EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by modsmustgo » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #339

batmaniam wrote: post #331

> This is a civil action seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringement under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 106, 107, as well as injunctive relief and damages for misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) Oh cool, so the EFF is gonna claim a false DMCA filing. I hope the student will be made whole financially after what he had to go through; app…

They need to go after the lawyers who signed off on the notice. That is the only way to get real accountability.

^Astrikes the portion of the law that says anything about responding to all claims "expeditiously", and replaces it with something that accurately represents the severity of the situation(s).^A

edit: severity in relation to an actual copyright violation, not possible damages imagined in the accusers theoretical situation if the content was not removed. Some companies might gladly eat a fine if only 1/100 people challenge their sick interpretation of the law and it keeps the bad PR from getting out. I could bore you with far worse scenarios but I will not aid the authoritarians with any further information.

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

#362

Post by professoretc » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

JohnWhigham wrote: post #336

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).

If you can't see them, doesn't that open up the possibility of students taking the exam together?

I give regular online exams without any protoring software, pure honor system. I have three students who live together who consistently turn in identical work. What I don't understand is why the keep doing it, when I keep giving them 0s for copying.

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

#363

Post by mdoms » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

It's unethical to hire people who align with your (and your company's) values?

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

#364

Post by input_sh » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #310

kasperni wrote: post #3

Background: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/student-surveillance-v...

(This was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900217 , which we merged hither.)

This isn't the same, it's two different lawsuits.

One is for a student by the name of Ian Linkletter from British Columbia.

EFF is suing on behalf of Erik Johnson from Miami.

The only thing they have in common is Proctorio.

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

#365

Post by professoretc » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #314

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the email mentioned particular students by name then that in and of itself is a violation (at least in California). We're absolutely not supposed to share any student performance information with anyone other than the student, without permission.

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

#366

Post by barefeg » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

samkater wrote: post #248

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 would add some nuance to this view. For nearly every undergraduate course I agree - the ability of knowing where to look for resources in a particular subject matter, synthesizing the available information to solve a reasonably novel problem, and presenting the information in a coherent way is a skill/art that should be one of the primary goals of the education. For advanced degrees, though, I'm not so sure. I expe…

1. PhDs don’t “do exams”. You can’t cheat your way to publishing original research (exceptions of course) and have external expert researchers review it and accepted on a reputable journal. Given that that’s a requisite for obtaining your degree, there’s no point on a final exam. Most defenses nowadays are partly ceremonial (exceptions of course). Both the material and your ability to do research has been checked months before by your advisors and graduation committee.

2. Master’s degree courses follow all kinds of schemas for examination. From oral exams, to in person no extra material allowed, to open book, and take home. Being on both sides (taking the exams and creating them) I can say that it really doesn’t matter if you allow people to take the exam home and collaborate among each other. These types of exams are designed to really test a deep understanding and ability of the material. There have been exam questions where an entire class of >20 students are not able to solve it. People that are really good are able to have a shot at it and maybe make some progress, and that differentiates the good from the exceptional.

3. Nowadays undergraduate degrees are a commodity so it feels they need to make sure only the good students get one. But in the end it doesn’t really matter, since most employers (exceptions of course) will want to see how much value the candidate add, which does not correlate with having a degree or good grades

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

#367

Post by arminiusreturns » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #5

In case you don't know who Proctorio is: (like me) Apparently it's a supervision software that students are forced to install on their private computer and (as expected) it'll do its worst to invade your privacy and flag "suspicious" things, based on which the university might punish you. "Suspicious" here means wearing glasses [3] or looking around in the room or blinking too much [4] or having eye and/or skin color…

My last uni used this and I had another major complaint: I had to show my drivers license to the person in the call center in India every time! None of my questions about what kind of privacy controls existed could be answered... and being a linux only person, it was a major pita to either get them to understand I don't have windows or to not give me a hard time if I was using a VM because who tf trusts that software? (the grwat irony being this school constantly touted its cybersecurity degree programs)

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

#368

Post by yowlingcat » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #238

yowlingcat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether I can take this statement at its word. If that's the response when questioned about working at a company whose entire purpose is purportedly ethical, I would strongly reconsider your position. There are many corporate cultures where this kind of apathy and whatabout-ism would be considered a red flag. That would certainly be the case for any process I've run.

Let me put it this way, asking why you left an employer is fine. Expecting a certain answer for a subjective situation and rejecting an applicant because they didn't give you exactly that answer is not exactly a healthy behavior. I'm here for a job, not to play weird mind games.

I'm not sure why it's so hard to say "Yes, company X did a lot of things well (Y, Z, AA) but could have improved in sectors AB, AC, AD." Actually, I do understand why -- you may be risk averse, and the fear of losing your job or rocking the boat precludes you from making a critique even if other people get hurt. Maybe in part because you too have mouths to feed and folks who will get hurt if you do so. So you downvote and make up excuses for it. After all, that's easier than addressing the cognitive dissonance, no?

It's understandable, but I still can't agree that it leaves you without some amount of ethical culpability. Maybe significantly less than an executive. But still, some. It's more understandable for roles that don't have as strong a position in the labor market as engineers, but I find it a little bit less so for myself, as someone who works in engineering.

I think you (and anyone else downvoting) should read Eichmann in Jerusalem [1]. It's about this exact ethical quandary. I would hope it would change your opinion on these things, but if it doesn't, agree to disagree. And certainly don't expect any sympathy from me or the rest of society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

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

#369

Post by jkelleyrtp » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #196

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #150

I personally believe education should just move forward into a world where cheating is impossible. Hands-on schools like Olin College of Engineering make it practically impossible to cheat... because you actually have to build something! Sure, plagiarism is still an issue, but that's much easier to control for than monitoring students while they take a test.

I don't disagree, but the issue here is one of scale and costs. Testing is just easy , cheap, and very ingrained to boot. A single teacher can teach dozens or hundreds of students. Olin charges $55,612/year tuition fees alone; the total costs are estimated at $79,024/year[1]. This is a lot higher than a lot of other "normal" universities[2], and even seems higher than most "top universities"[3]. I'm sure it's great i…

Olin provides a 50% scholarship for everyone and does really well at financial aid. I currently go here :). In the beginning of the school's lifetime, everyone had a 100% scholarship. It's a common tactic for schools to say their college is the same price as MIT/Harvard but not actually cost that much.

Plus, many schools are moving towards a co-op/hand son/project-based model, even public ones. University of Waterloo is such an example, and many state schools I know are also transitioning into a project-based model. It's not that more expensive than testing - especially given the fact that everyone has a computer, 3d printers and workshops are relatively cheap, and most undergrad projects aren't that expensive.

Students tend to get internships, pay for their school, and move into high paying jobs immediately out of school because how much experience they have, even if they have to give up some theoretical basis. That being said, Olin generates many grad-school students that do well at research.

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

#370

Post by dang » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #364

dang wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(This was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900217 , which we merged hither.)

This isn't the same, it's two different lawsuits. One is for a student by the name of Ian Linkletter from British Columbia. EFF is suing on behalf of Erik Johnson from Miami. The only thing they have in common is Proctorio.

Ah—sorry, I definitely missed that. I doubt that the distinction makes much difference for HN purposes, though, since threads on either one of those will fuse into the same discussion.