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Comment by erok | Hacker News Reader

I agree. There goes free online courses from MIT and Harvard due to the impending legal fees implied. Thank you National Association of the Deaf.

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On EdX.org, where Harvard and MIT put many online courses for free, all course videos already are professionally captioned and accessible. The cited videos in the lawsuit aren't even course videos, they're promotional videos or streaming versions of conferences. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President Obama and Lady Gaga visiting campus for an event. - see http://creeclaw.org/online-content-lawsuit-harvard-mit/

This will just change all of it though.

Most of these videos are already being captioned. What's needed in large part is just higher quality captions. Nobody is shutting anything down for the mere lack of a better captioning system.

Which means you'll have just as much access to the knowledge as deaf people. Accessibility should never be an add-on.

You have a good point, but I would point out that deaf people watching a silent un-captioned video is more access to knowledge than watching no video at all.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei8fyGwsy1o without looking at the captions and see how much you get from it. You're not going to get much if anything from the video. Now, add a professor who will be turning to write on a blackboard, doesn't move their lips enough for you to read them, etc, and you can start to see how this is a real problem.

Deaf people's problems are not my problems (except insofar as I choose to act on empathy I may feel), and making something accessible is a choice, and not something deaf people have any right to, nor I any obligation to provide. They are entitled to nothing (from me) I do not freely choose to give. They may have achieved sufficient political power to force others to do what they want, whether or not the other person wants to - but that is just coercion and nothing more than thuggery, and should be treated as such. To destroy other people's access to a good because you have the power to, in order to coerce them into acting so that you receive such a good yourself, is wrong.

(If I have the resources to make something accessible, and if I value making something accessible to deaf people over other uses of those resources, then of course it's a good thing to make it accessible. Personally, I think making these videos accessible would be a very good thing; I also think that, as long as it's reasonably feasible, the universities should . But the existence of deaf people does not represent any kind of a claim on my (or anyone else's) resources, nor a shackle on my behaviour; and if it does under current, it damn well shouldn't, and that law is unjust and oppressive.)

How does that even square? According to your initial premise, your problems are not deaf people's problems (except insofar as they choose to act on empathy they may feel), and they should do everything in their power to maximize their access, even if it costs you. If you want to live in the state of nature, everyone has the right to trample on everyone else. Mercifully, our social structure still is more in line with Rawls than Rand.

I consider Rand's political theories misguided, but it's certainly not "the state of nature", nor is that aneeshm's position. Claiming so is just flamebait, not having an honest discussion.

"Flamebait" was certainly not my intention. I may be naive, but what is the difference between a society comprised of people with no obligations toward each other and the state of nature?

Edit: For instance, for Hobbes, that pretty much is the definition of the state of nature, in which everyone has the natural right to their own self-preservation and goals. The rise of sovereign power is often conceived of as the enforcement of obligations that override natural rights to complete liberty (through something that is probably even more properly called "thuggery" than deaf advocacy groups' political actions).

Objectivism (Rand's philosophy) didn't defend a society comprised of people with no obligations toward each other. Like most libertarians/classical liberal philosophies, it supports the NAP[1], as well as defending the necessity of an impartial law system.

It just defends negative rights, instead of positives ones, not a lack of rights and obligations. See Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty[2].

EDIT to your EDIT: in Hobbes' state of nature, everyone has the right do to whatever one thinks is necessary for one's own preservation (including, say, killing others). For Rand, one has the right to not be attacked by others, even if that goes reduces the others' chances of self-preservation. The two are very different, and the latter does impose (negative) obligations on individuals towards others.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty

Ah, those links refreshed my memory- I was incorrect in my edit- that approach more closely resembles Locke's state of nature. But thank you for showing me that Rand gets there from another angle.

Equally, you have no more right to Harvard's free videos than a deaf person, and Harvard has no right to government funding. Turtles all the way down, with that argument.

> To destroy other people's access to a good because you have the power to, in order to coerce them into acting so that you receive such a good yourself, is wrong.

Sorry, Ms Parks, but you can't sit in that seat...

That's not actually true, since a deaf person (or community) could pay to get them captioned. That doesn't mean they should have to, but it's not the same as not having the video in the first place.

I believe the point is that if a barrier to produce 'a thing' is raised, people will be less likely to produce more of 'a thing'.

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