Proctorio Sued For Using DMCA To Take Down a Student's Critical Tweets (techcrunch.com) 43
A university student is suing exam proctoring software maker Proctorio to "quash a campaign of harassment" against critics of the company, including an accusation that the company misused copyright laws to remove his tweets that were critical of the software. From a report: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lawsuit this week on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson, who also does security research on the side, accused Proctorio of having "exploited the DMCA to undermine Johnson's commentary." Twitter hid three of Johnson's tweets after Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, alleging that three of Johnson's tweets violated the company's copyright. Schools and universities have increasingly leaned on proctoring software during the pandemic to invigilate student exams, albeit virtually. Further reading: Proctorio Is Using Racist Algorithms To Detect Faces; Cheating-Detection Software Provokes 'School-Surveillance Revolt'; and Students Are Easily Cheating 'State-of-the-Art' Test Proctoring Tech.
Shocked (Score:3)
The people who cry the loudest about cheaters are the real criminals
Re:Shocked (Score:4, Insightful)
They believe everybody's cheating because that's what they would do.
Re: Shocked (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> The term for that is projection
Conical? Mercator? Mollweide? Eckert? Hobo-Dyer?
Re: (Score:2)
Overhead
Evidence-based (Score:4, Interesting)
They believe everybody's cheating because that's what they would do.
When the pandemic first started we did not use any remote proctoring and ended up in one large intro course with 10-15% of students caught cheating and that's caught - the actual number may be higher. When you put people in a high-stress situation like an exam and an environment where there is no chance of cheating being caught the rate of cheating is extremely high.
So the evidence shows that while not everyone cheats a large enough fraction do that it will render exam results meaningless. We do not use Proctorio, which given their behaviour I am extremely thankful for. Our 'home-brew solution keeps all the data in-house and just flags things for instructors to check. It's far from ideal but because it relies on human intervention it is really no different than a TA pointing out something suspicious in an in-person exam. Despite this, it is incredibly effective. We went from 10-15% of students cheating to basically zero.
It's certainly possible to get around the system but sometimes all we need is a little prod to do the right thing and remote proctoring can provide that prod and there are a lot of students we have taught who have undoubtedly avoided a disciplinary failing grade or worse because of it. So while I would love to never have to use it the evidence shows that it improves outcomes for students. If we banned it discipline cases would go through the roof and a lot of students would be getting into serious academic trouble.
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I don't object to a bit of verifying (as in trust but), especially when humans are kept in the loop. Proctorio goes over the edge flagging things like looking to the side (as people reflexively do when trying to remember) or when a young sibling or even a pet enters the room. Things a human could easily enough discriminate from cheating.
Combine a paranoid hair trigger with lack of human review and you're practically assured of "catching" more innocents than guilty. Yet another silver bullet that hits anythi
Re: Evidence-based (Score:2)
The computer can only see that something came into the frame. It doesn't know whether that something is a child or not.
When something is detected coming into the frame, that's when the instructor or some other person needs to look to see what it is. It's not the computer's fault if the people don't look at the parts that were flagged as needing review. That's a people problem.
Re: Evidence-based (Score:4, Insightful)
It could at least look at the size of the thing that came in. It's able to tell if the test taker is looking directly at the screen or off to the side, so it should be able to tell a cat from a person at least.
It should definitely not refuse to proceed with the exam under any circumstance.
Like many things, it's too easy for people with a bit of authority to push off the responsibility with "the computer said..."
Re: (Score:3)
No, I was referring to Proctorio. I also think that people whose first instinct is to bleat about "But Party does X!" have absolutely pin-sized brains that can't see how much more alike all the popular parties are than they are different.
Hint: the lizards are all on the same side. Theirs. You're on the other side, because you're not a corporate Person with the cash to buy them.
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I am a troll, smartass. Want to meet after work and get drinks?
DMCA working as designed (Score:4, Insightful)
No penalties for false or frivolous claims.
So, what's up with our fancy new congress? Aren't they supposed to fix this stuff?
Re:DMCA working as designed (Score:4, Insightful)
There are priorities. Fixing the DMCA is probably down on the list, after protecting democracy from fascists. Also, if even one member of the fascist caucus wants to oppose a bill, it cannot pass in the Senate, currently it would take 10 members of that caucus for it pass.
There is a “Digital Copyright Act of 2021” draft bill, but I do not know if that particular fix is in it.
Don't expect magic wands to conjure up rainbow ponies on Day One.
Re: (Score:1)
Ten Rs that is to override even one opponent. I realized after posting that this commonly known fact about how the Senate filibuster work would escape the grasp of some here.
Re: (Score:1)
Democrats can kill the filibuster, but they always a convenient spoiler when needed. Today it's Joe Manchin
Re:DMCA working as designed (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider a simple example. Say you have three children - two boys and one girl. The boys like hamburgers, the girl likes pizza. You ask them to vote on what to eat. Hamburgers beat out pizza 2:1, so you go to have hamburgers. That's fine. That's how it should work. But now consider what happens when you ask them what to eat for a year. 360 votes, and 360 times hamburgers win. Despite the girl being 33% of the population, she gets pizza 0% of the time.
This is the fundamental flaw with majority rule: It only works if you only ever vote once. The moment you hold more than one vote, it results in outcomes which are skewed far too much in favor of the majority; the more votes you hold, the worse the skew. In the children example, it results in 100% of 360 votes being in favor of hamburgers. When a fairer, more democratic distribution would be for the girl to get her way 33% of the time (in proportion to her fraction of the population) - 240 days of eating hamburgers, 120 days of eating pizza. What's going on is that:
That's how the filibuster improves democracy. It provides a way for a 40% or greater minority to thwart the simple majority. And (if the issue is important enough for them to sit there filibustering 24/7) shifts the stairstep in the graph from 50% to 60%, making it a little bit fairer than simple majority rule. Eliminating the filibuster would make the government less democratic, not more. (The fairest system would be something like rock-paper-scissors, since that results in a win % exactly proportional to your share of the population. That's right, rock-paper-scissors is fairer than majority rule. Unfortunately, rock-paper-scissors is not deterministic - it's not repeatable. And would just result in people forcing the same vote over and over, until they got their way. Only for the losers to force the same vote again. But it works great for deciding where the kids should eat.)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
if the issue is important enough for them to sit there filibustering 24/7
Please cite a source that the Democrats are trying to eliminate that form of the filibuster. The idea is that if you want to filibuster something, you'll actually have to stand up there and hold the senate floor Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style. The current system allows any senator to block legislation by simply threatening to filibuster. The senate then moves on, with no further "cost" to the Senator who blocked the legislation. This effectively means that any legislation passed by the senate requires
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
AIUI it actually worked like that in the first half of the last century, but in the McConnell era, to take your analogy, the girl is blocking everything so that no-one eats at all.
Re: (Score:1)
AIUI it actually worked like that in the first half of the last century, but in the McConnell era, to take your analogy, the girl is blocking everything so that no-one eats at all.
You forgot all the times that the girl (McConnell) wanted to eat. Or place a Supreme Court justice. McConnell himself dropped the filibuster for SC justices after Gorsuch was filibustered. The girl is getting to eat all she wants.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The history of the filibuster is such that it was primarily used to block civil rights legislation in for much of its existence. "Mister Smith Goes To Washington" was a fictional story, it is not how filibusters have ever been used. That "minority' is much tiner than 40% if you realize that a state of any size gets 2 senators, giving a senator from Montana equal voting power to a senator from New York.
Re: (Score:2)
No, fixing the DMCA should NOT be last place, because it enables criminalizing the use of your own purchased possessions. That ooone line about circumventing a control has done almost as much damage as Citizens United. Companies have decided that you don't actually own anything anymore: not what you purchase at a store, not your "elected" officials (paid for by their corporate sponsors...).
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Who said LAST place? It just can't be FIRST (or even second, or third place). Really there are some other really important things that must be dealt with before it comes up.
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Okay, let me rephrase: fixing the DMCA is PART of fighting fascism. You can't very well put it after, when the corporations bought the state to get the state's guns to make you do their thing (fascism).
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It just has to be repealed, doesn't take long.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: DMCA working as designed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually you must be stuck in permanent adolescence (or possibly just an actual adolescent) to spout this sort of Randian nihilism.
Re: DMCA working as designed (Score:2)
Wow (Score:2)
I've seen most people not read the article, and all too often not even read the article. This is the first time I've heard of someone not reading the title.
Of course there are and have been penalties for fraudulent and frivolous DMCA claims. The issue is you have to sue the DMCA issuer to enforce them. No one wants to sue Sony because they were aggressive in issuing a DMCA and have to prove they were too aggressive.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't going to get better unless fraudulent DMCA claims or those that found to be so truly without merit that their frivolity is considered irrefutable by the court are considered criminal behavior, and criminal penalties are applicable.
Which, depending on the circumstances, could include the possibility of somebody spending time behind bars, businesses losing their license to operate in the country, etc.
If it's just an honest mistake, fine... not criminal (although civil penalties might still apply). But you better have all your ducks in a row and be able to describe to a court how precisely you came to the wrong conclusion from the information that you reasonably should have had available before trying to claim it as such.
Re: (Score:2)
No, once it is brought to their attention the government has to charge them with perjury, among other things that normal people get sanctioned over. The DOJ is supposed to enforce the law, but this law wasn't designed for that. It's just there to keep the kids from making their own copies. Major counterfeiters just buy off the cops.
Proctorio? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems like a good name for these assholes.
Re: (Score:3)
I say sue their asses off!
University Professors too (Score:5, Interesting)
They've sued a university professor for making public videos that were posted on Proctorio's website and documenting his distaste for it.
https://www.ubyssey.ca/news/pr... [ubyssey.ca]
Filing a takedown notice against the DMCA (Score:2, Troll)
We in Vatican City have been engaged in a campaign of harassment, censorship, and blatant abuse of the legal system against scholars, students, thinkers and scientists for over 800 years.
All rights reserved.
Amen. [wikipedia.org]
If it's an state school then may even be 1st amend (Score:3)
If it's an state school then may even be 1st amendment issues as well. So take it all the way to the US supreme court.
Don't just have the The Electronic Frontier Foundation help you also look at an civil rights lawsuit.
And state is the board state definition per the US constitution.
Honor System? (Score:1)