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Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

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Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#121
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the top edit on that post; All is accounted for.

Could you link to it please? I'm not able to find it :(

From the top of the Reddit post you linked to in your comment:

"Edit: Everything has been accounted for and is in the process of downloading, thank you to everyone who helped, especially lawpetex who backed up the full amount of all the Youtube and iTunes content!"

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#122
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What possible motivation could have moved those employees to file on behalf of their university? Malicious intent (they didn't want the free material competing with their courses)? Lack of gratitude (the material is free, but that's not enough)? Zealotry (everything, even free content, must meet their ADA compliance standards)? Simple lack of thinking through potential consequences? Lack of Net citizenship/spirit?…

The going rate to manually close caption transcribe those 20K videos seems to be missing. Apparently the DOJ did, but did not share that number in the letter, yet charges ahead that doing so would not be "unduly financially burdensome". Back of the envelope: assume an average 60 minutes per video, 20,000 videos. Googling around, I see manual, high-accuracy transcription and captioning goes for about $5-6 per minute,…

From the disability community's perspective, the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 are key safeguards to protect them from discrimination. Not enforcing these laws because the lectures benefit able-bodied people is ableism and discriminatory against the disabled community.

UCB was found to be in non-compliance. UCB could have chosen to fix the accessibility issues, but it did not. It wasn't the deaf community that took down the videos, but UCB's choice.

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#124
post #76

Could you get CS170 with Papadimitrou, EE 16A/B, and multiple semesters of 61A with Harvey? Thanks!

Ahh Harvey. He was really one of the best teachers I had at Berkeley.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to know him through the self-paced CS9 series.

I truly wish I had gotten to take 61A with him - and before it switched away from Scheme. I don't think the current incarnation is a worthy successor of the SICP based one.

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#125
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to it please? I'm not able to find it :(

From the top of the Reddit post you linked to in your comment: "Edit: Everything has been accounted for and is in the process of downloading, thank you to everyone who helped, especially lawpetex who backed up the full amount of all the Youtube and iTunes content!"

Weird. That isn't showing for me :/

Thanks anyway

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The going rate to manually close caption transcribe those 20K videos seems to be missing. Apparently the DOJ did, but did not share that number in the letter, yet charges ahead that doing so would not be "unduly financially burdensome". Back of the envelope: assume an average 60 minutes per video, 20,000 videos. Googling around, I see manual, high-accuracy transcription and captioning goes for about $5-6 per minute,…

From the disability community's perspective, the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 are key safeguards to protect them from discrimination. Not enforcing these laws because the lectures benefit able-bodied people is ableism and discriminatory against the disabled community. UCB was found to be in non-compliance. UCB could have chosen to fix the accessibility issues, but it did not. It wasn't the de…

I appreciate the disability community's "hand up, not hand out" attitude. But Bloomberg TV's and CNBC's closed captioning for example, are nearly incomprehensible much of the time. Far, far more of the disability community's members are impacted by timely, accurate financial news than the ones who wanted to take UCB's free video courses.

So why single out UCB? Why single out free educational content instead of for-profit content with a wider, more actionable impact?

I understand UCB pulled the videos. From my layman's perspective, that doesn't actually address the DOJ's enforcement action. The Title II compliance demand still stands even after taking down the videos from public access. I am concerned that UCB will simply ban all the videos from even student access, and only allow them back into use as they are vetted, one by one, slowly, by their Web Accessibility Services team, and now with expensive attorney time on top, and only when an actual disabled student attends a specific course.

The disability-compliant transcription processing cost is about 2.5X more expensive than stenography transcription. An all-day deposition will cost in the range of about $1K, and 8 hours of closed caption transcription will run around $2.4K. Yet court stenographers are not mandated absolutely everywhere on the off-chance a court-accepted record might be needed, only in a court where their output is required to make a decision. So why is the criteria for ADA compliance set so much broader?

Would Gallaudet University have pressed the case if the fewer than a handful of courses that were desired were re-done and transcribed to meet their accuracy requirements? If not, what is the rationale for a blanket injunction to transcribe all courses regardless of demonstrated need? The services to meet compliance are very expensive, is advocating for indiscriminate enforcement as a blanket policy economically realistic at this point of automated transcription development?

I want to see us reach the point where all media is seamlessly, automatically and practically for free transcribed for the disabled in a variety of formats. But we're still in a world ruled by scarcity for quite a while longer, and I am currently unable to reconcile the enormous costs placed upon society at large and content creators in particular. Please share your perspective, thanks in advance.

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#129

All of it has already been archived (EDIT: thanks to the hard work and quick response of ArchiveTeam and /r/DataHoarder). [edit: link to Archive Team project-specific page removed to reduce excessive load; replaced with Archive.is link below] https://archive.is/D1Ail

Out of curiosity, if Berkeley requests that the Archive Team remove their videos, I assume they would comply? There must be a reason they want their videos taken down, and could presumably use the threat of legal action to have them removed from any archives? Why choose to take down videos being hosted at no cost on YouTube if you're willing to allow them to be "pirated" (aka preserved) elsewhere?

Re: Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive?

#130

All of it has already been archived (EDIT: thanks to the hard work and quick response of ArchiveTeam and /r/DataHoarder). [edit: link to Archive Team project-specific page removed to reduce excessive load; replaced with Archive.is link below] https://archive.is/D1Ail

Out of curiosity, if Berkeley requests that the Archive Team remove their videos, I assume they would comply? There must be a reason they want their videos taken down, and could presumably use the threat of legal action to have them removed from any archives? Why choose to take down videos being hosted at no cost on YouTube if you're willing to allow them to be "pirated" (aka preserved) elsewhere?

I don't speak for Archive Team or Archive.org. Archive.org has DMCA exemptions but will comply with robots.txt access restrictions post-archival.

I operate independently as a digital archivist, providing support when possible. I will keep my own copy in cold storage as long as I'm alive, outside of the US jurisdiction but accessible globally.

The reason they're being removed is ADA subtitle compliance and the cost/effort associated with that (cheaper to purge/remove access rather than comply). Is UC Berkeley going to pursue people attempting to preserve knowledge without their consent? That's up to them. They would, of course, be unsuccessful.

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