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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.
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.
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03...
Maybe there's an opportunity for an app which crowd sources the transcription of videos without closed captioning? Maybe get the students at Gallaudet University to pitch in (sorry, I couldn't resist).
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
And for anyone who wonders what the hell "LBRY" is:
What’s with the name LBRY?
The very first question of newcomers is often, “How do you pronounce it?” Answer: library.
“Is it an acronym?” No.
“Then why confuse people with the all-caps and no vowels?”
First and foremost, LBRY is an internet protocol, just like HTTP. Content on LBRY is served to users via “LBRY names,” which look like this: lbry://itsawonderfullife. Very similar to the URL you type into your internet browser. LBRY is not just our branded name, but the character string we’ve chosen to lead our URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier).
It also serves as a truncated form of “library,” which reflects our mission: every film, song, book, and app ever made – available anywhere. Our vision for LBRY is to create a massive media repository for the 21st century that is built on a decentralized network controlled by its users. LBRY is to a traditional library what Amazon is to a department store.
Is it an odd name? Perhaps. But we would kindly point to the success of brands like Hulu, Yahoo!, Etsy, Skype, Tumblr, and Zillow. In the end, a good company with a strong user base will be remembered regardless of its name. And a company with a brand as straightforward as Pets.com can still fail.
LBRY is working well as a brand so far. SEO is a top consideration for startup branding, and LBRY already dominates the search results for our brand name.
So apparently it's a protocol like torrents or something?
So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them
And how is this "irrevocable"? Somebody needs to do a lot more explaining about this LBRY thing instead of just namedropping it and expecting people to know what they're talking about.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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.
I think part of the problem is the model under which these videos have been released.
Here at the University of Washington, if a registered student needs special accommodation to access materials for a particular (traditional) course, the university pays the cost for that - transcription, closed captioning, whatever. I would imagine Berkeley does the same, for traditional courses. But these videos were released under a program which doesn't seem to have any sort of underlying funding support.
#DeleteChrome
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 is a logical fallacy to generalize from this isolated case and imply that all regulations are bad. Regulations that protect the environment are provably good and are a cost to a corporation, tough shit for the corporation. The other option is that the corporation gets to destroy the environment freely by "externalizing" the costs which really means destroying the health of millions. It is clear that many more benefit than pay by protecting the environment preferentially. The main problem with environmental regulations is that there aren't enough of them and not aggressively enough enforced.
I do think there is some Fed overreach in controlling for example "illicit" drugs, who the fuck is the Federal Gov't to tell me what I can and can't put in my body. Same argument regarding raw milk, vaccines, etc. The Gov't has no business interfering in what I do with my body.
If you want to argue health care, lets have single payer universal health care with aggressively negotiated pricing on medications and drugs. Or, lets get rid of all monopolies on medication; no drug patents, no medical licensing, no restrictions on trade. In other words, lets have us a free market.
Only I can judge you.
They couldn't have utilized automatic text-to-speech software? I imagine a University like Berkeley could have set its CS department on the problem and in the process brought in all kinds of funding.
Only I can judge you.
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.
And then you find out that the ADA was signed into law by a Republican President.....
The university had two choices - spend all kinds of money to make them available meeting the requirements of the ADA, or take them down.
No, they had a very clear third choice - tell the Feds to go fuck themselves and sue the Department for First Amendment violations.
UC and Berkeley in particular used to care about civil liberties. But some shithead on MSNBC might have cried, right?
I am guessing that the real reason is that Trump would have sided with UC and that would be a "worse" outcome than taking down the videos.
Kudos to LBRY.io for mirroring.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It is a logical fallacy to generalize from this isolated case and imply that all regulations are bad.
No, the logical fallacy here is you deciding that if someone says a regulation is bad, that they are saying all regulations are bad.
The fact of the matter is that if you cant defend a regulation without resorting to this BULLSHIT fallacy, then its almost always a bad regulation.
"His name was James Damore."
How is this not a free speech issue? Doesn't UC Berkeley have a 1st amendment right to distribute creative content -- especially free content -- in whatever format it wants with or without accommodations?
Can a photograph or painting be banned if it does not have a descriptive text to accommodate the blind? What if the artist's point was to have something that was visual only? What if the artwork were in fact a political statement about the absurdity of laws like the ADA resulting in censorship and including the descriptive text would defeat the purpose of the artwork?
We're not talking about a physical wheelchair ramp or an ATM that is too high (*); we're talking about creative content. So why isn't it protected?
*At my workplace the ATM was removed because it was too high for wheelchair access and didn't have headphone-jack capability. Fixing it to comply with ADA was cost prohibitive to the credit union that owned the ATM. So instead of leaving a non-disabled-accessible ATM they took away the ATM from everyone.
So apparently it's a protocol like torrents or something?
So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them
And how is this "irrevocable"? Somebody needs to do a lot more explaining about this LBRY thing instead of just namedropping it and expecting people to know what they're talking about.
It's like a blockchain for media, so you cannot do a "takedown" on content that is uploaded with that parameter set without destroying the whole system. The idea is to make a censorship-resistant media platform for the Internet.
It's a good project but yeah the submitter should have done some editing. I went to a development demo last year at NH Liberty Forum so I'm familiar with it but it's definitely not a household name yet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
At the local municipal park, there is a baseball diamond that has been there for about 50 years for kids to play at.
Some gun in a wheel chair all of the sudden sued the city because it isn't ADA compliant for some reason. I checked out the place and it's right off of the road, level ground and has a sidewalk going to the bleachers. I'm not sure what he's bitching about. The city's solution is to tear down the baseball field.
In the same city, (Lincoln, California) there is a terracotta factory that's been there since the late 1800's. Some ADA dweeb sued the company so it's not accessible to anyone for a tour anymore.
In two cases, single people have eliminated access by thousands of people simply because they claim the places aren't ADA compliant. If I were in a wheel chair, I could certainly be able to access both places but they technically don't meet ADA standards.
We also have a Sacramento attorney that likes to visit places in remote areas of the county and threaten to sue them for ADA violations. Oh,, he will drop the lawsuit if they pay him "damages" and he'll go away. Ironically, two of his employees are now suing him for sexual harassment.
People like this ruin good places for thousands of people. Many of the ones I've seen out here are extorting money.
It's a good idea gone bad.
The summary is incorrect, the lawsuit was brought on by two employees of Gallaudet university, not two students. The employees are Glenn Lockhart, the director of public relations and communications and Stacy Nowak who is part of "Arts, Communications & Theater".
You can find the relavant information on the previous post to slashdot, which includes links to the referenced material.
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.
The ADA has a long, long history of abuse. In fact, the are many documented cases of where somebody sues a business for not being handicap accessible, and it has turned out that the person suing never even set foot in the establishment to find out. Nonetheless, the businesses often settle because it's cheaper to do that than it is just to pay a lawyer's retainer fee.
The was one interesting case where somebody sued Clint Eastwood over some restaurant for ADA violations. He countersued and won, but it was still less than what he paid his lawyers. He just did it over the principle of the thing, but most business owners don't have as much money to throw away as he does.
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.
Haha! Joke's on you, they've always been black and white!
I'd mod you insightful if /. ever gave me mod points.
Berkeley was once the proud home of free speech, really a founder in the "free speech on campus" movement in the US. Now they stage violent riots to shut down on-campus speakers who may say something they disagree with. WTF happened, Berkeley?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, they have to make reasonable accommodations to their students. Seems a bit of a stretch to say that they have the same obligation to non-students as to students.
The US Department of Justice would be the one disagreeing with you on this.
The USDOJ apparently decided in favor of Stacy Nowak (a professor at Gallaudet University) who "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."
Including to "6. Pay compensatory damages to aggrieved individuals for injuries caused by UC Berkeley’s failure to comply with title II."
Berkeley *already* makes reasonable accommodations for their tuition-paying students by offering to caption any videos for them. The DOJ decided that if they make the material available to anyone, they must do this for anyone. As a result, they no longer make the videos available to non-students.
This is part of the reason why we can't have nice things...
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.
Oh fuck off with your ridiculous 'anything I dissgree with must be leftist' bullshit. The ADA act was written by the Republicans, and signed into law by one George H.W. Bush. How is that for 'leftist', huh?
If I'm not mistaken the issue here is that the University of California is covered under the rules for government agencies, which are stricter than the rules for a private entity. The rules for private entities include a "balancing test" which weighs the costs and resources that entity has. There is no slack for government-run entities.
Arguably there should be a "public good" balancing test for corner cases like this, but the clear intent is that a public school like a high school must provide services like note taking and interpreters to profoundly deaf students -- if they have them. UofC can still offer these videos on campus because it can provide those services to students on campus, but it obviously can't provide them for every deaf or hard-of-hearing person on the Internet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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)
You use "left" and "right" in some idiotic way that nobody but your stupid fucking subgroup understands. The US has largely trended more authoritarian, and has been moving largely towards deregulation and propping up the already wealthy (occasionally through regulations intended to strangle potential competition). That would generally be considered moving to the economic right.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
The law as written allows third parties to sue and collect damage or settle out of court, even if no fixes are ever made to accomodate someone with disabilities. It's a quirk on the ADA. The out of court settlements are often less than the cost to hire lawyers and defend the lawsuit.
Compare to something like the EPA. I cannot sue my neighbor for having smelly dog waste in his backyard, instead the government has to do this and they're not going to bother with such an expensive process for this, they don't have the time or resources. Even if lucky they'd have an inspector have a look and say "this is not a problem and does not violate any regulations, stop wasting my time you stupid slashdot poster!" With ADA it's different. I can go and find a lawyer to sue, or more likely a lawyer will approach me and offer to split some money with me if I sue my neighbor, or even more likely than that they'll get a plaintiff who's never seen my neighbor or the yard or who doesn't even live in the area act as a plaintiff.
Even Saul Goodman thinks these lawyers are sleazebags.
But instead, let's act like a spoiled-entitled-child with the immature "If I can't have it, no one can".
I don't think that's what happened at all here.
These are videos that are made by Berkeley, for Berkeley's own purposes. Someone got the idea to upload them to YouTube and make them available to the world for free, because the cost to doing that is very close to zero. Very likely one university employee came up with the idea and spends a few minutes per day uploading whatever new lectures are in the library... or maybe even automated it so that no human spends any time on it.
What you're talking about, even if it is possible to get some crowdfunding, will require orders of magnitude more effort and expenditure by the university, isn't really in their mission, and definitely isn't in their budget. And it's entirely possible that they're even looking into what they could do... but until they have a system in place, *and* have verified that whatever approach they take satisfies the requirements of the law and won't leave them with more legal bills, the only thing they reasonably can do is take them all down.
There's no reason to assume that they're acting out of spite here.
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