It must be because I have worked with advocates for disabled people. I don't see the funny aspect. I'm glad for the laws. Either they apply or they do not. Either our hearing-disabled brothers and sisters are equal or they are not. It's juvenile to somehow factor porn out and say it shouldn't count there.
They are obviously not equal. They are hearing disabled. That's a red herring.
Should the society support them to lead normal lives as much as possible? We can pretty much agree on that, at least as long as the costs are reasonable (for example one billion per inner ear implant is definitely not).
If you put the problem like this it's obvious there is room for discussion. Is PH captioning helping them live normal lives? Is the cost reasonable? Is it really the best direction for society to put resources?
People will answer differently, of course, not being identical copies. But the conversation itself is legitimate.
Honestly I'd say you accusing the parent of a red herring is pretty much a red herring, given that the parent is very aware that the people in question are deaf.
Your resource argument doesn't hold up either, especially with money. Things can become cheap if society values them enough to invest time to make them cheap. Most of that time is currently being invested in making middle- and upper-class people's lives more comfortable (eg most unicorns out of SF) but that doesn't mean it _has_ to be that way.
Drugs could be cheaper (or not become absurdly expensive), places could be accessible, people wouldn't have to be homeless... It's clearly a resource allocation problem, but you make it sound like resources are very well allocated right now. I don't think they are.
The problem with this kind of regulation is that it stifles entrepreneurship with unfair financial burden. If the quality level of YouTube auto-generated CCs is considered passable, then don't you think tax money would be better invested in developing client-side captioning software that would be universal and work everywhere ?
Yeah, but what about the case that @threatofrain mentioned? If a company has no resources to auto-generate CCs for every video uploaded, then it should be punished and sued? (Of course this case does not apply to PH)
It's a very bad thing if in real life, everyone has to be in illegality in order to function. This is when the rule of law loses meaning and becomes a mere weapon to be used by those in power.