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> it seems like it would be cheaper for the schools to just stop sharing the courses instead of dealing with a lawsuit. Indeed. That's exactly what happened at

> it seems like it would be cheaper for the schools to just stop sharing the courses instead of dealing with a lawsuit. Indeed. That's exactly what happened at UC Berkeley, once news of these lawsuits got out. We used to have all of our class lectures available free to the public, but now they're restricted only to students.

endswapper 10y ago
I see that as an embarrassing result for UC Berkeley and any institution that follows suit. Clearly, there is value to making the material available, otherwise it would not have been posted in the first place. Discriminating against a few or against everyone because of a negligible cost is a failure. Furthermore, the fact that these considerations are not at the forefront of people's minds when releasing materials reinforces the merits of the lawsuit and the law.
- rhaps0dy 10y ago
  > Discriminating against a few or against everyone because of a negligible cost is a failure. It's not a negligible cost to transcribe every single phrase the lecturer utters, for hours and hours and hours of lessons. Would it be better if the captions were generated by Youtube? Come on, that system is not good enough yet.
  - endswapper 10y ago
    Negligible is a relative terms, which is why I used it. My school has an annual operating budget in excess of $100MM. It's a small school in the Midwest. They could slice something off to accommodate the closed-captioning. I worked in post-production in Los Angeles and Manhattan and I have a reference for closed-captioning service fees. They could do it, or even better they could hire a person (maybe more) full-time and save money. A technology solution that improves access for everyone sounds like a great starting point for a startup.
  - cooper12 10y ago
    They could set up a crowdsourced model for it. I don't know if they host their videos on Youtube, but it offers that option and there are services they could utilize if not such as Amara [0] which is used by Udacity and Khan Academy. [0]: https://pro.amara.org/education https://pro.amara.org/education
- guitarbill 10y ago
  > I see that as an embarrassing result for UC Berkeley and any institution that follows suit. Clearly, there is value to making the material available It's not "clear" at all that there's value to put it up for them. They probably did it out of good-will, in which case the easiest option was to simply record the lecture. I don't think it's fair to imply malice at all. So the solution is for them to give you a call, and you'll do it for a cut of the profit (i.e. free), right?
  - endswapper 10y ago
    There is value for them and for the public: goodwill - business : the amount of value that a company's good reputation adds to its overall value[0] [0] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goodwill http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goodwill I didn't imply malice at all. No, they should not call me. They should start with an inclusive perspective that eliminates the need for lawsuits. And when things slip through the cracks because of advancements in technology, or cultural shifts in perspective they should lead. My point is that it's embarrassing because they had the opportunity to do the right thing, and instead they did the easy thing, which was to take it away.
    - guitarbill 10y ago
      I was being facetious about them calling you, but somebody has to make a start. > they had the opportunity to do the right thing, and instead they did the easy thing, which was to take it away. Nope, by providing it for free they definitely were adding. As you will see when they take it offline, it was completely additional. EDIT: I see you were talking about UC Berkley, I though "they" referred to Harvard and M.I.T, my mistake. Yeah, they took it away, but lawsuits have that effect. I doubt the plaintiffs would have settled for "we'll crowdsource the captions" :) > They should start with an inclusive perspective that eliminates the need for lawsuits IDK. It's taken millennia to get to where we are. Improvement isn't an option? A campaign to crowdsource the close captions might have been far more effective and definitely less mean-spirited than a lawsuit. The all-or-nothing approach isn't practical and will likely result in nothing.
- jordonwii 10y ago
  In the specific case of Berkeley, campus officials estimated that it would have cost a few extra hundred thousand dollars in order to put in the infrastructure to caption all of the videos that they made public. Given that the return for the University on making these videos public isn't really clear - and could be very low - it's hard to justify that investment, especially in Berkeley's present financial situation. For context, we have an enormous budget deficit, state funding is not keeping up with rising costs, and the UCs in general had their first budget deficit ever this year. It's worth mentioning that captioning services are provided for students with disabilities, but that infrastructure simply isn't a part of what was made public, and is only provided in those classes that have students with disabilities in them. It's one thing for them to provide public access to exactly the same portal that students used to access the webcasts that are being made anyway, but an entirely different one to also a). Run the risk of expensive lawsuits on the university's dime, and also b). ensure that those videos are up to federal accessibility standards. Edit: wording and fixing dictation errors.

endswapper 10y ago

I see that as an embarrassing result for UC Berkeley and any institution that follows suit. Clearly, there is value to making the material available, otherwise it would not have been posted in the first place. Discriminating against a few or against everyone because of a negligible cost is a failure. Furthermore, the fact that these considerations are not at the forefront of people's minds when releasing materials reinforces the merits of the lawsuit and the law.

rhaps0dy 10y ago
> Discriminating against a few or against everyone because of a negligible cost is a failure. It's not a negligible cost to transcribe every single phrase the lecturer utters, for hours and hours and hours of lessons. Would it be better if the captions were generated by Youtube? Come on, that system is not good enough yet.
- endswapper 10y ago
  Negligible is a relative terms, which is why I used it. My school has an annual operating budget in excess of $100MM. It's a small school in the Midwest. They could slice something off to accommodate the closed-captioning. I worked in post-production in Los Angeles and Manhattan and I have a reference for closed-captioning service fees. They could do it, or even better they could hire a person (maybe more) full-time and save money. A technology solution that improves access for everyone sounds like a great starting point for a startup.
- cooper12 10y ago
  They could set up a crowdsourced model for it. I don't know if they host their videos on Youtube, but it offers that option and there are services they could utilize if not such as Amara [0] which is used by Udacity and Khan Academy. [0]: https://pro.amara.org/education https://pro.amara.org/education
guitarbill 10y ago
> I see that as an embarrassing result for UC Berkeley and any institution that follows suit. Clearly, there is value to making the material available It's not "clear" at all that there's value to put it up for them. They probably did it out of good-will, in which case the easiest option was to simply record the lecture. I don't think it's fair to imply malice at all. So the solution is for them to give you a call, and you'll do it for a cut of the profit (i.e. free), right?
- endswapper 10y ago
  There is value for them and for the public: goodwill - business : the amount of value that a company's good reputation adds to its overall value[0] [0] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goodwill http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goodwill I didn't imply malice at all. No, they should not call me. They should start with an inclusive perspective that eliminates the need for lawsuits. And when things slip through the cracks because of advancements in technology, or cultural shifts in perspective they should lead. My point is that it's embarrassing because they had the opportunity to do the right thing, and instead they did the easy thing, which was to take it away.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    I was being facetious about them calling you, but somebody has to make a start. > they had the opportunity to do the right thing, and instead they did the easy thing, which was to take it away. Nope, by providing it for free they definitely were adding. As you will see when they take it offline, it was completely additional. EDIT: I see you were talking about UC Berkley, I though "they" referred to Harvard and M.I.T, my mistake. Yeah, they took it away, but lawsuits have that effect. I doubt the plaintiffs would have settled for "we'll crowdsource the captions" :) > They should start with an inclusive perspective that eliminates the need for lawsuits IDK. It's taken millennia to get to where we are. Improvement isn't an option? A campaign to crowdsource the close captions might have been far more effective and definitely less mean-spirited than a lawsuit. The all-or-nothing approach isn't practical and will likely result in nothing.
jordonwii 10y ago
In the specific case of Berkeley, campus officials estimated that it would have cost a few extra hundred thousand dollars in order to put in the infrastructure to caption all of the videos that they made public. Given that the return for the University on making these videos public isn't really clear - and could be very low - it's hard to justify that investment, especially in Berkeley's present financial situation. For context, we have an enormous budget deficit, state funding is not keeping up with rising costs, and the UCs in general had their first budget deficit ever this year. It's worth mentioning that captioning services are provided for students with disabilities, but that infrastructure simply isn't a part of what was made public, and is only provided in those classes that have students with disabilities in them. It's one thing for them to provide public access to exactly the same portal that students used to access the webcasts that are being made anyway, but an entirely different one to also a). Run the risk of expensive lawsuits on the university's dime, and also b). ensure that those videos are up to federal accessibility standards. Edit: wording and fixing dictation errors.