04.03.07
Posted in Pedagogy and Scholarship, Copyright at 12:34 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
My friend Dawno alerted me to this story about anti-plagiarism service Turnitin.com being sued for copyright violation by four students. Turnitin is a service contracted by universities and schools. Faculty submit student papers for analysis by Turnitin which compares the text to papers stored in an internal database and to text stored on the Web; Turnitin uses an algorithm based-text-string analysis of the sort an experienced teacher engages in when we use our own skills and Google to spot plagiarism. Turnitin looks for strings that match within a few characters, and then provides a “report” that color codes text and and offers statistics and URLs.
I’ve had problem with the concepts behind Turnitin right from the start; I blogged about my concerns regarding violating student’s rights some time ago. Now, students are suing Turnitin for copyright violation because their papers are databased and used for subsequent comparisons without their permission; I suspect we’ll see a privacy violation, particularly in the context of FERPA soon.
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06.04.04
Posted in Pedagogy and Scholarship, Copyright at 9:41 am by Lisa Spangenberg
There’s an interesting discussion over at Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light regarding the University of Kent student dismissed for plagiarism. The comments from Teresa’s regular readers, including those in the UK, are especially good.
My university has recently subscribed to Turnitin, a database and searching service that compares instructor-submitted files of student papers to those in its database, and to data on the web, in an attempt to identify plagiarism. The instructor then receives an annotated color-coded version of the paper, that includes citations to “sources” from the database, or the web, and an indication of the percentage of the paper that “source” equals.
The school doesn’t require faculty to use the service, and they’ve done a good job of integrating TurnItIn into official web sites, (well, integrating TurnItIn into the site; the pedagogical and philosophical integration is missing) but I really loathe the idea and the service. I think Turnitin is a potential violation of student rights, and I think it could cause more problems than it eases.
UPDATE: 06/06/2004 10:59 AM: Teresa has posted an additional reflection “Not the case for the Defense” regarding her suggestion that Mr. Gunn repeat his entire university program. I actually think her suggestion has some merit. If, in fact, it is true that he plagiarized throughout his three years, then the university failed part of its mission in not catching and responding appropriately. Mr. Gunn’s transcript would indicate that he took six years to earn a three year degree, and the university will doubtlessly be paying much more attention to the quality of his work. The argument that Mr. Gunn would somehow “displace” a more deserving student doesn’t really seem realistic to me. Admit however many new students the univeristy would ordinarily admit. You aren’t so much readmitting Mr. Gunn as allowing him to repeat his coursework, legitimately.
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05.05.04
Posted in Software, Pedagogy and Scholarship, Copyright, Security at 9:50 am by Lisa Spangenberg
I’ve posted about the DMCA before, pointing out that the DMCA is a poorly written law, but it is the law,
and must be adhered to, something RIAA subpoenas rely on. There have recently been a
number of articles referring to the way UCLA, where I am a student, is
dealing with P2P (peer to peer) MP3 file trading, and allegations of a
digital copyright violation from rights holders. Most of the articles seem
to miss the point, even though UCLA has provided a public
statement explaining the process.
UCLA, like most other campuses
and networks with any sizeable user base (or an Online Service Provider in
DCMA terms), is required to have contact information for the DMCA
“designated agent” posted on the university’s web site. When a rights holder contacts
the DMCA designated agent and asserts the presence of a copyright violation
on the network the content in question must be removed, immediately,
before a decision about the validity of the complaint. Keep in mind that
the claim of online copyright infringement is not a standard, easy to
follow memo; it’s a legal document, generated by a culture that gives
points for complexity. Sometimes the notifications are incomplete.
Nonetheless the designated DMCA agent has to respond by removing the
material, within a very short time, in accordance with the law. That’s a
lot of work for a large school, especially a school with 25,328
undergraduates, many of whom live in campus residences connected to the
high speed campus back bone. It’s not uncommon for large schools to receive
hundreds of notifications a month. And of course UCLA, like every other
campus with a network connection, is worried about students potentially
“trading” illegal MP3 or other files covered by copyright for reasons
beyond their concerns about possibly illegal activity on their networks.
The popularity of P2P “file trading” among users between twelve and fifty
can clog networks, creating so much congestion that users simply trying to
send and receive email or browse the web, can’t.
There are a number
of ways a campus can deal with potential problems.
- Some campuses
look specifically for users employing P2P clients on their networks, and
react by shutting off specific ports. Others look for traffic patterns and
other indicators of P2P use, and automatically restrict access based on
locally determined criteria.
- This is the approach that the
University of Florida’s ICARUS system uses. ICARUS looks for use patterns associated with
large-scale “sharing,” then displays a pop-up notifying the student that
network access has been restricted locally, and why, and how to obtain full
access again. I don’t think much of this solution; it’s not always that
easy to distinguish between illegal P2P activity and legal P2P activity. It
also seems needlessly invasisive. Remember, it isn’t P2P software that’s
the problem, only the actions of some users. There are also legitimate reasons to use P2P (many of them related to
research and
instruction— think “distributed computing” and “grids”) and some
“file trading” is legitimate, and not in violation of copyright. I can
think of a number of ways to legitimately use P2P to transfer large files for
instruction, for instance, in a music composition class. This approach
makes that kind of use difficult.
- Some campuses don’t do
much of anything to educate users or prevent network abuse until the RIAA
comes calling, subpoena in hand, and then they turn over records, in the
worst cases, or stall, in the most common reaction.
- I
don’t think much of this solution either. It is illegal to distribute
copyright protected files without permission from the rights holder.
Moreover, it is part of the responsibility of a university to educate
students about ethics as well as the standard academic subjects. Students,
and all the other users of a network, need to be educated about the
illegality of distributing material without permission from the rights
holders. Finally, students do have certain privacy rights, rights that are
explicitly protected via FERPA regulations; this “solution” tends to impinge
students’ rights, potentially resulting in violations of FERPA and other
privacy statutes.
- Some universities use another form of
technological prevention; they employ various filtering and packet sniffing
technologies (both hardware and software) to inspect network data,
comparing the data to a database of materials, or looking for specific
protocols associated with P2P traffic, and then stopping the transfer in
one of several ways.
- Filtering, unless it is used in
tandem with other measures, isn’t a solution; it may well in fact create
additional problems. First, it tends to work by paying attention to
specific kinds of traffic, like P2P, rather than other kinds (UseNet, for
instance). Again, any technology can eventually be subverted, (encryption
doesn’t have to be difficult, and soon won’t be) and since these methods
rely on letting a download start, so that it can be checked, this approach
strikes me as a waste of bandwidth. The likelihood of false positives seems
fairly high to me. Generally, with this kind of technology, there are
tracking identification methods that are a bit of a problem on a campus,
given privacy issues. This solution tends to be expensive, since it relies
on proprietary code and hardware. Close monitoring, at the level of
individual use patterns, can have a chilling effect on research and the academic community,
often because to the average user it may appear like “spying,” whatever the
intention is. Finally, this kind of solution doesn’t do anything to change
the behavior of users for the long term, and therefore isn’t a real
solution.
- Some universities engage in bandwidth
throttling, monitoring the network for excess throughput and shutting it
off, or shutting off specific users, or in some cases, prohibiting the
ability to upload files; this was pretty common for reasons of cost and
network management long before P2P was an issue, and it’s fairly standard
practice for a variety of reasons having to do with network and cost
management. UCLA does this in part now, by making web and email traffic on
the network a higher priority than, say, P2P traffic.
- This
solution doesn’t change user behavior for the long term; it simply masks
the symptoms of the problem, and it affects the innocent as well as the
possibly guilty. There are legitimate reasons for academic users to use
lots of bandwidth, and uploading is necessary for a variety of research and
educational purposes. However, bandwidth control in combination with other
methods can be effective as a protective measure.
In
general, I’m not impressed with any overly sophisticated or elaborate
technological solutions. For one thing, digital technology changes rapidly,
in a matter of hours, sometimes, and a really clever method of preventing
“file trading” is likely to attract the attention of really clever people
who will subvert it as an interesting puzzle. Moreover, these solutions
tend to be expensive, and I think there are far better ways to spend an IT
budget. The real solution is to change behaviors, not
technologies.
I rather like what UCLA has done.
- First,
though the awkwardly written and scantily researched
Chronicle of Higher Education article doesn’t refer to it,
UCLA spends a fair amount of effort on educating students regarding appropriate use of the campus academic and residential networks. That includes orientation
sessions for incoming students. For obvious reasons, right now the central
issue is the use of the residential network (ResNet) associated with
campus housing
(about 7,500 students and some faculty and staff living in the residence
halls), but the entire UCLA community is involved in appropriate use
education.
- Secondly, UCLA doesn’t make assumptions about the
guilt or innocence of the students. If UCLA is contacted regarding a
violation, the student is notified by email, and the students computer is
“quarantined” with respect to the campus network, allowing the student to
access on campus resources vital for instruction and interaction with
administration and faculty, but not access other ResNet points or external
networks.
- The resident is told to remove the files in
question, and to sign a statement which indicates that the files have been
removed but which neither asserts nor requires an admission of
guilt. The file removal and quarantine are in response to the
requirements of the DMCA; they are not punitive.
- If these
steps are followed, complete network access is restored, generally within
in one business day.
- If there is a subsequent incident
involving the same student, the student’s computer is again placed in
quarantine (that is, it’s access to the network is restricted) and the
student must go through the standard campus disciplinary process, which
generally involves the Dean of Students office. During the time the inquiry
is in process, the computer remains in quarantine, with restricted network
access, but the student can still use the campus network resources
necessary to complete course work.
I like UCLA’s
approach since it doesn’t engage in invasive actions, packet sniffing, or
assumptions of guilt. UCLA responds with alacrity to allegations of
copyright violation, in accord with the DMCA, by placing a computer in
quarantine. This method provides an opportunity to educate the user. Even
though copyright issues are discussed at orientation, many students don’t
really seem to understand that not only are they inadvertently sharing
files they may have obtained legally, (naive P2P users don’t realize that
their own files are “shared” when they are downloading) or that even
downloading files “ripped” by others is illegal. By applying a quarantine,
UCLA prevents possible inappropriate use of the network, without
obstructing the student’s education, protects rights of the rights holder,
meets the requirements of the DMCA, and there’s an opportunity to educate
the user. UCLA’s approach also allows for due process in the event of a
second offense (and second offenses aren’t as common as you might think).
I particularly like the fact that this is a local UCLA solution,
created by the UCLA community. Despite what various sites have reported,
UCLA’s process does not rely on Universal’s ACNS software nor does UCLA use the University of
Florida’s ICARUS system, though UCLA does take advantage of the XML schema
for the allegation of a rights violation created by Universal, working with
the Joint
Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology
Task Force and other concerned parties. The XML schema for the initial
notification from a rights holder to an OSP standardizes the format, making
a timely response much easier. UCLA’s response is also standardized, so
that all students are treated the same way. I also like the fact that this
approach is not too technologically clever; UCLA uses the network equivalent
of shutting off a valve by removing access to parts of the network, to quarantine
the computer in question, and it can be combined with other preventive
measures, including user education. Best of all, UCLA’s process was
developed as a cooperative effort by a variety of people from the Dean of
Students office, campus Counsel, Residential Life, Housing and Hospitality
Services, many of them acting as members of committees, including student
representatives (like me). UCLA’s approach serves to protect the rights of
copyright holders, it educates students, and it protects students’ (and
users’) privacy rights.
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01.05.04
Posted in Copyright at 9:22 am by Lisa Spangenberg
So said Steve Jobs in a recent Rolling Stone interview, in which he says some of the smartest things I’ve seen anywhere about copyright. According to Steve Jobs:
If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise they’ll stop investing. But on another level entirely, it’s just wrong to steal. Or, let’s put it another way: it is corrosive to one’s character to steal.
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08.12.03
Posted in Copyright at 10:39 am by Lisa Spangenberg
From Observable Phenomena
- A news report yesterday stated that benevolent software hegemony Microsoft (all blessings to them [please don’t hurt us!]) lost a patent suit brought jointly by Eolas Technology and the University of California. The jury decided that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer contains functions that infringe an Eolas-UC patent, and the jury awarded the plaintiffs over half a billion dollars. Microsoft, looking through its pockets for spare change to tip the legal staff, announced that they will appeal the decision. Given the justice system’s track record in dealing with Microsoft, one can expect that within five years California will boast the William Gates University of California, and that the degrees it grants will be licensed on a three-year renewable basis.
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09.02.02
Posted in Copyright at 1:44 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
I attended the “The DMCA and Fandom” panel on Sunday at ConJosé. The official description reads:
How has the Digital Millennium Copyright Act affected Fandom? Fan writers, editors and lawyers discuss recent actions and activities surrounding Fan Fiction.
The participants were Cory Doctorow (author and EFF Outreach Coordinator), C. E. Petit (Harlan Ellison’s attorney), Deborah M. Geisler (an acdemic, fan, and writer), Christy Hardin Smith (attorney and author), Julie Stephenson (fan and attorney, with an interest in writing), and John F. Hertz (attorney, fan, and dance master), who moderated.
The ostensible subject, fans, fandom, and copyright was never really thoroughly addressed—in part I think because the subject was really too large. It should have been divided into two panels, one on the DMCA, and another on Fandom, Fan writing, and copyright and trademarks. More often then not, in the case of say, Buffy fan fiction, or Trek fiction, it’s less a matter of copyright and more one of trademarks, and protective studios. The panelists made a good effort to get there, and the very end of the panel did discuss fannish issues.
The panel spent a fair amount of time, understandably, discussing the DMCA itself. Perhaps Mr. Petit said it best when (I’m paraphrasing) he said that it’s really two unconnected parts. The first part of the DMCA deals largely with the ISP (Internet Service Provider)’s Safe Harbor. The second half deals with “piracy prevention” or “Anti Circumvention.” Mr. Petit described the second half of the DMCA as “bad law, unjustified, just a bad idea.” I want to thank him for a very clear effort he made to be understandable and specific—and for his well-worth perusing web site on copyright from an author-centric stance.
Much of the discussion dealt with the Notice of Takedown, and the problems with the way plaintiffs execute the notice. Often no reason for the notice—no specific text or passage—is given, and often it goes to the ISP not the user. The user may never be told his or her site was taken down because of a DMCA complaint. If the user doesn’t know that a DMCA complaint triggers the “Notice of Takedown,” then the user can’t respond with a “Counter Notification,” explaining why the content does not in fact infringe copyright.
Cory Doctorow (who was also clearly making an effort to be clear but non-confrontational), near the end, made a wonderful point, almost a paen, about the original intent of copyright in the U.S. He was, I think, riffing on the original bit in the Constitution Art I, Sec. 8, Clause 8:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
The idea was to promote publication, to increase the number of works available to the public, and to encourage their dessimination, and to eventually have those works return to the commons. We need to remind our legislators of that.
At the same time, I do very much want creators rewarded for their efforts. I just don’t think the DMCA is a rational way to do that. As written, the DMCA invites abuse. I’m increasingly also leaning towards a version of the European droits moral as a partial solution. And I think that creators should be able to decide what rights they are reserving and what rights they are licensing—Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons strikes me as a very smart solution to some of our problems, and throwing out the DMCA and starting over for others.
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08.19.02
Posted in Copyright at 8:10 am by Lisa Spangenberg
From a press release from host Information Wave Technologies, via Metafilter:
Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA’s previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulerabilities in a client’s browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA’s web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers’ data.
They’re also engaging in null seeding, and tracking the data: “Clients which connect to our peer-to-peer clients, and then afterwards attempt to illegally access the network will be immediately blacklisted from Information Wave’s network.” That is, Information Wave Technologies is preventing would be RIAA or any other outside user from using its own network as a staging point for attacks on the Gnutella network.This is an different appoach; it will be interesting to see if others adopt similar strategies.
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08.16.02
Posted in Copyright at 6:11 am by Lisa Spangenberg
I knew a bit about Congressman Howard Berman, since he’s the representative for my home state, California, but I’d never heard of Congressman Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) until I learned he was Berman’s co-sponsor for the so called “Peer to Peer Piracy” bill.
Here’s a list of Coble’s top eleven contributors (via PACs and other forms of contributions):
| Assn of Trial Lawyers of America |
$10,000 |
| Winston & Strawn |
$5,515 |
| Recording Industry Assn of America |
$5,374 |
| National Assn of Broadcasters |
$5,360 |
| ASCAP |
$5,000 |
| National Assn of Realtors |
$5,000 |
| Teamsters Union |
$5,000 |
| Wal-Mart Stores |
$5,000 |
| GlaxoSmithKline |
$4,999 |
| National Cable Television Assn |
$4,999 |
| American Intellectual Property Law Assn |
$4,000 |
You will note that the list features several large entertainment corporations, with vested interests in controlling intellectual policy, including the Recording Industry Academy of America (RIAA) who might as well have written the bill themselves, The National Association of Broadcasters, ASCAP, and the National Cable Television Association. You will notice that the top two positions are occupied by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and Wallace and Strawn, a law firm who represents Euro Disney, and Microsoft (Palladium chip anyone?). In fact, just as with Howard Berman, the two industries that are responsible for most of Coble’s funding are:
| Lawyers/Law Firms |
$35,515 |
| TV/Movies/Music |
$33,483 |
Now, I can see that Coble would likely always have a sizeable percentage of his money coming from lawyers and law firms since he’s on the Judiciary committee. But last year the top industries his monies came from were Pharmaceuticals/Health, and Lawyers and Law firms, with TV/Movies/Music the third. Do I think he’s representing the voters of North Carolina when he sponsored this bill? No, I really don’t. He may think he is, having been informed by the relentless lobbies of the entertainment industry that what’s good for them and for attorneys (who always win when litigation is involved) is good for his constituents.
I also suspect that, like many people who have little or no exposure to digital technology, and who don’t actively use it themselves, Senators Coble and Berman must depend on the information they are given—and right now, that information is not coming from end users, it’s filtered through the paranoid neuroses of the RIAA, who not only don’t want files to circulate, they want to be able to control digital technology, instead letting users control their own hardware and software.
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08.15.02
Posted in Copyright at 9:08 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
Howard Berman (D-California) is co-sponsor with Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) of the Peer to Peer Piracy Bill). I’d like to make sure you know that Congressman Berman’s top five financial contributors (via PACs) are:
| Walt Disney Co. |
$31,000 |
| AOL Time Warner |
$28,050 |
| Vivendi Universal |
$27,591 |
| Viacom Inc. |
$13,000 |
| News Corp. |
$11,750 |
Other major contributors include well-known intellectual property law firms in Los Angeles, like Irell and Manella, Phillips and Cohen, “the nation’s only law firm that is dedicated solely to representing whistleblowers,” Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer, the Los Angeles entertainment firm, responsible for, among other things the Divx DVD scheme to charge users each time they viewed a Divx digital video. In fact the two top industries who have supported Mr. Berman are:
| TV/Movies/Music |
$186,891 |
| Lawyers/Law Firms |
$97,100 |
Now, granted, I’m just a naive digital medievalist from rural New Hampshire, but to me that looks like Mr. Berman isn’t so much interested in doing what’s right, or what’s best for his entire constituency, or even in doing what’s sensible. He’s acting in the best interests of his largest contributors, two groups who stand to benefit financially from his proposed legislation. Take a look at what Dan Gillmore of the San Jose Mercury Newshas to say about recent legislation regarding distribution of content, paying particular attention to Mr. Berman’s role. Now, it’s more than likely that Mr. Berman is simply naive about the technology involved, and is therefore assuming that the “truths” he is given by various lobbiests and special interests are in fact true—you and I, then, need to let him know what we think.
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Posted in Copyright at 8:40 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
There’s an important post about Coble’s role in the Peer to Peer Piracy bill at Ed Cone’s blog. He quotes an email from Fred von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Under the bill, “…a copyright owner *can* invade your computer if it has your “authorization.” When would you ever authorize such a thing? When it’s hidden in a “clickwrap” license agreement! If the bill passed, there’s nothing to stop PressPlay, Microsoft, or any other copyright owners, from putting a “pre-authorization” into their service agreements.
The worst thing about the bill is that it entitles copyright owners to ignore *any law*, so long as they stay within the (murky) bounds of the statute…Copyright owners are saying that, unlike the rest of us, they should be above the law. This is a power that we as a society don’t give to anyone, even to the FBI.”
This is why all of us need to contact everyone we can think of and let them know that passing the “Peer to Peer Piracy” bill is a seriously bad idea. You might also suggest that they read Ed Cone’s column at the News - Record, and this editorial as well.
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