcing Berkeley to remove the "Free" content - content and delivery which paid for by the California Taxpayers, charitable contributions to Berkeley, and students. So the State does not have the right to post free content if it does not meet federal requirements for accessibility? Something's WRONG here ... a DoJ federal power grab.
What if the U.C. system was providing free bus to students but not handicapped-accessible? Would that be justified since only 1% or less are affected and so many other students who cannot afford personal transportation can benefit from a free system.
The larger argument is that in this library case, all 100% lose out; but not for other online content. Everyone gets to provide content that everyone can access. That's the prize, despite this intermediate inconvenience.
When one starts making excuses for education, health, recreation, and other aspects of normal life, then pretty soon we'll have a whole bunch of second class citizens. That is more dangerous than forcing universities to comply with ADA laws.
So he couldn't have vetoed it using this as justification?
Or are you just trying really, really, really hard to put an anti-liberal spin on it?
Bullshit!!! This is Devos trying to build "God's Kingdom". First step, make sure nobody has access to a real education.
SJWs had 8 years under Obama and they never did anything like this. How is there any social justice in depriving people of a decent education??? The only people that want that are Republicans, and look, as soon as they take control... out goes the decent education. That is the first step in building "God's kingdom" (which is just brainwashing the masses into religious submission by making them too stupid to rebut religious nonsense).
This is not because of a complaint, it's because of the government's response, which should have consisted of a bureaucratically-worded version of "...and?...so what, it's free?" instead of the present myopic, pigeon-holing, thinking-strictly-within-the-box, easily-predictable, and all-too-typical bureaucratic mess of unintended consequences whenever big government gets involved.
Strat
Why would the government contradict its own position? Note below that this was the 1996 position of the "The Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education".
Being an old man, I remember exactly this sort of thing being warned about literally (correct use of the word) 20 years ago when the movement began to make web content ADA compliant. (Now let's see... Who was the President in 1996 again?)
Here's a 1998 article I quickly found "Is Your Site ADA-Compliant... or a Lawsuit-in-Waiting?". It has these couple of sections:
According to the United States Justice Department, the ADA also applies to the cyberspace “world.” In an opinion letter dated September 9, 1996, The U.S. Department of Justice stated that:
“Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well.”
and
When members of the public who have a disability attempt to access a Web site, they are therefore entitled to equal access as are any other members of the public. But what exactly is “effective communication”? According to a 1996 settlement letter from The Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education (OCR):
[T]he issue is not whether the [person] with the disability is merely provided access, but the issue is rather the extent to which the communication is actually as effective as that provided to others.
This is why we can't have nice things.
The summary stated the complaint was made in AUGUST -- that's while POTUS Obama was in reign with the SJWs in tow. POTUS Trump was not in office during any August as of today.
You are a Troll
The sweet irony of this is if UC Berkeley asked the Trump DOJ to reconsider it, it would undoubtedly be reversed. But, that wouldn't be politically correct, now would it?
UC Berkeley is taking down videos, which are "audiovisual works", not books, which are "literary works". This particular exception to copyright applies only to literary works, not to audiovisual works.
Hopefully someone in a foreign country outside US jurisdiction, if such a place even still exists, can grab a mirror of this information and place it back online.
I had not known these existed. I picked one to make local copies as a token gesture using keepvid.com:
"Peace and Conflict Studies 164A - Fall 2006 (Michael N. Nagler)"
https://www.youtube.com/view_p...
"PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense."
For some reason lecture #16 is marked private, so can't get that.
Dr. Nagler talks in the first lecture about Kenneth E. Boulding and "The Three Faces of Power" as ways to get something done:
* threat power
* exchange power
* integrative power (the core of principled nonviolence as he sees it)
See here (until March 14th): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Those three faces of power also overlap with the five types of economic transactions (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) I outline on my site.
It's unfortunate that the plaintiffs and DOJ here seemed to used "threat power" instead of focusing on building better relationships for mutual benefit through "integrative power" to both fix the specific problem and have a beneficial effect on the whole educational ecosystem.
See also my point here as regards UCB now putting stuff behind what presumably may be a paywall again requiring registration:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open...
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."
Glad to see more substantial efforts going on as mentioned in another comment.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The department reached that conclusion after receiving complaints from two employees of Gallaudet University, saying Berkeley’s free online educational content was inaccessible to blind and deaf people because of a lack of captions, screen reader compatibility and other issues.
This sounds a lot like those parasites that are not themselves actually disabled but go around suing people "on the behalf of disabled people" because they want money for themselves. www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-americans-with-disabilities-act-lawsuits-anderson-cooper/
but they can be solved. Voting can be both anonymous and mandatory ensuring 100% turnout without it becoming an oppressive census. Parliaments can eliminate the issues with a two party system. Education can create an electorate that's capable of being well informed. True, good government is hard work but even before that it requires a willingness to do so.
And make no mistake, you _will_ have a powerful central government. They're just too useful. If you don't form one and participate in it then somebody else will; usually to your detriment...
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Why not take a minute to look it up and make an informative post?
"Bush signed it in 2008 dude"
Nobody likes being strong-armed; it bruises the ego and encourages getting bullied more. It's so much more satisfying to opt-out with a finger in the air.
This is not because of the government, this is due to a complaint:
"The Department opened its investigation of UC Berkeley based on a complaint"
A complaint means nothing. People complain all the time, about everything.
What comes of it is government power that is in response to the complaint.
Because I don't know if they are gay. What I do know is that they are spineless, like most people who live in the San Francisco bay area.
Yeah, those spineless types, always bucking the trends of larger society!
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide
Gallaudet University is a school for the deaf. They (Glenn Lockhart and Stacy Nowak) wanted to use the content for their coursework, but couldn't use it as is, so instead of providing closed captioning themselves or work something out for the specific material they were interested in they decided to sue Berkeley.
Sadly this is not made clear in the submissions to slashdot, so speculations run amok about ambulance chasing attorneys and some deaf students suing.
I hope Glenn and Stacy are happy with their result.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks