
UC Berkeley to remove public legacy libraries - wazanator
http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-capture/
======
ucaetano
Previous discussion:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761)

~~~
WalterGR
And 14 hours ago:

UCBerkeley Will Delete Online Content (insidehighered.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13803564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13803564)

72 points | 77 comments

------
jedberg
Pretty sure this is almost entirely due to the fact that the videos must
contain closed captioning and other accessibility options, which are too
expensive to add.

It's a tough spot to be in. On the one hand, it's great to make all the
content accessible to handicapped folks, but on the other hand, is society
better off not having this material at all or having it without accessibility?

~~~
prawn
How do you judge which content then is released uncaptioned because it was
impossibly expensive, and which because the creator prefers to keep their
money? How many venues or historical buildings would have wheelchair ramps and
lifts if they didn't have to or because it came down only to whether they
could justify the cost?

~~~
strken
The obvious answer is that you grandfather in existing content, and only
require accessibility for content created after a certain date. That way,
actual courses are accessible, and the roughly 7 billion human beings who
don't go to Berkeley can still access the old content.

~~~
x0x0
The ADA was passed in 1990. What's Berkeley's excuse here.

~~~
Kadin
The content only exists because it's cheap to put online. If you require that
someone transcribe it for closed captioning, it is like putting a tax on video
uploads. They just won't be uploaded.

Barring some public funding to make it possible for institutions to caption
videos, which would be the reasonable solution, the demand for captioning
vastly raises the barriers towards putting content online.

~~~
forgottenpass
_The content only exists because it 's cheap to put online. If you require
that someone transcribe it for closed captioning, it is like putting a tax on
video uploads. They just won't be uploaded._

Because it's prohibitively expensive, or because they can't be arsed?

I used to assume the prohibitively expensive angle, but DEF CON has had live
closed captioning for 3 or 4 years now, and is done so the recorded material
can be used in classrooms with accessibility requirements. If DT can afford
it, I have little regard for people who pretend to be committed to educating
the masses and still don't bother.

~~~
mirashii
DEFCON also has a budget of millions of dollars to host a 4 day event, as well
as a very loyal and dedicated team of volunteers. What value is there in
comparing such a vastly different organization?

~~~
forgottenpass
...at $240 a head. That's what sticks out to me. If anyone is entitled to cut
this corner on cost, certainly they are.

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xt00
I remember reading about people years ago who went around suing various
restaurants and businesses because they were not ADA compliant (ramps and a
handicapped parking spot type of thing). So they would sue them and show they
had standing (due to some disability they had) and most of the companies would
make the modification and settle out of court for like 10-20k. Rinse and
repeat. So I imagine that the UC system along with other online course
providers realized that they were likely to get sued based upon the ADA
violation. My thinking is that somebody should push for having a law that
states something like this: "for content created for the public good such as
educational material that is provided in an archival form without cost shall
not be required to be ADA compliant".. So basically if you are willing to give
the content away for free, then you should not be required to annotate it. If
you want to charge for it, then you need to comply with the law.

~~~
xenadu02
FYI: the lawyer responsible for most of the ADA lawsuits is a scam artist (in
my opinion). He was involved with Prenda law and disbarred for his conduct in
those cases.

[http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/prenda_law_attorney_w...](http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/prenda_law_attorney_who_switched_to_ada_suits_is_suspended_says_hell_contin/)

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echaozh
Nowadays, people talk about _possible_ discrimination like it's _real_
discrimination and want it be punished. This should not be right. Possible
wrongdoing is not real wrongdoing, and you cannot have people punished for it,
and should not pass laws to prevent it.

I'm not American so I don't know a lot. With what I've heard, political
correctness is more about possible discrimination.

There is an old Chinese story. A Chinese emperor once demanded all brewing
tools to be confiscated because he didn't want people to drink when there was
an ongoing war. One day when he was walking with one of his advisers, the
adviser asked him to arrest a man as a rapist. "How do you know, it's a total
stranger," the emperor asked. "He got the tools to rape," answered the
adviser. The emperor laughed and revoked the absurd rule.

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4WIW
Here is an amazing opportunity for somebody "independently wealthy" to make a
real difference: set up a fund that pays for close-captioning of any free
content coming out of Berkeley.

~~~
0xFFC
Why some body rich? Why not start NGO like website for this? each of us,would
contribute a little bit 1$. And that site would have investment to recurit
people for subtitling.

Is this idea feasible?

P.s. Your idea completely makes sense. I wish google instead of wasting money
in many different ways(for example starting cs education site , which of
course will be not even close to what Berkeley offers) would do this. Anyone
would do this ,would become my here, literally.

~~~
4WIW
By all means, if crowdsourcing can work in this case, that would be a great
positive example of community taking responsibility.

------
alphapapa
The letter from the DoJ is quite threatening, and it demands (literally on the
bottom line) that UCB pay restitution to the "aggrieved" (I suppose this
refers to the two individuals specifically named as complainants?). No amount
is specified, but it seems like a form of extortion: 1) complain to the DoJ
about something on the Internet freely available, 2) get a check in the mail
(at the expense of California taxpayers, on the other side of the country), 3)
profit?

However, it also states this:

> UC Berkeley is not, however, required to take any action that it can
> demonstrate would result in a fundamental alteration in the nature of its
> service, program or activity or in undue financial and administrative
> burdens.

Given the obviously prohibitive costs of transcribing all of these freely
shared lectures (including describing all charts, graphs, tables, and other
visual aids), it seems clear that UCB should not be required to transcribe all
of the videos, nor remove them from public access. This is a travesty of
justice.

~~~
icebraining
_No amount is specified, but it seems like a form of extortion_

It's a result of California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which states that
private plaintiffs can receive monetary damages for discrimination. Most
states don't have this provision, IIRC.

It does serve as a way to get the public to do the work for the State, rather
than having to provide for ADA inspectors and such.

~~~
alphapapa
Are you sure? The letter was from the USDoJ, so shouldn't they only be
concerned for federal law? They surely don't spend time and money enforcing
state laws. (I don't feel like combing through it a second time to be
absolutely sure that CA law wasn't mentioned.)

~~~
icebraining
Nope, not sure, sorry.

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schrodera
Seems to be about time to apply youtube-dl and create a torrent of the result.

~~~
strken
If the archive was available under an appropriate license[0] then it'd be
trivial to scrape the site and stick the files on s3. It's even got a
bittorrent tracker built in.

I suppose there's no chance of getting it relicensed?

[0] for example, [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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smnrchrds
How much does it cost to generate compliant closed-captions, e.g. per hour of
video? Every article I see on this issue talk about how unaffordably expensive
it would be, but no one provides a number to put things in perspective.

~~~
secabeen
The ballpark I've heard is $1/minute. Auto-generated captions were considered
not good enough by the courts.

~~~
mulmen
This seems like a troubling precedent. It is entirely possible that the
judgement was correct at the time but what about as technology advances? Are
there other examples of prescriptive judgements like this which prevent new
technology from being applied?

~~~
DanBC
There's nothing preventing new technology from being applied.

In this specific case the court looked at the results of the technology and
found a significant number of errors.

New technology that does't have that many errors is probably fine.

~~~
mulmen
Well then I suppose that's the question. Did the court specifically say that
software cannot be used or did the court provide a minimum standard of quality
that can be applied to any method?

~~~
DanBC
[https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...](https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08-30-UC-Berkeley-LOF.pdf)

> The Department found that of the 543 videos it could identify on the YouTube
> channel, 75 had manually generated closed captions. Of the remainder, many
> had automatic captioning generated by YouTube’s speech recognition
> technology. In March 2015, the Department selected 30 videos – 15 with
> manually generated closed captions, 15 without – for review. The 6 lectures
> were selected across a sample of subjects and based on popularity. Examples
> of barriers to access on UC Berkeley YouTube channel content included the
> following:

> 1\. Automatically generated captions were inaccurate and incomplete, making
> the content inaccessible to individuals with hearing disabilities.

> 2\. Approximately half the videos did not provide audio description or any
> other alternative format for the visual information (graphs, charts,
> animations, or items on the chalkboard) contained in the videos. For
> example, in one video lecture, a professor pointed to and talked about an
> image and its structure without describing the image, making it inaccessible
> to individuals with vision disabilities.

> 3\. Some visual content presented in the slide presentations had low color
> contrast. For example, two video lectures referenced computer code on the
> screen that had insufficient color contrast, making it difficult for an
> individual with low vision to discern. Another video lecture used different
> colored lines on a graph, but the colors could not be differentiated by an
> individual with low vision.

It's not just old content created with old tech.

> In January of 2016, the Department reviewed ten new and archived courses
> available on UC BerkeleyX. The Department observed some improvement in new
> and archived courses, including the addition of closed captions on some
> content, but in general, the new courses had most of the previously reported
> accessibility issues and the archived courses were still inaccessible.
> Specifically, the Department found that both new and archived courses are
> inaccessible because many have incorrect alternative text, videos without
> captions, undefined headings, a lack of color contrast, inaccessible PDFs,
> and inaccessible keyboard links.

People seem to be focusing on captioning. That's part of the problem, and
maybe the hardest to solve, but it's not the only problem. There also seems to
be a focus on hearing impairment, but deaf people aren't the only people with
disability that Berkeley chose, illegally, to exclude.

> Between March and April 2015, the Department reviewed the sixteen MOOCs then
> available to the public on UC BerkeleyX. None of the courses reviewed were
> entirely accessible. For each course reviewed, it would be difficult for an
> individual with a hearing, vision, or manual disability to understand the
> content conveyed to course participants. Examples of barriers to access
> found across most course content included the following:

> 1\. Some videos did not have captions. As a result, the audio content in the
> video was inaccessible to people with hearing disabilities.

> 2\. Some videos were inaccessible to people with vision disabilities for
> several reasons. First, many videos did not provide an alternative way to
> access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or
> urls on slides), such as audio description, alternative text, PDF files, or
> Word documents. Second, videos containing text sometimes had poor color
> contrast, which made the text unreadable for those with low vision. Finally,
> information was sometimes conveyed using color alone (for instance, a chart
> or graph would differentiate information only by color), which is not
> accessible to individuals with vision disabilities.

> 3\. Many documents were inaccessible to individuals with vision disabilities
> who use screen readers because the document was not formatted properly. For
> instance, headings were sometimes neither defined nor arranged in a logical
> order; page structure was not always defined, contained empty elements or
> was incorrectly defined; some tables did not have row and column headers
> defined; math equations were not always defined in a comprehendible way.
> Many PDFs either did not have a tag structure defined or the tag structure
> was incorrect. Individuals with vision disabilities who use screen readers
> would have a difficult time understanding and navigating the content.

> 4\. Some links were not keyboard accessible and did not indicate whether
> they were expandable or collapsible, so individuals with vision disabilities
> who use screen readers may not understand the purpose of the links and
> individuals with manual disabilities would not be able to use the links.

> 5\. Websites and materials that were integrated into the course material
> were not fully accessible

------
mankash666
As a California taxpayer funding the UC system, I'd like to be able to access
the new content. At the very least my California ID should be accepted as
authentication for access

~~~
Kadin
Ironically, it appears to be the laws specific to California that are putting
Berkeley in a bind. In other states, they'd be able to cite administrative
burden and tell the complainants to pound sand. But CA has a well-intentioned
but terribly-used law that would still allow users to claim discrimination and
force Berkeley to cut them a check for damages.

It is unfortunate that Berkeley couldn't transfer ownership of the archive to
an institution located in a different jurisdiction.

The ultimate solution would appear to require a legislative change in CA,
though, so perhaps by pulling everything down and creating some public
concern, they are doing the right thing in the long run.

Good luck if you live in CA getting the law changed...

~~~
LanceH
Release to public domain would solve it.

------
jsprunck
Something similar seems to have happened previously to MIT and Harvard.
([https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/education/harvard-and-
mit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/education/harvard-and-mit-sued-
over-failing-to-caption-online-courses.html)).

Has that impacted OCW availability? I was noticing a lack of newer OCW
material, but I have no data to substantiate that perception.

------
phozy1
I'm lost. why not just run the content through a modern voice to text API?
They are pretty good and youtube has their own voice to text captions, right?

~~~
cbhl
I actually think there is room for a "human-assisted collaborative captioning"
effort. You'd start with the results of automated speech recognition, and then
you'd add in Google Docs-style collaborative editing of the closed captioning
/ fan subs.

Imagine if you could save a video by watching it and correcting the typos in
the existing transcript.

But there's no way it'd be a viable business. (That's Rev, and it costs
$1/minute, and it doesn't even give you a .srt file that you can upload to
YouTube.)

Plus, you'd have to deal with spam/abuse, and creative uses of captions (e.g.
niconico).

I tried building a prototype of this in college, but I couldn't figure out how
to make it work financially, so I had to take a paid summer internship at
YouTube.

~~~
ericras
This has existed for years: [http://amara.org/](http://amara.org/)

~~~
cbhl
To put it lightly, the Amara platform needs work. If you try to sign in with
both Google and Facebook and the same e-mail address, you end up creating two
separate accounts that are impossible to link/merge. Never mind that people
have multiple email addresses and phone numbers and YouTube accounts in real
life.

If it has existed for years, why wasn't it used to save the UC Berkeley
library videos?

I'm thinking more of a Google Docs style interface, where you can make a
lightweight edit (only one or two lines of captions) and someone else can
_concurrently_ time and edit other lines.

------
mulmen
Can they do something like caption content only as requested instead of
preemptively captioning _all_ of it? Is there some time limit on how quickly
the content must be made available? Can they caption only the most commonly
accessed content up to $x/yr up to whatever Berkeley can afford for
accessibility?

~~~
Kadin
A reasonable solution would be similar to what has traditionally (since the
early 20th century) been done with books for the blind in the US via the
Library of Congress.

See:
[https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-167/](https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-167/)

The government, at public expense, provides Braille books and "talking books"
to blind readers on demand. If someone requests a title that doesn't have a
Braille edition, the (Federal) government will pay to have one made. They're
distributed through the public library system and recovered after use to be
lent out again.

A few years ago there were some articles around about the Braille and talking
editions of the Harry Potter books, which were produced so that they could be
released at the same time as the regular print editions for sighted readers.
Quite cool. I think the government will also do periodicals (there are
regularly Braille copies of national magazines at my local library, which they
seem to get out within a few days of the regular edition).

Aside from the unwieldy size of Braille books, it seems like a pretty nice
system. It's a trivial cost in government terms, and it serves a community
that would otherwise not have a reliable source of content. I'm sure it's
imperfect and could use improvement (though I think they now do talking books
digitally), as most public programs could, but it's existed and been basically
uncontroversial for generations.

What it does not do, of course, is it does NOT obligate traditional publishers
to produce Braille editions. That would be ridiculous, and would vastly cut
down on the number of books that could be published by increasing the cost,
and would result in more Braille content than there's really a demand for
anyway. It's a completely insane way to try to increase accessibility.

------
DashRattlesnake
Are there any particularly good courses that I should try to download ASAP?

------
BrailleHunting
Bureaucracy and profit-maximization drive what was academia away from
archivism and towards digital impermanence (linkrot).

Plus, the whole "old equals bad" consumerism rationalizations.

------
alphapapa
This seems ripe for becoming an ominous pattern, e.g.:

"This ____ will also partially address recent findings by the Department of
Justice which suggests that ____ meet higher ____ standards as a condition of
____."

And if ____ is not done, and the ____ does not meet the higher ____ standards,
will the Department of Justice cause it to ____?

~~~
alphapapa
Interesting downvotes. Let us all hope that my observation is never validated,
however I think enough examples exist already which could be considered to do
so.

