Apr 23, 2021 10:26:00

College student sues exam monitoring software maker

On April 21, 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , a non-profit organization in the United States, announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Proctorio , a software maker that handles test management and monitoring systems, on behalf of students at the University of Miami. EFF alleges that Proctorio abused copyright law to remove tweets that were critical of the company.

EFF Sues Proctorio on Behalf of Student It Falsely Accused of Copyright Infringement to Get Critical Tweets Taken Down | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-proctorio-behalf-student-it-falsely-accused-copyright-infringement-get

Proctorio sued for using DMCA to take down a student's critical tweets | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/22/proctorio-sued-dmca-student-tweets/

In September 2020, University of Miami student and security researcher Eric Johnson posted a critique of Proctorio's test monitoring software developed as a Chrome extension on Twitter.

Hey @proctorio @artfulhacker How do you explain this?
You have strings referencing

'A Proctorio agent will review and verify the test taker's room scan'
and
“Live id check”

All while still saying that professors are the only ones who can access recordings and look at students?
— Erik Johnson (@ ejohnson99) September 8, 2020

In a series of tweets, Johnson posted a tweet containing a link to a page where part of the software code was published to discuss the security and privacy of Proctorio's software. Twitter has deleted three of Johnson's tweets because Proctorio filed an application under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for this tweet.

Regarding this removal request, EFF lawyer Kara Galiano said, 'Software companies should not abuse copyright law to discourage critics. For commentary on their research and for criticism. Using a portion of the code to support a comment is no different than quoting a passage from a book in a book review. ' He said it was an abuse of.

In addition, Twitter later revived Mr. Johnson's tweet as 'Proctorio's deletion application was incomplete', so it is possible to view the tweet at the time of article creation. However, the link to the public page of the code in the tweet is broken.

Your attempt can be terminated if…
―― 2 + min disconnection
--Attempt to modify page
--Attempt to download a file
--Plugged in a monitor
-(Un) plugged camera / mic
―― “Hardware malfunction”
--Switched networks
--Switched Proxies
--Reloaded tab https://t.co/5d327wS44t
— Erik Johnson (@ ejohnson99) September 8, 2020