Proctorio sued for using DMCA to take down a student’s critical tweets
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.
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.
Tweets linking to source code were fair use, say digital-rights warriors Share
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Wednesday sued Proctorio, a maker of academic surveillance software, to obtain judgement that a Miami University student s tweets linking to portions of Proctorio source code on Pastebin do not violate copyright law.
Proctorio in November last year had tweets from computer science student Erik Johnson removed from Twitter using a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request, based on the company s claim that his posts violated its intellectual property rights. Twitter subsequently restored the tweets citing Protorio s incomplete takedown request but the Pastebin code samples remain inaccessible.
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During the pandemic, a dangerous business has prospered: invading students’ privacy with proctoring software and apps. In the last year, we’ve seen universities compel students to download apps that collect their face images, driver’s license data, and network information. Students who want to move forward with their education are sometimes forced to accept being recorded in their own homes and having the footage reviewed for “suspicious” behavior.
Given these invasions, it’s no surprise that students and educators are fighting back against these apps. Last fall, Ian Linkletter, a remote learning specialist at the University of British Columbia, became part of a chorus of critics concerned with this industry.
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The university began using Proctorio last spring, in response to the rapid shift to online instruction. It will not renew the contract past this summer. In a memo to faculty members announcing the decision, university administrators cited the “significant accessibility concerns” associated with Proctorio, along with other worries about privacy, data security and equity.
Accessibility and Other Concerns
This echoes ongoing complaints from many students and professors about cheating-prevention software in general, including that these programs don’t always work for students with visual impairments who need screen readers. These programs have been known to repeatedly flag as suspicious students who self-stimulate or “stim” during exams. Many students report increased text anxiety due to feeling surveilled. Even the glare of glasses sometimes interferes with the software.