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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.
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 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.
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)
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.
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.
I think what is "the right thing to do" is debatable. Maybe instead of making music, Beyonce should first be working on ensuring that medical breakthroughs cure deafness so *everyone* can enjoy her music, and not just those who can hear. If we made listening to music contingent on deafness being cured, there would be a lot more pressure to have it cured. Until we do that, there will never be the same amount of leverage to cure deafness in general.
I don't think using tax money to help increase for disabled people is unreasonable. I think preventing access to education for everyone until everyone can have equal access is unreasonable. Yes you get leverage from this, but I don't think this leverage is worth the cost it imposes.
> 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.
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!