
Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling - ca98am79
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide
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sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856)

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velodrome
The complaint was put forward by _two employees of Gallaudet University_ \-
not students.

Gallaudet University is a private university for the deaf. I would like to
point out that their videos are not friendly to those with visual impairments
and they should have their videos removed for the same reason UC Berkeley has
to remove theirs. Here are a few such examples:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffqU3mT4k1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffqU3mT4k1o)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWdF7G1SrzA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWdF7G1SrzA)

~~~
brothercolor
There have been debates among those in the Deaf community on how best to make
their videos accessible. Many in the Deaf community routinely add image
descriptions and other kinds of captioning/access to their videos and images,
usually on Facebook or other social media.

I have yet to see the greater hearing community routinely engage in this kind
of universal thinking in access; thinking about people in terms of
capabilities and designing their messages with as many capabilities in mind as
possible given the technology at hand.

An quote from the article can be rewritten:

"Berkeley had two choices: spend a fortune adding closed captioning to the
videos, or remove them from public view. Cost-conscious administrators chose
the latter option."

or...

"Berkeley had two main choices: spend money and/or spend time making their
content accessible to everyone, or backtrack on their commitment by removing
from public view. Privileged administrators (who likely do not need the
benefit given by making this content accessible) chose to hide the content
rather than be responsible stewards for knowledge."

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ruleabidinguser
This zealotry needs to stop.

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cm2187
I have seen the same thing happening in construction. An old building was
being refurbished into some social housing units, and this building had a lot
of storage space in the basement. But because the lift couldn't reach the
basement, the contractors were forced to build a brick wall to block access to
the basement otherwise it would violate disabled access laws. So no one can
benefit from the storage space...

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guelo
This makes no sense. The courses are up on youtube with closed captioning.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley](https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley)

I hope someone is downloading these all and putting up a torrent.

~~~
Cyphase
There are torrents, and they're also up on archive.org.

[https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22UC+Berkele...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22UC+Berkeley%22)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5xqnc6/uc_berk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5xqnc6/uc_berkeley_courses_time_to_seed/)

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jacquesm
So to go against the grain: this is a bad thing. Those videos not being
accessible to the deaf is unfortunate. What is even more unfortunate is that
those videos are now _also_ no longer available to lots of people who would
never in a lifetime stand a chance of attending Berkeley, many of them outside
of the reach of that particular law.

I'm all for accessibility but this 'reset' causes a lot of good content to
disappear for reasons that are suspiciously close to spite, and spite that has
_far_ wider ranging consequences than for those that have access to
alternatives.

A blind person in the USA has more options available to them than almost _any_
person somewhere in the developing world and those were the biggest
beneficiaries of these videos. Principles are great, looking beyond your own
interest is even greater.

~~~
maxerickson
You aren't going against the grain.

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tudorw
If you muzzle accessibility laws then there will be little to no compliance,
organisations and companies do not do these things by choice, that is the
evidence of history, laws have been implemented to address this, true, though
there is little legal support for those who need assistance to defend what
little rights they have gained, it's commercial interests in the main that
hinder the implementation of accessibility. Organisations using excuses like
this are doing little to address the underlying issues, they are more likely
driven by a desire not to pay legal fees and would rather err in favour of
their finances.

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digikata
Hmm, maybe some big company with a great speech to text capability could offer
to process the videos to add captioning info ...

~~~
crgt
We volunteered. Waiting to hear back.

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malloryerik
This is so ridiculous. There are fantastic courses here.

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afinlayson
This is easy to solve, have the public add closed caption. As volunteers add
closed caption to them they become publicly available.

~~~
loco5niner
Great idea. A wikipedia or similar for closed captioning.

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draw_down
Seems like a better course of action would have been to make the videos
accessible rather than force them down.

~~~
haswell
In a perfect world where captioning 20,000 videos was an easy and free task,
sure. But since this is not that world, it's an unfortunate and inevitable
result.

~~~
jacquesm
This is that world. Lots of subtitles are added to all kinds of content for
$0. All you need to do is provide the means.

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vorotato
I'm sure if they asked the american public, or their students, or youtube, or
anyone if they were willing to help transcribe educational videos they would
have gotten the help they needed. It sounds more like a petty way for
administrators to get back at people who just wanted to be treated equitably.

~~~
nyolfen
perhaps those people shouldn't have jumped to bringing a lawsuit, then

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skywhopper
Assuming that Reason.com presented the facts of this case fairly (a rather
generous assumption), rather than framing it as the DOJ forcing Berkeley to
take the videos down, I think the fairer way is to say that Berkeley is
refusing to make the videos accessible to the hearing impaired. Captioning the
videos would be hugely beneficial to all users of the videos, not just those
with hearing problems. I am skeptical that the DOJ would not accept a good-
faith active project to caption the videos to allow them to stay online.

But the facts as presented don't make much sense anyway. I'm not sure I
understand how withdrawing access to just Berkeley students and professors
changes the ADA implications. Curious if anyone knows something about this.

Edit, here's the actual statement from Berkeley:
[http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-
capture/](http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-capture/)

    
    
        we have determined that instead of focusing on
        legacy content that is 3-10 years old, much of
        which sees very limited use, we will work to
        create new public content that includes accessible
        features.... moving our content behind
        authentication allows us to better protect
        instructor intellectual property from “pirates”
        who have reused content for personal profit
        without consent.
    

Ah, so this is actually just an opportunity to reset some decisions made 10
years ago about how open they wanted to be with their content.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Berkeley students have accessibility accomodations for each class.

I do think understand why all of the US should expect such accomodations.
That's not a feasible thing for most universities to do (caption historical
catalogue of videos).

~~~
skywhopper
The goal of the ADA is to stop the neverending "well this just affects a few
people" and "it's too expensive" arguments against providing equal access. If
there's no enforcement mechanism, then there's no incentive for Berkeley to
ever provide captioning for these videos. They provide it for their students
only because the ADA has strong enforcement powers like this. In the dream of
edX's original mission--to provide Berkeley-quality education to everyone,
free of charge--failure to caption those videos actually does represent
discrimination against the hearing-impaired. So I think this is entirely
reasonable.

