
Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions  in violation of the ADA - elmar
https://abcnews.go.com/US/deaf-man-sues-pornhub-lack-closed-captions/story?id=68354500
======
threatofrain
If a company doesn't have the kind of technology to effectively transcribe
their large volume of videos and the daily rate of uploads, then must they
simply start taking down videos? If a company started hiring inhouse to
develop such tech, how long would it take?

~~~
michaelt
Given the performance of Google's auto-captioning, I suspect developing
worthwhile auto-captioning is pretty difficult; according to [1] the better
Youtube channels use gig economy captioning at $1 per minute.

Of course, there would be some scope for efficiency - no need to pay for
captioning when the performers aren't speaking!

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/problem-with-youtubes-
terrible-c...](https://www.wired.com/story/problem-with-youtubes-terrible-
closed-craptions/)

~~~
lowdose
While Youtube auto captioning has a superior performance compared to Google
Translate output. In youtube translations there is much more language specific
nuance. In many European languages a more formal word for the English word
"you" exists, in German it is "Sie", French "Vous".

Correct interpretations of these nuances are applied by Youtube, Google
however translates "you" by default to the most formal option.

So to me $1 dollar per minute sounds like an awesome deal because there is not
much to adjust.

Out of curiosity, can you link to such a gig company?

~~~
uncle_j
Youtube auto captioning doesn't work for British Accents especially anything
Northern English, Scottish or Welsh.

The same with any voice control, It doesn't work with my west country accent.

------
chrxr
Relevant precedent: Harvard recently settled with National Association of the
Deaf, resulting in all videos made publically available after Dec 2019
requiring captions, and a required 5 day turnaround for captioning of older
videos. [https://dredf.org/2019/11/27/landmark-settlement-with-
harvar...](https://dredf.org/2019/11/27/landmark-settlement-with-harvard-to-
improve-online-accessibility/)

~~~
Myrmornis
That sounds positive. In contrast, a similar situation at Berkeley had a
disastrous outcome -- all Berkeley's historical non-captioned videos of
lectures were taken down.

~~~
drewbug01
> That sounds positive. In contrast, a similar situation at Berkeley had a
> disastrous outcome -- all Berkeley's historical non-captioned videos of
> lectures were taken down.

It's worth re-iterating that it didn't have to happen this way: Berkeley could
have captioned the videos; but there's no indication that they seriously
considered this option. In fact, I cannot find any indication that Berkeley
tried to find any sort of compromise with the DOJ - despite the letter from
the DOJ strongly urging Berkeley to work with the department towards a
solution.

The DOJ letter is also worth a read, in that they find the management of UC
Berkeley did not seriously attempt to enforce any sort of compliance with
accessibility standards.

It would have been expensive, sure. But it's wise to keep in mind that the UC
system operates with a yearly budget exceeding nine billion dollars - and as
much as we want to worry about the cost of transcribing those old courses, at
the end of the day it is a drop in the bucket of their overall expenditures.

------
breakingcups
Does anyone with more experience with this law know whether the ADA would
apply to _all_ video content on a website or just a subset?

Otherwise YouTube would also have a huge problem. Their auto-generated CC's
are laughable most of the time.

~~~
aequitas
I find their CC to be pretty accurate most of the time with sometimes some
words misunderstood. It's not perfect, but for me it often is very usable as
aid in a noisy environment (mind you I have no hearing disability, just don't
want to crank the volume to 11 when my kids are playing in the same room).

~~~
tpaksoy
Until someone with an accent appears on the screen.

And I don't mean someone from France or Turkey for instance. But Brits, and in
particular Scots, usually break the automatically generated CCs.

~~~
ghaff
TBH, even human transcribers have their limits. I often get transcripts of my
podcasts. But if I have someone with a strong accent, I’ll often skip because
I know I’ll be charged for a difficult transcription especially around
technical terms and I’ll still have to do a lot of cleanup.

Surely the ADA requirement isn’t for a near perfect transcript.

That actually makes me wonder re podcasts and other audio. Is there any reason
they’d have a different requirement or are these lawsuits specifically about
video for some reason?

~~~
extra88
> Surely the ADA requirement isn’t for a near perfect transcript.

The law requires "reasonable accommodations" to provide a equivalent
experience. Expecting perfection would not be reasonable. Also with heavy
accents, the hearing audience probably doesn't understand every word so if
some words in the transcript were wrong, the hearing impaired have the same
experience.

There's nothing special about video, the law can also require podcasts and
other audio-only content to provide transcripts. But the law doesn't apply to
everything and everybody, it applies to "places of public accommodation," and
many podcasts are personal projects, to which it doesn't apply. The legal
precedent for what is a place of public accommodation is evolving, even
including anything online is not universally held, I don't know what counts;
having an ad spot in a podcast is probably not sufficient to suddenly make it
a business to which the law applies. It almost certainly applies to an
operation like Gimlet.

~~~
ghaff
And it’s possibly complicated by the fact that many podcasts don’t even carry
advertising but are clearly content marketing for businesses. Mind you for SEO
and other reasons, transcripts are often a good idea but probably the vast
majority of even quasi-pro podcasts don’t do them.

------
raxxorrax
Some people do indeed watch it for the story.

The phonetic alphabet would probably be helpful here, given the "text"
material. Quite a challenge. But since this is for pornography, I do not doubt
it will exist in a short amount of time.

------
dbetteridge
Honest question here If you are building a system that is focused on a
specific audience, i.e you're building a video site not intended for those
with disabilities, how does that work?

Can you be forced to provide additional content outside of your systems
intended use case?

We build sites to meet WCAG standards when doing Government work, but for
other sites that are personal/startup projects do these same rules apply and
if so why do they apply?

As a somewhat contrived example, are Spotify required to provide
captions/lyrics with each song they stream?

~~~
extra88
> If you are building a system that is focused on a specific audience, i.e
> you're building a video site not intended for those with disabilities

That in itself would be discriminatory, excluding people belonging to a
protected class (i.e. people with disabilities).

The law does not apply to personal sites, it applies to "places of public
accommodation." Most court case outcomes have agreed that it's not only
physical places, websites and apps of businesses are included.

A private club might be exempt but I'm sure there are limitations on what can
be a private club; i.e. Dollar Shave Club can't call themselves a private club
so their website can be inaccessible to people with disabilities.

> As a somewhat contrived example, are Spotify required to provide
> captions/lyrics with each song they stream?

Probably lyrics, which are basically a transcript, they wouldn't have to be
synchronized to the music, as captions are. The law requires "reasonable
accommodations" to be made and lyrics to songs are readily available from the
rights holders; if those rights holders wanted a lot more money for the lyrics
along with the songs, that could be an undue burden on Spotify and mean they
don't have to do it.

I thought Pornhub hosted videos uploaded by users. If they're just a platform,
they shouldn't be liable for the lack of captions. The article mentions there
is a section for captioned videos (though I wonder if they're actually
subtitles translating a language, not captions for the hearing-impaired) so I
assume their video player supports caption files.

------
grzm
From 4 days ago (40 points, 34 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22077649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22077649)

------
qwerty456127
This is funny (who cares about what do they speak in porn, really? I know some
people learn German just to understand that but that's hardly essential for
the experience) but there have been more alike case which were sad:
universities removing (!) freely-available lecture videos as there were no
subtitles (even those published on YouTube, I don't know why generated
subtitles wouldn't qualify).

~~~
michaelt
_> who cares about what do they speak in porn, really?_

The article says one of the videos in the complaint was "hot step aunt"

If you remove the audio from incest porn, doesn't that turn it into regular
vanilla porn?

~~~
StevePerkins
Yes, thankfully.

------
chmaynard
Porn videos are best left un-captioned. The court should advise the plaintiff
to use his imagination.

------
FerretFred
You mean people actually watch porn with the sound turned on? (pardon the pun)

------
mrbonner
Now, this would be a very high bias, low variance ML problem to tackle :-)

------
reallydontask
There is a closed caption category in pornhub. Well, at least, that is what I
have been told.

Not to mention that this is actually mentioned in the article

------
levosmetalo
Why only Pornhub. Many Videos on Prime don't have captions. Why not just sue
Amazon?

------
bilekas
How will he ever know if the new tennant ever got the plumbing fixed !

This is just pure discrimination. :)

~~~
buboard
spoiler alert they never do.

~~~
qwerty456127
Perhaps they do but we can't see that because PornHub doesn't have the full
movies. E.g. I've actually done both the jobs once when I was a [real] cable
worker.

~~~
buboard
thats a good point. always a cliffhanger

------
gushie
"Oh oh oh oh ooooh" just about covers it.

------
tw1010
Curious: why isn't all porn sites sued for this? I don't quite get why they're
only going after PH? Is it because it's harder to win a case against 1000
websites? Is it because it's more overhead to go after multiple sites and they
expect the biggest return on investment only going after the biggest one?
Anyone smarter than me who has a take?

~~~
jascii
Precedent: a conviction against one will encourage the others to do the right
thing while avoiding the cost of having 1000's of defendants.

~~~
jeroenhd
If "doing the right thing" means banning videos from all online platforms
except those with the capability to automatically translate sound into
subtitles, I'd rather they don't do the "right thing". The end result will be
lawsuit money for a few disabled people and the end of most alternative video
platforms.

~~~
scarface74
No the result will be a lot of money for lawyers and a few pennies for the
actual litigant.

------
Beltiras
I think it's just transparently obvious that the plaintiff is right. Youtube
is autogenerating CCs.

~~~
azdacha
World cannot laugh enough about this. Let's be transparently honest about
this!

~~~
Beltiras
It must be because I have worked with advocates for disabled people. I don't
see the funny aspect. I'm glad for the laws. Either they apply or they do not.
Either our hearing-disabled brothers and sisters are equal or they are not.
It's juvenile to somehow factor porn out and say it shouldn't count there.

~~~
pyr0hu
Yeah, but what about the case that @threatofrain mentioned? If a company has
no resources to auto-generate CCs for every video uploaded, then it should be
punished and sued? (Of course this case does not apply to PH)

~~~
PudgePacket
I think in real life these things are on a sliding scale, similar to business
obligations as the business grows in $ and employee count.

So if the mum & pop corner store has a video on their site without captions
it'll slide, but if a bank doesn't have captions they're in trouble.

~~~
leppr
It's a very bad thing if in real life, everyone has to be in illegality in
order to function. This is when the rule of law loses meaning and becomes a
mere weapon to be used by those in power.

