
20,000 UC Berkeley Lectures Made Illegal, So We Irrevocably Mirrored Them - liamcardenas
https://lbry.io/news/20000-illegal-college-lectures-rescued
======
bdhess
Previous HN thread on this topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761)

~~~
liamcardenas
This is not a dupe, the point of this article is that they have mirrored all
of the content.

~~~
Myrmornis
Looks like a great project. Have they actually got them all available already,
or are they promising to do so? It's entirely possible I'm not using it
correctly.

    
    
      $ ~/Downloads/lbrynet-daemon &
      $ curl 'http://localhost:5279/lbryapi' --data '{"method":"get","params":{"name":"ucberkeley"}}'
    
      $ cat ~/Downloads/ucberkeley_index.txt
      lbry://ucberkeley-3ACwBm9Id7A                   ----            Electrical Engineering 123 - 2015-04-22: Node-Pore Sensing
      lbry://ucberkeley-6CQk6d5P5iY                   ----            Electrical Engineering 123 - 2015-04-24:  How signal processing changes optical imaging
      lbry://ucberkeley-vwNtTHED6s8                   ----            Computer Science 186 - 2015-05-07
      lbry://ucberkeley-lEESG9Bquok                   ----            Biology 1B - 2015-05-08
      lbry://ucberkeley-WtrLpRZv8qg                   ----            Computer Science 10 - 2015-04-27
      lbry://ucberkeley-VVxvj3irxPw                   ----            Physics 8B - 2015-05-08
      lbry://ucberkeley-ZV6AvcJH9kE                   ----            Computer Science 10 - 2015-05-06: No audio
      lbry://ucberkeley-PZqVwVDgWb4                   ----            Environ Sci, Policy, and Management C11 - 2015-05-07
      lbry://ucberkeley-6inUnzXx7k4                   ----            Computer Science 170 - 2015-05-07
      lbry://ucberkeley-QLFw93d9Igk                   ----            Public Health 241 - 2015-05-06

~~~
abeyer
from tfa: "The full catalog is over 4 TB and will be synced over the next
several days."

------
bmcusick
While I understand wanting to make things available to the deaf, making them
unavailable to everyone else is nuts. It's crazy that the law put UC Berkeley
in the position of having to choose between bearing the expense of close-
captioning all these videos, and taking them down.

How is society improved by taking them down?

~~~
idiot_stick
> _How is society improved by taking them down?_

First of all, I agree with you. I think most others do as well.

The problem is, we can look at a case like this and say, "Obviously we
shouldn't lose access to this." Then there's a next time, and a next time, and
a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational
disadvantage to those who _can_ hear. That's why these laws exist.

So, everyone should take a step back and figure out a reasonable solution. I
hope that's the reason for the judgment.

~~~
naasking
> Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually
> the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can
> hear. That's why these laws exist.

While I can sympathize, I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire
society just to not disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem
to think. I agree that a better solution would be ideal though.

Perhaps they should just fund a machine learning program for closed
captioning, instead of punishing people who are advancing social interests.

~~~
lohi
"I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire society just to not
disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem to think."

I think that's a hard argument to make when Encarta 95 was more advanced than
this. I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation
that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the
presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly the
future. And with all the information available these days the standard should
really be higher.

~~~
naasking
> I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation
> that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the
> presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly
> the future.

Are you so sure that the learning style you seem to prefer is really ideal for
all people? Because you sound really sure, but I'm not sure how that could be.

~~~
lohi
I have no idea what you are talking about. Exposing the data, that is already
there, is what gives people the choice how to learn. If you just have a blob
of video there's no practical way to e.g. search for something.

~~~
naasking
You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has
endured for quite some time. This video format provides a certain kind of
structure that may be suited to some, but not to others. For those others
there are alternatives.

~~~
lohi
"You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has
endured for quite some time."

There weren't really an alternative, so whether the format has endured or not
isn't really relevant. Many other schools are doing this differently. At this
point your statement about "holding back the progress of an entire society"
seems rather hollow. I can't convince you data exposing data is more useful,
but I also shouldn't have to. It's one of the fundamentals of computer systems
if not the Internet.

------
peterkelly
They first suggested that they were considering removing the videos back in
September last year:

[http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-
co...](http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-
content-and-accessibility/)

It would not surprise me one bit if the advanced notice of the takedown was
made precisely because they knew someone would take it upon themselves to
archive the content and make it available elsewhere :)

~~~
coverband
I think a good option at that time would have been starting a campaign to get
volunteers that would put in the transcription effort. Maybe this is still
possible.

------
HarryHirsch
Between Berkeley and Gallaudet and the Libertarian market worshippers I think
we are being played. Everyone wins, getting exposure for their enragement,
whereas every other course, from MIT, Stanford, Yale &c just had subtitles.

~~~
rfrey
Is it possible the difference is Ivy League (with larger more discretionary
budgets) vs. public university? Do the same rules even apply to the private
institutions?

~~~
neltnerb
There have to be speech to text applications targeted at automatic
captioning... they don't need 100% accuracy to help a lot of people, just
block curse words.

Was the court conclusion so onerous that autocaptioning wouldn't meet the
requirements unless they actually paid a proofreader to check over everything
by hand? This seems like software that would cost $100 at most.

~~~
takluyver
Last time I saw Youtube's automatic subtitling, it was rubbish, and if Google
hasn't got this solved, I doubt anyone has. Lectures are also likely to
include some less common, discipline specific words, and to be hard to follow
if the transcription doesn't record those accurately. So I can totally imagine
that manual subtitling is necessary to meet the required standard.

------
chajath
Taking those videos off YT will make things worse in terms of the inequality
of deaf people. YT at least has an ability to automatically generate subtitle.
It is not perfect, for sure, but is still better than nothing

~~~
st3v3r
No, YT's automatic captioning is absolute trash. It most definitely is worse
than nothing.

~~~
Myrmornis
Hi, this statement is objectively, entirely, incorrect. I assume you are
talking about English. I have used YouTube's subtitles on Berkeley's lectures,
and they are almost entirely correct; the errors that are present do not
impede understanding. E.g. in a math lecture if a lecturer sees x with a
subscript zero, and they say "x naught", YouTube captions might say "x not".

------
ncr100
The legal aspect smells like a law about fixing inequality. The inequality of
>deaf people< not being able to consume this publicly funded material. Seems
appropriate to me given the ADA.

[https://www.ada.gov/ada_intro.htm](https://www.ada.gov/ada_intro.htm)

> "...civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination and guarantees
> that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else
> to participate in the mainstream of American life -- to enjoy employment
> opportunities..."

In the mean-time could these folks simply repost the catalog to YT?

~~~
mikeash
Requiring publicly funded materials to be accessible seems like a good thing.
But there must be better ways to enforce it than taking down existing material
that doesn't qualify. Not that I can immediately come up with one.

~~~
rhino369
Change the law such that removing/ceasing/etc doesn't cure the breach of the
ADA. That way Berkley has to provide closed captioned videos even if they take
them down. That would remove any incentive to take them down.

You'd probably have to include some exceptions for when the expense is too
great (but I'm fairly sure the ADA only requires accommodations that are
reasonable).

------
artursapek
Isn't this like demolishing a building because it's impractical to add a
wheelchair ramp to the entrance?

~~~
SilasX
The best analogy would be, a grocery store tries to give away unsold (safe)
meat at the end of the day, and is blocked by a law that says, if you give
away meat, you have to give an equal quantity of tofu. [1]

So, it ends the giveaway. Then, volunteers steal the meat (with the store's
tacit permission) and give it away for free, and this is ruled as legal.

Then we get lectured that this is a good result "because you guys need to
learn the importance of accommodating vegetarians".

You object and say, "But ... this is the same as what the store was doing
before, it's just that the meat is harder to find but every bit as useless to
vegetarians" and you only get blank stares and lectures about "It's just that
some of us care about those who can't eat meat, and aren't mindlessly obsessed
with profits and cost-saving. The grocery store already makes a ton of profit
anyway".

[1] Let's assume there's also a law, that the store complies with, that says
"any store selling meat must also have tofu available for sale".

~~~
s0rce
I'm not sure this is the best analogy. They aren't giving away some unsold
that they no longer need, they are distributing copies. I think a more apt
comparison would be a if I library was lending books then they were told they
couldn't lend the books without having audio books to accompany all the paper
books. Without adequate funding to do this they left all the books unguarded
and waited for someone to come and photocopy all the books and distribute them
without audio books.

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kefka
Well.. This lbry, from what I gather from their "Quickstart", is a IPFS-like
clone, with a hacked on blockchain cryptocurrency that you pay them to access
certain content or hold names (or whatnot).

And it's being run as a business, so expect the usual monetization schemes and
tricks. But yeah, lbry.io seems to be a waste of time.

[https://lbry.io/quickstart/all](https://lbry.io/quickstart/all)

~~~
the_greyd
Why do you say that? What do you think would be a better solution for
decentralized content distribution?

~~~
kefka
Primarily because it's a semi-proprietary protocol, with "monetization
scheme", and backed by a single org. And, also, there's not much interest...
If there was, then they'd dog-food and have the UI inside the protocol (like
IPFS's as well).

IPFS does one thing, and does it well. And it's a protocol absent of any sort
of Ethereum-like money grabbing. Not everything needs a blockchain.

------
make3
I feel like if Berkeley had made a call to the public to ask people to close
caption these for free, people would have lined up to do it. I wonder what the
legal requirements were for the CC

~~~
takluyver
People would have lined up to do it at the start, but would the enthusiasm
last long enough to go through thousands of hours of video? Are they accurate
enough? And how do you protect it against trolls deliberately doing it wrong?
It's easy to catch the kid typing in four letter words, but if serious trolls
put a bit of effort in, they can probably dodge most automated filters.

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dogma1138
Http isn't good enough anymore?

~~~
sqeaky
At first I thought this was a comment on httpS.

After reading, I am wondering what the hell lbry:// is, why not just serve the
videos over https with html 5 like tons of other sites are doing?

Or at least explain what lbry is.

~~~
geoffmcc
> why not just serve the videos over https with html 5 like tons of other
> sites are doing?

Because then they are being provided by one entity.

 _The LBRY protocol provides a completely decentralized network for
discovering, distributing, and publishing all types of content and
information, from books to movies._

~~~
sqeaky
The page doesn't really make that clear. It just starts talking about another
protocol I had never heard of before, when I was expecting videos of lessons.

It is not that it can't be understood, they just didn't set themselves up to
be easily understood. It's seems like they want to plug their protocol first
and share the lessons as a side effect.

------
Papirola
Taking the quality out of equality

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guelo
LBRY appears to be some kind of p2p/youtube/blockchain custom protocol.

I guess this is a good marketing opportunity.

~~~
greenhatman
The real story here is the LRBY protocol. I don't know why everyone is talking
about the ethics of the videos being removed from YouTube. Or is LRBY old news
and I'm just out of the loop?

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throwaway29901
Do we also not have an obligation to dumb down these lectures to make them
more understandable for people with lower IQ? Where do we draw a line as a
society on who to help and who not to? I'm genuinely curious about this issue
and have been and I'm not trying to insult anyone. It's certainly not the
person's fault that they got a lower IQ just as much it isn't the deaf
person's fault for being deaf. Why do we treat certain disabilities
differently and not pay attention to a whole slew of other disadvantages that
people might be suffering from? Are we therefore not misguided in trying to
correct these issues when we know we're not eliminating most of them and
making matters slightly worse for everyone else?

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throwaway29901
Do we also not have an obligation to dumb down these lectures to make them
more understandable for people with lower IQ? Where do we draw a line as a
society on who to help and who not to? I'm genuinely curious about this issue
and have been and I'm not trying to insult anyone.

It's certainly not the person's fault that they got a lower IQ just as much it
isn't the deaf person's fault for being deaf.

Why do we treat certain disabilities differently and not pay attention to
whole slew of other disadvantages that people might be suffering from?

Are we therefore not misguided in trying to correct these issues when we know
we're not eliminating most of them and making matters slightly worse for
everyone else?

------
rdtsc
> Berkeley removed the videos because of a lawsuit brought by two students
> from another university under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Wait, what happened? How does removing the videos help Americans with
Disabilities?

~~~
x1798DE
They weren't ordered to remove it, they were ordered to caption it if it's
provided at all. They decided it's not worth it to provide it to everyone for
free if they have to caption all their videos, so they are making it available
to students only (presumably because they have compliant services available to
students like interpreters for people going to the class in person).

~~~
rdtsc
Thank you for explaining. That makes sense.

Though ordering them to "caption them if they are provided at all" and then
ending with them being removed was not a surprising side-effect. I wonder if
the students who filed the suit or the judge should have expected that
outcome.

Now on the other side UCB is not exactly a poor cash strapped outfit so yes
they could have captioned them if they wanted.

~~~
JCzynski
Actually, UCB is running multi-million-dollar deficits, they're pretty cash
strapped already.

~~~
rdtsc
Ah interesting. I didn't expect that. But well if that's the case then I take
it back. Their decision is rather rational then.

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popol1991
Didn't youtube have an auto subtitle supported by speech recognition?

~~~
garysieling
It does, but the quality is fairly poor

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therealmarv
Why not mirror on YT itself by a third party, maybe outside of the USA and
keeping the license?

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garysieling
These don't seem to have been removed from the Berkeley youtube page yet

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fakerobotgamer
how much is tuition at uc berkely again? why was hiring students to caption
the videos not an option?

~~~
politician
You can't hire students to install an ADA-compliant wheelchair ramp. This is
probably the same thing in the eyes of the law.

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fs111
can we get a torrent please?

~~~
greenhatman
It's many many terabytes. Too big for torrents for normal people with normal
sized hard drives.

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tombert
I'm a bit confused...what actually happened at Berkeley that warranted this?

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0xFFC
You are my hero!

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st3v3r
They weren't made illegal. The lectures were inaccessible to deaf people.
Given that they were created with public funds, that's not acceptable. Berkley
decided to throw them away rather than remedy this, in a rather short sighted
move reminiscent of cutting off one's nose to spite their face.

To those that are preserving/mirroring these lectures, I really hope you have
plans to make them accessible to all, not just the hearing enabled.

~~~
NathanKP
One thing I don't understand, maybe because I'm hearing, but how is the UC
Berkeley YouTube not accessible to deaf people? Doesn't YouTube have a CC
feature designed to make videos accessible for the hearing impaired or just so
hearing people can watch them with the sound off?

Is the suit because the lectures don't have a sign language translation for
every single lecture?

~~~
DanBC
It's not just deaf people. It's people with hearing impairment, or with visual
impairment, or with manual disability. The complainants in this case were
people with hearing impairment, but the DoJ expanded the scope.

You're right that YT can auto-caption some video. The DoJ looked at the
accuracy of a selection of video, and found it was rather low. That
inaccuracy, coupled with the lack of reasonable adjustments for people with
visual impairment or manual disability means that YTs auto-captioning isn't
enough to make a video accessible.

~~~
NathanKP
Okay that makes sense, sounds like someone at UC Berkley took a risk thinking
that auto captioning would be enough but it isn't good enough yet.

I hope the auto captions improve over time. I feel like Facebook auto captions
are already really, really good. If YouTube can reach that level of auto
captioning it would benefit a lot of people.

