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>The Americans with Disabilities Act [...] explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. Sure, that seems justifiable for commercial businesses b

by jasode 10y ago

>The Americans with Disabilities Act [...] explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. Sure, that seems justifiable for commercial businesses but many find the ADA to be an ugly legal weapon for attacking free donations. The spiritual intentions of "free" should be exempted. If UC Berkeley used the viewing of those videos as a mandatory requirement to qualify for admissions into the school or required viewing for the students to pass a class, then I think most of us could see the fairness of forcing them to caption it -- regardless of costs. However, the goodwill act of making them free for humanity's knowledge-seeking causes the DOJ to threaten lawsuit? That does not seem right. >Importantly, this is NOT a lawsuit. It's a DoJ investigation under the ADA focused on enforcing existing laws and regulations. It's not about "formalizing it into the nastiness of a lawsuit" In the last page of the cited PDF, the DOJ explicitly writes "lawsuit": >"In the event that we are unable to reach such a resolution, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA" That this particular DOJ letter is one or a few steps removed from a "formal lawsuit" doesn't detract from my overall point. The DOJ threatening a lawsuit is the tool of choice we're using instead of other options ... such as raising a crowdsourced fund to pay for captioning or recruiting volunteers to transcribe them into braille. If there is an effort of goodwill to make something available, I think society should pay that back with reciprocal goodwill in finding a way to make the material accessible to the disabled. The donation and the litigation response to that donation is asymmetrical. It gives the ADA bad press.

shanusmagnus 10y ago
I came back to make a comment just like this, but you already did it better than I would have. The metaphor I had in mind was restaurants that make too much food, and (sometimes; some restaurants) they donate it to foodshelves (when appropriate) or sometimes just to some homeless guys who happen to be nearby. The extra food is an externality of their real purpose as a business, which is to take money in exchange for feeding people. They could throw the food away, but instead they're doing something nice with it. Almost nobody would say they should throw the food away because the homeless guys who happen to be the recipients of their largesse are benefiting, while other, further-away homeless guys are not. Such an argument would be idiotic. In just this way these videos and course materials are an externality of the 'real' business of Berkeley, which is educating the people who are admitted to Berkeley and enrolled in the classes. Berkeley, and others like them, are going above and beyond to be nice to the rest of humanity, to our great collective benefit. This ADA thing is just a kick in the face, and it pisses me off.
- bonaldi 10y ago
  No but people would say they food they give away should still comply with health regulations. Just because you're making a gift doesn't mean the law doesn't apply to you.
  - crazy2be 10y ago
    That's not a good comparison, not complying with health regulations substantially devalues the food given away, because of the significantly increased risk of illness resulting from consumption of said food. Your second statement is irrelevant, we are not talking about what the law does, but what the law should do. And I absolutely think that gifts (and good samaritan acts in general) should be held to a much lower standard than commercial enterprises. This is not at all unprecedented in US law (or in many places in the world), every state has some form of good samaritan law[1], which protects (to some extent) individuals who act in good faith to aid strangers in need of immediate medical assistance. There is also a federal law indemnifying donors of properly labeled foods, except in the case of gross negligence or intentional misconduct. These laws are important, because donations result in no benefit for the bearer, so making them cost money is a significant deterrence to charity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_Stat...
    - bonaldi 10y ago
      What does it matter in your scheme if the food being given away is substantially devalued? It's a gift, it should be held to a lower standard, right? Or are you saying that the gift must be of an equal value to that sold? Do they have to also serve it on fine china to the homeless? How low should the lowered standard be, then? My second statement is disagreeing with yours. The law does and should absolutely hold organisational gifts to the same standard as commercial transactions. Not least because otherwise you create a massive loophole ripe for exploitation, at all levels. "Hey, don't tax my import, it was a gift!". "Hey, my formula milk shouldn't be subject to marketing laws, it's a gift to new [and ill-educated] mothers!" "Hey, I shouldn't be subject to your weird license restrictions, my source code was a gift to the community!" Now, sure, good samaritan laws are important things. But so is equality legislation, and disability rights legislation, and much of the other legislation that defines the standards society expects of its participants.
bdhess 10y ago
> Sure, that seems justifiable for commercial businesses but many find the ADA to be an ugly legal weapon for attacking free donations. The spiritual intentions of "free" should be exempted. I dispute labeling this program as a "donation". It's an official program run by a quasi-governmental institution that is supported by taxpayer dollars. Disabled people pay taxes in California, and yet cannot avail themselves of this content that's ostensibly provided for the public benefit.
- jasode 10y ago
  >I dispute labeling this program as a "donation". It's a release of course videos that they don't charge for. Making free videos available for the public certainly isn't going to help UC Berkeley's $150 million budget deficit.[1] It's not going to make anybody rich. If any university wants to provide free videos to the public with no strings attached, I consider that a generous gesture on their part. I want us (society) to be generous in return. Therefore, lawsuits are the wrong tool for captioning videos for the disabled audience. (Oh btw, I know your school is losing money and may lay off some employees but about those free videos ... yeah we're suing you for that!) >Disabled people pay taxes in California, and yet cannot avail themselves of this content that's ostensibly provided for the public benefit. There seems to be a "accommodate-ADA-no-matter-what" principle that's present in many comments. We are not that inflexible. Disabled people may pay Federal taxes but we did not install multi-million chairlifts on Yosemite Half Dome (a Federal Park) so wheelchair bound people can experience the summit. The Yosemite Park entrance pass is $15 per car and we didn't all agree to make it $200 per car so that we can subsidize helicopters to take all disabled people to the summit for those who can't climb it on their own power. Yes, we do have wheelchair lifts for the buses running on the valley floor but we didn't make everything equal for all disabled tourists. If a business has 14 employees or less, we also don't make them comply with ADA access. That exclusion is written into the ADA law. The point is that there are are tradeoffs, limits, exceptions, and compromise to make ADA work. If a "14-employee threshold" seems like a reasonable exemption from ADA, let's make "freedom of spreading knowledge" another reasonable exemption. Don't punish institutions for providing free knowledge. Let's not disincentivize other institutions from releasing free videos just because they didn't cross every 't' and dot every 'i' to comply with ADA. Let's find another way to add captions and braille without the lawsuits. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=uc+berkeley+operating+deficit https://www.google.com/search?q=uc+berkeley+operating+defici...

by jasode 10y ago

shanusmagnus 10y ago

I came back to make a comment just like this, but you already did it better than I would have. The metaphor I had in mind was restaurants that make too much food, and (sometimes; some restaurants) they donate it to foodshelves (when appropriate) or sometimes just to some homeless guys who happen to be nearby. The extra food is an externality of their real purpose as a business, which is to take money in exchange for feeding people. They could throw the food away, but instead they're doing something nice with it. Almost nobody would say they should throw the food away because the homeless guys who happen to be the recipients of their largesse are benefiting, while other, further-away homeless guys are not. Such an argument would be idiotic. In just this way these videos and course materials are an externality of the 'real' business of Berkeley, which is educating the people who are admitted to Berkeley and enrolled in the classes. Berkeley, and others like them, are going above and beyond to be nice to the rest of humanity, to our great collective benefit. This ADA thing is just a kick in the face, and it pisses me off.

bonaldi 10y ago
No but people would say they food they give away should still comply with health regulations. Just because you're making a gift doesn't mean the law doesn't apply to you.
- crazy2be 10y ago
  That's not a good comparison, not complying with health regulations substantially devalues the food given away, because of the significantly increased risk of illness resulting from consumption of said food. Your second statement is irrelevant, we are not talking about what the law does, but what the law should do. And I absolutely think that gifts (and good samaritan acts in general) should be held to a much lower standard than commercial enterprises. This is not at all unprecedented in US law (or in many places in the world), every state has some form of good samaritan law[1], which protects (to some extent) individuals who act in good faith to aid strangers in need of immediate medical assistance. There is also a federal law indemnifying donors of properly labeled foods, except in the case of gross negligence or intentional misconduct. These laws are important, because donations result in no benefit for the bearer, so making them cost money is a significant deterrence to charity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_Stat...
  - bonaldi 10y ago
    What does it matter in your scheme if the food being given away is substantially devalued? It's a gift, it should be held to a lower standard, right? Or are you saying that the gift must be of an equal value to that sold? Do they have to also serve it on fine china to the homeless? How low should the lowered standard be, then? My second statement is disagreeing with yours. The law does and should absolutely hold organisational gifts to the same standard as commercial transactions. Not least because otherwise you create a massive loophole ripe for exploitation, at all levels. "Hey, don't tax my import, it was a gift!". "Hey, my formula milk shouldn't be subject to marketing laws, it's a gift to new [and ill-educated] mothers!" "Hey, I shouldn't be subject to your weird license restrictions, my source code was a gift to the community!" Now, sure, good samaritan laws are important things. But so is equality legislation, and disability rights legislation, and much of the other legislation that defines the standards society expects of its participants.

bdhess 10y ago

> Sure, that seems justifiable for commercial businesses but many find the ADA to be an ugly legal weapon for attacking free donations. The spiritual intentions of "free" should be exempted. I dispute labeling this program as a "donation". It's an official program run by a quasi-governmental institution that is supported by taxpayer dollars. Disabled people pay taxes in California, and yet cannot avail themselves of this content that's ostensibly provided for the public benefit.

jasode 10y ago
>I dispute labeling this program as a "donation". It's a release of course videos that they don't charge for. Making free videos available for the public certainly isn't going to help UC Berkeley's $150 million budget deficit.[1] It's not going to make anybody rich. If any university wants to provide free videos to the public with no strings attached, I consider that a generous gesture on their part. I want us (society) to be generous in return. Therefore, lawsuits are the wrong tool for captioning videos for the disabled audience. (Oh btw, I know your school is losing money and may lay off some employees but about those free videos ... yeah we're suing you for that!) >Disabled people pay taxes in California, and yet cannot avail themselves of this content that's ostensibly provided for the public benefit. There seems to be a "accommodate-ADA-no-matter-what" principle that's present in many comments. We are not that inflexible. Disabled people may pay Federal taxes but we did not install multi-million chairlifts on Yosemite Half Dome (a Federal Park) so wheelchair bound people can experience the summit. The Yosemite Park entrance pass is $15 per car and we didn't all agree to make it $200 per car so that we can subsidize helicopters to take all disabled people to the summit for those who can't climb it on their own power. Yes, we do have wheelchair lifts for the buses running on the valley floor but we didn't make everything equal for all disabled tourists. If a business has 14 employees or less, we also don't make them comply with ADA access. That exclusion is written into the ADA law. The point is that there are are tradeoffs, limits, exceptions, and compromise to make ADA work. If a "14-employee threshold" seems like a reasonable exemption from ADA, let's make "freedom of spreading knowledge" another reasonable exemption. Don't punish institutions for providing free knowledge. Let's not disincentivize other institutions from releasing free videos just because they didn't cross every 't' and dot every 'i' to comply with ADA. Let's find another way to add captions and braille without the lawsuits. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=uc+berkeley+operating+deficit https://www.google.com/search?q=uc+berkeley+operating+defici...