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EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

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Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#311

Post by rubatuga »

djoldman wrote: post #300
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

His GoFundMe if you want to contribute: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-against-proctorio

EFF: "...The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit today against Proctorio Inc. on behalf of college student Erik Johnson ..." GoFundMe page: "...My name is Ian Linkletter ... wired over $50,000 to Arvay Finlay, LLP, doubling my legal defense fund. John Trueman is joined by Cathie Boies Parker, Q.C., and Mark Underhill..." Different lawsuits?

I think @dang did a faulty merge between two different, but related articles. This was the original article it was from:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900217

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#312

Post by davrosthedalek »

elliekelly wrote: post #137
davrosthedalek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a room, I can make sure that there is no other person there, that there is no big monitor with solutions, notes, whatever. I can also not see whether the students has another browser open with one of the cheat-websites where one of his faster colleagues has already uploaded the solution. I'm luckily in a field where we can do open-book exams without too much problems, which makes the "hidden notes" a non-issue, bu…

If someone can use hidden notes or google to get the answers then the exam isn't testing for knowledge or subject-matter understanding.

While it doesn't test for understanding, it absolutely tests for knowledge. Take the medical profession. There are many easily googlable facts a student has to know without google. For example a list of symptoms for a diagnosis (or better: possible diagnoses for a list of symptoms). It's not the only thing, but it's part of the education.

Or in physics (my field), I do want a student to know U=RI. Not google it. Not look it up. I also want them to be able to transform it to U/R=I.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#313

Post by tzs »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #301
soperj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. Make the exams open book and then the only thing you really need to worry about is the correct student taking the exam. If you're testing based on memorization of things in this day in age, then the course is useless.

I never understood the concept of cheating . If you don't know the answer to a question and you look it up, that's not cheating, it's research , or at least referring to reference material, which is always permitted in real life. Except for some contrived or rare circumstances someone will now point out. Even the Apollo 11 crew had support. Any professional in any industry is allowed to say: "I don't know" and "I'll…

That only works if the answer can be looked up.

Real life isn't always kind enough to only give problems that someone has already solved and published somewhere you can find.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#314

Post by _fat_santa »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #217
HillRat wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there’s a strong case that universities are violating ADA and state equal-access laws if they’re using proctoring software that unfairly penalizes individuals with glasses, to say nothing of the issues raised by the potential of racially-biased AI. A few class action suits against state university systems might well be warranted.

Not defending Proctorio, but: As I understand it, the software results aren't directly used to penalize students. It just flags the situation for review by an actual human if the software doesn't have high confidence that the student is looking at the screen most of the time. That doesn't mean there isn't a violation here, of course.

The bigger problem I see is professors that think "Oh well it's sophisticated AI, it can't make a mistake" and take the results for granted.

In one of the twitter thread I saw a screenshot form a professors email where they were mentioning that "X student had 100 more eye movements than Y student" and threatened to fail the entire class.

That email blew my mind because it seemed like the professor just didn't know or didn't care that the software was the problem here. And that's the real issue.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#315

Post by phildenhoff »

jimmySixDOF wrote: post #119

They should have just ignored this guy and gone on with life. Now the they got the EFF to deal with and it serves them right. There is another HN thread on this and a lot of people in it are more upset about the line of work Proctorio is in and how they do it than the fact they sued this minor irritating student. My opinion is there is simply no easy pain free way to do fraud auditing and that's that. I just recently…

Those are different lawsuits. The other (previous) article was for Ian Linkletter.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#316

Post by bo1024 »

djoldman wrote: post #300
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

His GoFundMe if you want to contribute: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-against-proctorio

EFF: "...The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit today against Proctorio Inc. on behalf of college student Erik Johnson ..." GoFundMe page: "...My name is Ian Linkletter ... wired over $50,000 to Arvay Finlay, LLP, doubling my legal defense fund. John Trueman is joined by Cathie Boies Parker, Q.C., and Mark Underhill..." Different lawsuits?

As someone else said, this originally linked to a tweet by linketter, who is being sued by proctorio. Similar but different scenarios

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#317

Post by dariosalvi78 »

leetcrew wrote: post #146
Guthur wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very disappointing that this whole monitoring system was deemed necessary to begin with. How screwed is the system that anyone one would believe this level of intrusion should be part of the education process.

cheating was absolutely rampant when I was in college getting my CS degree. and that was with tests taken in person with the professor in the room! I'm sure students are even more brazen when all assignments are done at home. I think at the very least, all exams ought to be designed as "open book" with a time limit. that at least eliminates the issue of students using unauthorized resources. I'm not sure what can be…

Is this the responsibility of teaching staff? They're not the police. in the end it's students responsibility to study, exams are just a way to make them understand that should. If they cheat they lose an opportunity to learn. They'll pay the consequences later, at work.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#318

Post by crazygringo »

driverdan wrote: post #161

Proctorio is on my red flag list. If any current or former employees of a flagged company apply for a job on my team I expect their reason for leaving to be for ethical reasons, or for them to tell me about how they had ethical problems with what the company was doing. If they don't I immediately remove them from the candidate pool.

Unless those ethical concerns directly impact your own team, then that's deeply unprofessional and unethical on your part, and you should reconsider your priorities.

Who appointed you moral judge of others? You discriminating against candidates based on their moral views unrelated to their work is no different from discriminating based on religion or political party affiliation.

It is legitimately within your purview to ensure that that a candidate doesn't have moral objections to the work they'll be expected to do, as well as look for legitimate objective red flags such as previously embezzling from an employer.

But the idea that you'd appoint yourself as some kind of moral purity guardian is deeply objectionable in a world where people legitimately disagree in good faith over ethical issues. You should re-examine this.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#319

Post by dariosalvi78 »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #303
smiths1999 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach at the university level and this is what I have done with my exams. Everything is open book and in my experience there is no difference in the average exam score between open book online and closed (or open) book in person. It is also way easier for me to not have to worry about who is cheating and where everyone is looking (I also don't like the idea of forcing students to turn on their webcams).

I finished up the coursework for my masters degree at the start of the pandemic. My university was quite flexible for how instructors would examine us, given how sudden everything had to change. One of my courses, which only had about 8 students and two instructors, decided to do an oral examination, which ended up being basically a very in-depth, one on one conversation about the course material and based on the exp…

When I was an engineering student at the university of Naples, all my courses were examined both with a written exam and an oral one. No exception, no matter how many students. It was hard for us and the teachers but, boy, you had to really study that stuff! Since then I've become an academic myself and have been teaching in several countries. I have never found the same level of rigor in any place I've been.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#320

Post by mhuffman »

crazygringo wrote: post #318
driverdan wrote: post #161

Proctorio is on my red flag list. If any current or former employees of a flagged company apply for a job on my team I expect their reason for leaving to be for ethical reasons, or for them to tell me about how they had ethical problems with what the company was doing. If they don't I immediately remove them from the candidate pool.

Unless those ethical concerns directly impact your own team, then that's deeply unprofessional and unethical on your part, and you should reconsider your priorities. Who appointed you moral judge of others? You discriminating against candidates based on their moral views unrelated to their work is no different from discriminating based on religion or political party affiliation. It is legitimately within your purview…

Hey, don't you know that "culture fit" means hating all the same things that I hate?
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