4 ms·

It's not about the videos, it's about sending a message. Specifically, that it's critically important to make sure that the deaf have the same access that ever

It's not about the videos, it's about sending a message. Specifically, that it's critically important to make sure that the deaf have the same access that everyone else does, even if it's expensive and inconvenient, because we as a society demand that level of fairness.

fiter 10y ago
I appreciate this discussion because we need to realize the trade offs of strict fairness. In order to be fair, we have provided less good/utility for those that were benefiting unfairly from the service. We have not provided any additional good/utility for those that were not able to benefit from the service.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  Yeah, it is a trade off. We're basically forcing content producers to subsidize access for the hearing impaired. This will make some content not worth publishing at the margin, while also forcing the clearly-worth-publishing things to provide access at their expense. The non-obvious thing is that this compliance-by-force is non-local. If you only look at Berkeley's videos, you're giving up these videos pointlessly. You have to also look at the videos that are going to be published anyways, and whether they'd include access for the deaf if people weren't dicks about enforcement.
  - fiter 10y ago
    I like the way you put it: the creators are required to subsidize the disabled. Would it be better if this was approached from the other side? Creators could create without this concern. Disabled consumers would then pay for services that make specific creations accessible to them. The US government could then explicitly subsidize the disabled people.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  > We have not provided any additional good/utility for those that were not able to benefit from the service. If you insist on looking at this incident in isolation, yes. But if you look at it like that, there's no reason to imprison murderers, because it won't bring the victim back to life. If there were no requirement, very few things would be accessible. As a minority, the deaf will always be irrelevant to the majorities' utility calculus.
  - fiter 10y ago
    There's definitely reasons to imprison murderers: (1) to prevent them from murdering again, (2) to rehabilitate them so they do not murder again, (3) to give feelings of closure/justice to those that cared for the victim. I think ThrustVectoring said it best in a post above yours: we're requiring creators to subsidize the disabled. An alternative way to subsidize the disabled might be to give them some amount of money every year which they can use to buy transcription, parking, etc. services. This might result in only certain content being transcribed. This might result in less parking spaces that are continuously empty. Maybe that would be a better use of everyone's time. Maybe it would create unnecessary decision burden on disabled people.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      The notion that prison rehabilitates has been widely discredited. Most of the time prison hardens criminals and makes them worse, with high recidivism rates being the rule rather than the exception. Also, if your goal was to prevent murderers from murdering again, why would you ever let them out? To generalize this to other crimes: why would you let any criminal out if your goal was to prevent them from committing more crimes?
      - fiter 10y ago
        Keep in mind I said prison, not "US prison system in 2017". http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-... You would let murderers out because you think there is some compromise between their freedom and the crime they committed. What is your suggestion?
andrenth 10y ago
Now they have the same level of access: none.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  Yeah, this is the bad case. But this sort of policy also has an effect on other situations: Suppose it costs $100 to make a video accessible for those with hearing impairments. Furthermore, suppose this video is really important - the university is willing to spend up to $20,000 on making it, but fortunately only has to spend $15,000. Without being a dick about "deaf accessible or you can't publish", the university would get $5000 of producer surplus and the hearing impaired lose out. With this rule, the university gets $4900 worth of producer surplus, and the hearing impaired can actually watch this very important video. It's really easy to forget about the cases that aren't getting fought over but are still subject to the rule. If you've got an idea for a better rule that lets Berkeley publish these videos, but still keeps universities from pretending that they can't afford to make videos accessible when they actually can, I'm all ears.
  - andrenth 10y ago
    I have no idea if your cost assumptions make sense or not so I don't know whether they are pretending. Either way, I have a better idea: no rules. They are releasing high quality content online for free to a large segment of the world's population. Just let them do it! Here's another idea: The people who are so concerned about accessibility could join their efforts and provide a transcription. In multiple languages, by the way. We don't want to exclude anyone.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      I guess the same argument could be made in regards to not providing accessibility accommodations to buildings: that there should be "no rules", and if a building is built without accessibility accommodations at least access to such building "is free to a large segment of the world's population. Just let them do it!" It's pretty clear that such arguments lost with the passage of the ADA.
PeterisP 10y ago
The current law demands that level of fairness, but it's clear even from this thread that there's currently not a consensus in society if we really do demand that level of fairness given the drawbacks that we see; the society can also choose a slightly lower level/cost of fairness and might on whole be better off that way.
powertower 10y ago
The needs of a few never outweigh the needs of the many. Shutting down videos to millions of potential viewers because the recorders did not have the time nor money to produce transcripts, gains nothing / takes away everything. If things were really fair, we should be able to now sue the complainants for taking away from us everything that could have resulted from viewing the course material.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  >The needs of a few never outweigh the needs of the many. This is, uhh, kind of false. In liberal democracies like the US, we have some extraordinarily protections for the needs of the few at the expense of the many. For example, we've ruled as unconstitutional anti-miscegenation laws. The founding fathers were explicitly worried about the tyranny of the majority, too.

fiter 10y ago

I appreciate this discussion because we need to realize the trade offs of strict fairness. In order to be fair, we have provided less good/utility for those that were benefiting unfairly from the service. We have not provided any additional good/utility for those that were not able to benefit from the service.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
Yeah, it is a trade off. We're basically forcing content producers to subsidize access for the hearing impaired. This will make some content not worth publishing at the margin, while also forcing the clearly-worth-publishing things to provide access at their expense. The non-obvious thing is that this compliance-by-force is non-local. If you only look at Berkeley's videos, you're giving up these videos pointlessly. You have to also look at the videos that are going to be published anyways, and whether they'd include access for the deaf if people weren't dicks about enforcement.
- fiter 10y ago
  I like the way you put it: the creators are required to subsidize the disabled. Would it be better if this was approached from the other side? Creators could create without this concern. Disabled consumers would then pay for services that make specific creations accessible to them. The US government could then explicitly subsidize the disabled people.
pessimizer 10y ago
> We have not provided any additional good/utility for those that were not able to benefit from the service. If you insist on looking at this incident in isolation, yes. But if you look at it like that, there's no reason to imprison murderers, because it won't bring the victim back to life. If there were no requirement, very few things would be accessible. As a minority, the deaf will always be irrelevant to the majorities' utility calculus.
- fiter 10y ago
  There's definitely reasons to imprison murderers: (1) to prevent them from murdering again, (2) to rehabilitate them so they do not murder again, (3) to give feelings of closure/justice to those that cared for the victim. I think ThrustVectoring said it best in a post above yours: we're requiring creators to subsidize the disabled. An alternative way to subsidize the disabled might be to give them some amount of money every year which they can use to buy transcription, parking, etc. services. This might result in only certain content being transcribed. This might result in less parking spaces that are continuously empty. Maybe that would be a better use of everyone's time. Maybe it would create unnecessary decision burden on disabled people.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    The notion that prison rehabilitates has been widely discredited. Most of the time prison hardens criminals and makes them worse, with high recidivism rates being the rule rather than the exception. Also, if your goal was to prevent murderers from murdering again, why would you ever let them out? To generalize this to other crimes: why would you let any criminal out if your goal was to prevent them from committing more crimes?
    - fiter 10y ago
      Keep in mind I said prison, not "US prison system in 2017". http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-... You would let murderers out because you think there is some compromise between their freedom and the crime they committed. What is your suggestion?

andrenth 10y ago

Now they have the same level of access: none.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
Yeah, this is the bad case. But this sort of policy also has an effect on other situations: Suppose it costs $100 to make a video accessible for those with hearing impairments. Furthermore, suppose this video is really important - the university is willing to spend up to $20,000 on making it, but fortunately only has to spend $15,000. Without being a dick about "deaf accessible or you can't publish", the university would get $5000 of producer surplus and the hearing impaired lose out. With this rule, the university gets $4900 worth of producer surplus, and the hearing impaired can actually watch this very important video. It's really easy to forget about the cases that aren't getting fought over but are still subject to the rule. If you've got an idea for a better rule that lets Berkeley publish these videos, but still keeps universities from pretending that they can't afford to make videos accessible when they actually can, I'm all ears.
- andrenth 10y ago
  I have no idea if your cost assumptions make sense or not so I don't know whether they are pretending. Either way, I have a better idea: no rules. They are releasing high quality content online for free to a large segment of the world's population. Just let them do it! Here's another idea: The people who are so concerned about accessibility could join their efforts and provide a transcription. In multiple languages, by the way. We don't want to exclude anyone.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I guess the same argument could be made in regards to not providing accessibility accommodations to buildings: that there should be "no rules", and if a building is built without accessibility accommodations at least access to such building "is free to a large segment of the world's population. Just let them do it!" It's pretty clear that such arguments lost with the passage of the ADA.

PeterisP 10y ago

The current law demands that level of fairness, but it's clear even from this thread that there's currently not a consensus in society if we really do demand that level of fairness given the drawbacks that we see; the society can also choose a slightly lower level/cost of fairness and might on whole be better off that way.

powertower 10y ago

The needs of a few never outweigh the needs of the many. Shutting down videos to millions of potential viewers because the recorders did not have the time nor money to produce transcripts, gains nothing / takes away everything. If things were really fair, we should be able to now sue the complainants for taking away from us everything that could have resulted from viewing the course material.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
>The needs of a few never outweigh the needs of the many. This is, uhh, kind of false. In liberal democracies like the US, we have some extraordinarily protections for the needs of the few at the expense of the many. For example, we've ruled as unconstitutional anti-miscegenation laws. The founding fathers were explicitly worried about the tyranny of the majority, too.