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20,000 Worldclass University Lectures Made Illegal, So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them (lbry.io)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Today, the University of California at Berkeley has deleted 20,000 college lectures from its YouTube channel. Berkeley removed the videos because of a lawsuit brought by two students from another university under the Americans with Disabilities Act. We copied all 20,000 and are making them permanently available for free via LBRY. Is this legal? Almost certainly. The vast majority of the lectures are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows attributed, non-commercial redistribution. The price for this content has been set to free and all LBRY metadata attributes it to UC Berkeley. Additionally, we believe that this content is legal under the First Amendment.
The headline makes it sound as if Slashdot itself deserves credit for this. Hopefully readers here are smart enough to know that is not the case, but it should be made clear that "we" does not include anyone who works with or is affiliated in any way with Slashdot.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
missing annotations are not the reason to put information down because certain people cannot properly digest it. While their situation is unfortunate, it's not an excuse to deprive 99.99% of other people of this knowledge.
The students sued because the lectures were not available in a suitable format to meet the requirements of the ADA. The university had two choices - spend all kinds of money to make them available meeting the requirements of the ADA, or take them down. The law of unintended consequences at work. The ADA is a good thing, until you go ape shit with it.
Two assholes ruined it for everyone else... great. Forget that there's technology to automatically add subtitles. No, we must fuck over everyone. At least the two snake bastards won't be able to hear anyone sneaking up on them to enact revenge...
Two handicapped snowflakes sue the university because the videos didn't have closed captioning in them and therefore they discriminated against the handicapped. The university look at what it would cost to add captioning to what they were giving away for free and decided it wasn't worth it. So if the handicapped don't get it, you can't have it either. No surprise here, this was an anticipated resulted when the Americans With Disabilities act was passed. Makes about as much sense as forcing the government to built expensive wheelchair ramps on buildings in a national park that can only be reached by hiking trails.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I want to know the dialogue between the students that filed the suit and the university. I they could have been granted some kind of continuance, they could have started a program to find volunteers to close caption them. This is pretty sad. Even though the videos are mirrored, all the old links are now dead .. lots of blank screens for anyone who embeded them or cited them on other websites.
It was going to cost a ton of time and money to get all the material ADA compliant, and they would have continued to be in violation the entire time they were working toward that. So they did the only thing they could, and removed everything.
I don't know about the legal issues, but from a common-sense perspective it would make more sense for the captioning to be performed on-demand on a per-video basis; i.e. if a disabled student needs access to a particular video, he/she can request that it be captioned. The captioning is then added to that video and made available to everyone.
That way the ADA students get the captioning they need, and everyone else gets the benefit of the videos as well; plus the captioners don't spend a lot of their limited time captioning video that nobody will actually use the captions of; rather they spend their time captioning videos that actually need captioning sooner rather than later.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The issue I see with this, is not so much that the existing lectures were removed, because they've been saved elsewhere. It's that there will now be no new content released in this fashion. So everyone loses out on future changes to course content.
I think that once knowledge has to be suppressed just so everyone can be deprived of it equally, it's already gone full apeshit.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It really does sound to me like a case of leftist-imposed regulations running amok yet again.
Normally it's non-leftists who are hurt by their regulation, but in this case it sounds like it has actually backfired and affected one of their very own premiere institutions!
They're finally getting a taste of what their regulations tend to do to the rest of Americans, especially the ones who try to engage in productive business. These regulations act as barriers more than they provide helpful benefits.
Ideally, we would be able to make all content and facilities accessible to everybody, regardless of ability or disability. But the reality is that we'll never manage that, or if we could, it just wouldn't be economical. There are buildings constructed in ways that prevent accessibility. Likewise, there will always be cases where content can't be made fully accessible.
But to deprive everybody of the benefits of such facilities or content because a very small number of people aren't able to easily benefit from them? It's absurd. It's harmful. It's disrespectful.
This leftist lack of understanding regarding economics in general is one of the problems that their regulations fail so horribly so much of the time. It doesn't matter what your political beliefs are, in the real world it's just not possible to ignore economics.
Until leftists learn the essential of real economics (and not just Marxist ideology spewed by ivory tower professors), their regulations will continue to be more harmful than beneficial.
You got stuck on an ancillary point. The main thrust was the statement "So if the handicapped don't get it, you can't have it either."
If this content was required for something, or paid for, then it seems reasonable to me to demand ADA compliance. If it was just free information that the university put up for the greater good, I have more empathy for all the people who don't get it at all then the tiny few people would won't have been able to get it anyway.
No one is saying being handicapped doesn't suck, but perhaps there's a better solution than crippling (either figuratively or literally) everybody else for the sake of equality.
Yes. How dare a University say "We have all of this valuable information recorded on video and we are going to give it away to anyone for free.". . It is really great that a couple of handicapped people were able to say "If we can enjoy it as much as you then no one should be able to see it". . This result will really empower people. I'm colorblind and I'm going to sue all of the movie studios and TV stations for presenting their product in color. If I can't see the shows in full color them they should all be forced to present the shows in only black and white so we can all be equal. Screw you, you non-colorblind elitists.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Someone should sue those two people for depriving the world of valuable informations.
Basically the whole thing stinks for abuse of the legal system. Yes, they may be disadvantaged, but they don't need to abuse the law such that (*more*) people have to suffer.
On the flipside though, how are they supposed to access the information. A bit of a shit, but the law should be changed/adjusted so that the information/lecture/this kind of thing isn't forced off the planet due to some ill-thought-out process.
(fucking lawyers)
Hopefully you'll get handicapped some day ....
Your wishing such things on people reveals what a bitter hateful person you are. Actually, I do have a handicap, and in fact it is hearing loss, exactly the issue here. Mine is not complete, but severe enough that I watch TV and movies with closed captioning on. But I'm not damaged enough that I would say that if I can't hear something then no one else should be able to either.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
> Regulations that protect the environment are provably good and are a cost to a corporation, tough shit for the corporation.
You don't actually mean exactly what you said, do you? I sure hope you were in a hurry when you typed that, that you're thinking is deeper than a bumper sticker slogan. You don't actually think labeling something "for the environment" or "for the children" or "for the economy" makes it a good idea, do you?
All regulations have costs. Most also have some benefits. Some costs are concentrated on a few people. For example, right now a bunch of people are suing the government because on his way out, Obama's EPA chief declared they can't build a house on their land they bought *in case an endangered species might want to live in the area some day*. There is no endangered species on their land now, there hasn't been in the past, but who knows, maybe someday some animal might decide to live near where the people where planning to build their house. In that case, the cost is borne by the people who just spent $50,000 buying a lot to build their house on. On the other hand, the costs of regulations that affect "major corporations" are of course paid by most everyone equally. If General Mills is required to do some X that's more expensive, everyone pays more for their groceries. For any new regulation related to gasoline, the cost is paid by everyone who buys gas.
In this instance, one cost of the regulation is that the educational videos are no longer available to the public. The benefit is - nothing. The lawyers got a nice chunk of change, and maybe the people suing got paid, but there's no benefit to society whatsoever. You know Uber and Lyft are ~illegal under regulations in many cities, and in many states regulations prevent Tesla from selling cars to consumers. Most people here understand these regulations don't benefit the public, they benefit the taxi companies and car dealerships. They are overall bad for society (or at least arguably so). You don't think that slapping the label "green" on an expensive regulation which does little to no good magically makes it good, do you?
> Or, lets get rid of all monopolies on medication; no drug patents
You could do that, the problem is 90% of the cost of new medication is R&D and testing. Suppose a company spends $800 million and and finally has a good medication to show for it. It costs $1/pill to produce. (Which means they can recover their costs by selling 800 million pills at $2 each). Since producing the pills costs $1, other companies will happily produce and sell them for $1.25. Without patents, new medications are pretty much impossible, unless you remove all of the regulation of testing and disclosure and everything, allowing companies to sell medications without revealing what's in them, or without expensive regulatory compliance including all the testing. personally, I prefer well-tested medication and full disclosure of their contents. That makes R&D expensive compared to production. And that basically means no new meds without patents.
What makes you think that the complainants wanted no one to see these videos? They just wanted the university to meet its legal obligation to them, I really doubt that they intented for this to happen.
Once the complaint was made it would have been beyond their ability to stop it because the case is taken on by the government.
It's a bad decision but blaming those guys is probably unfair, unless you know otherwise.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The students sued because the lectures were not available in a suitable format to meet the requirements of the ADA. The university had two choices - spend all kinds of money to make them available meeting the requirements of the ADA, or take them down. The law of unintended consequences at work. The ADA is a good thing, until you go ape shit with it.
\
One minor correction. The students DIDNT sue. Some fucking ambulance chaser bottom feeder lawyer sued.
The students were just used as the "injured party."
There's all kinds of that shit going on now all over, the financial industry is getting hit too. Threat letters and demands for settlement because some site is not compliant with the ADA in context of NO requirement to be ADA compliant. (Usually ADA compliance means WCAG 2.0 but of course, since there's no governing body then it might not be good enough.)
Having the content in a web site be accessible is good. Using it not be so to pad the pockets of some scum-sucking lawyer is not.
Yes. How dare a University say "We have all of this valuable information recorded on video and we are going to give it away to anyone for free.". . It is really great that a couple of handicapped people were able to say "If we can enjoy it as much as you then no one should be able to see it". . This result will really empower people. I'm colorblind and I'm going to sue all of the movie studios and TV stations for presenting their product in color. If I can't see the shows in full color them they should all be forced to present the shows in only black and white so we can all be equal. Screw you, you non-colorblind elitists.
As a pretty deaf person, I understand their frustration. However, if they did not see the likely result of their lawsuit, that is the retroactive captioning of some 20 K videos, well then they are of the modern variety of special snowflakes. Congratulations you two special snowflakes, you WON! Crack open a bottle of ADA compliant whatever it is that snowflakes drink, and know that the world is better for your lawsuit.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The very worst part about this isn't even considered in the scope of the trial. The chilling effect this has on all universities. Not only did we almost lose these 20k videos, but I can bet you no more will be made by UC Berkley and their competitor universities will eschew this process as well.
Free enrichment of the commons should not be circumvented by a lawsuit and a couple of idiots.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
And yet, mysteriously, every "mostly peaceful" campus protest works the same way: the speaker is prevented, by violence or threat of violence, from speaking. This is the exact opposite of free speech.
Every, huh?
Really, how many documented cases of speakers being prevented can you provide? How many injuries? How many hospitalizations? Or are you just bringing up a scary bogeyman of "violent protests" because you feel in your gut that it must be true that EVERY time it happens? Or will the dozens of speeches given by "controversial" individuals without incident not matter to you for some reason? How many would it take for me to present before you retracted your statement?
Look, you can deplore it happening if you want, it'll be a good deal of codswallop, but at least it won't be such blatantly dishonest hyperbole.
You should know better. You're just giving into the desire to exaggerate, to foster fear and despite, against a group, and why? What do you have to gain from such? Do you think you're protecting free speech? I hate to tell you this, but at best you're a catspaw who will be used to justify more oppression, not less.
At worst? You're knowingly complicit in it.
C'mon, at least agree to tone down your own rhetoric.
Leaving aside the tragedy and lack of compassion, let's not forget that Obamacare is essentially a rightwing plan, not too different from what was proposed by Nixoncare or Bob Dole's plan.
None of the advanced social democracies that provide universal healthcare do it in a similar fashion.If they're not single-payer, they all at least have a public option.
There are instances where what's available in America is better but not for the vast majority - especially for what's being spent.
If the per-capita expense could be cut by $1000, that would free up over $300 BILLION EVERY YEAR - and the USA would still be spending $2000 more per person than Norway, Netherlands or Switzerland.
Finding a way to bring it down to about $4000 per person per year which is roughly the expenditure of countries like Germany, France & Sweden would save $1.3 Trillion which $200 billion more than 2015's total Federal discretionary spending.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
And they're quite convinced they're right
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream 'oppression!'
And the oaks, just shake their heads
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
Lifeson/Peart/Lee
(Bonus Fahrenheit 451 Captcha: fireman)
Many of these lawsuits are driven by lawyers who seek out plaintiffs (sounds familiar?). Ie, some shop owners are being sued because their handicap parking spaces are not wide enough or not enough of them, etc. The plaintiffs almost always turn out to be someone who's never been to the shop, never tried to shop there, never complained to the shop owner, etc. The first the owner hears about not being in compliance is the lawsuit.
This is NOT how regulations are supposed to work. Lawsuits are supposed to be the last resort, and the usually come from a government agency which is too overburdened to create lawsuits on a whim. The snag with the ADA is that it allows people other than the government to sue. The end result of this may be that ADA is torn town by an anti-regulation administration rather than reforming it and fixing the abuses.