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Comment by philonoist | Hacker News Reader

I hope they don't take it down like how Berkeley CS videos were taken down.

Those were taken down because of some complicated lawsuit about use of public funds to make available content that wasn't accessible to people with disabilities. It was too expensive to make the recorded lectures work with tools used by people with disabilities, so the university took down the content instead instead of spending even more resources making it compatible with screen readers, adding captioning, etc.

CMU is a private university so this doesn't apply.

no good deed goes unpunished

That is the most Berkeley thing I've ever heard

Well Berkeley wasn't wanting to take it down, but there are evidently people who like to sue Berkeley who would prefer a world where those videos aren't available to anyone.

We have to ask ourselves: too expensive for what?

Berkeley has a 7 billion dollar endowment. I am sure they could have found the budget to make the videos compliant. They simply chose not too.

Endowments can't be spent.

Indeed. But the size of endowment, much like market capitalization of a company or GDP of a country, is a very useful metric to judge fiscal capacity.

Isn't this dependent on the the specific endowment policy though?

UC Berkeley's annual budget is 3 billion dollars. I still think they can afford this.

https://cfo.berkeley.edu/budget-101

I would think there's a legal way around that - maybe donate the rights to the affected materials to a private charitable trust that is exempt.

Well, I found an illegal way around that, haha - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34818768

This is the most wtf thing I have heard all day. Basically "me can't have so you can't have." It's like shutting down a public Library just because it doesn't have a ramp for people with wheelchair. Do people really go hmm 10 out of 100 people cannot have it so the other 90 will not have it too. Doesn't make sense.

It's also the reason why you can't get most college textbooks as an ebook, because ereaders are deemed not compliant for the blind: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague...

I don't understand anyway since screenreaders are a thing on computers and smartphones and you can load an ebook into either. Meanwhile a paper book either needs a very expensive braille copy or some kind of complicated electronic shit to read the book for you.

My guess is the publishers knew ebook piracy is a thing and bribed some officials to use the ADA line.

Off topic

a sentence with "instead instead" ... sounds both right and wrong at the same time :)

By the same token, would the course material be available under California's Public Records Act which is essentially a state version of the Freedom of Information Act?

Since the course material was created by public funds, shouldn't a state resident be able to request access to it?

This is an awesome idea. They should record the videos, not post them, have someone file a public records act request for them, and then that person can post them.

Oh that's why I can't find those lectures. Those saved me in my undergrad. Amazing content from amazing teachers.

You can suggest them to look into this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34818768

You can't find them anywhere? Not even Archive.org?

Please tell me you can find them somewhere.

Many from Reddit resonated with what you feel.

So let me help you with the location - Jackett or

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5E84BE34F69B1A313F6DCB51667EDF238D5D4412&dn=UC+Berkeley+Computer+Science+Courses+%28Full+Collection%29%09&tr=https%3A%2F%2Facademictorrents.com%2Fannounce.php&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexplodie.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopentracker.i2p.rocks%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.internetwarriors.net%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fcoppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.zer0day.to%3A1337%2Fannounce

It works! Thank you so very much!

https://archive.org/details/academictorrents_5e84be34f69b1a3...

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