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The Great Firewall of Yale

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Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#71

Post by icambron »

teraflop wrote: post #65
pkfrank wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this apply even when the "copyright holder" has meaningfully manipulated the information in order for it to be in a useful form? Have they imparted some IP that is now protected in some way? IE, could I mirror deep-level sports statistics without attribution? One would think the agency I "took" it from had applied meaningful resources to extrapolating this data, which may be in fact be statement of fact . I'm pu…

My understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that it depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, copyright normally only applies to works of creative expression, and not to facts or ideas. However, you can argue that the selection of facts that are compiled into a database involves creativity; in that case, the database as a whole may be protected, even though the individual facts aren't. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy…

IANAL, but since the database is just (presumably) all of the classes at Yale, it's hard to see how their selection could be copyrightable. I haven't used the app, but it's quite possible they have course descriptions in there too, though, which are copyrightable.

But then there's the separate question of why Yale wants to do any of this.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#72

Post by shtylman »

I run a similar service for other schools (courseoff.com) and I have run into this before. I bet what happened was their site failed to cache the course data or seat information and was thus making lots of requests to the Yale servers. To Yale it might appear like a DoS from this site.

Obviously I don't know for sure but I would venture to bet this block was more an automated response than malicious intent against the site.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#73

Post by waps »

muppetman wrote: post #41
brianpgordon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were only blocking based on IP address then students wouldn't be able to ping the server. So they're blocking on at least the TCP layer. ... not that that constitutes DPI either.

You don't think they probably force their students through a HTTP Proxy (which will have a different address) than the one a ping ends up originating from? I'm with the parent, I doubt they're doing DPI here.

If that's the case, and it looks like it may be, then they should simply switch to https and things will work again.

There's a million other reasons to use https as well.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#75

Post by Crito »

shtylman wrote: post #72

I run a similar service for other schools (courseoff.com) and I have run into this before. I bet what happened was their site failed to cache the course data or seat information and was thus making lots of requests to the Yale servers. To Yale it might appear like a DoS from this site. Obviously I don't know for sure but I would venture to bet this block was more an automated response than malicious intent against th…

The article indicates otherwise.

The issue isn't that Yale cut off the sites access to the school's servers. The issue is that Yale cut off their students access to the site. Furthermore Yale and the site were apparently in dialog before the block, and Yale raised copyright concerns (probably bullshit, unless they were copying course descriptions or something like that (I suspect course descriptions were involved initially): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_generis_database_right#Unit...).

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#77

Post by bentcorner »

shtylman wrote: post #72

I run a similar service for other schools (courseoff.com) and I have run into this before. I bet what happened was their site failed to cache the course data or seat information and was thus making lots of requests to the Yale servers. To Yale it might appear like a DoS from this site. Obviously I don't know for sure but I would venture to bet this block was more an automated response than malicious intent against th…

> Over 2,000 students out of a campus of 5,000 were using it as of today noon, when the Yale administration began censoring it using traffic inspection. They had contacted us warning that we were using copyrighted data.

It doesn't seem automated, and if there was a DoS wouldn't they just go out and say so?

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#78

Post by Crito »

icambron wrote: post #71
teraflop wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that it depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, copyright normally only applies to works of creative expression, and not to facts or ideas. However, you can argue that the selection of facts that are compiled into a database involves creativity; in that case, the database as a whole may be protected, even though the individual facts aren't. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy…

IANAL, but since the database is just (presumably) all of the classes at Yale, it's hard to see how their selection could be copyrightable. I haven't used the app, but it's quite possible they have course descriptions in there too, though, which are copyrightable. But then there's the separate question of why Yale wants to do any of this.

> But then there's the separate question of why Yale wants to do any of this.

I suspect that providing easy/effective access to course and professor ratings trampled on some feet. Somebody's course enrollment is hurting and making somebody look bad.

Re: The Great Firewall of Yale

#80

Post by jsrozner »

bentcorner wrote: post #77
shtylman wrote: post #72

I run a similar service for other schools (courseoff.com) and I have run into this before. I bet what happened was their site failed to cache the course data or seat information and was thus making lots of requests to the Yale servers. To Yale it might appear like a DoS from this site. Obviously I don't know for sure but I would venture to bet this block was more an automated response than malicious intent against th…

> Over 2,000 students out of a campus of 5,000 were using it as of today noon, when the Yale administration began censoring it using traffic inspection. They had contacted us warning that we were using copyrighted data. It doesn't seem automated, and if there was a DoS wouldn't they just go out and say so?

The data was scraped quite some time ago. There is no issue with a DoS on the Yale servers.
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