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Building An Uncensorable Course Guide At Yale
Former Googler and Foursquare employee Sean Haufler is now a student at Yale studying CS and Economics, but he hasn't put away his real-world software skills for academia. When two other Yale students named Harry Yu and Peter Xu were threatened with the school's punishment committee for designing a site that extends and improves the presentation of data from the school-controlled course selection guide (the Yale Bluebook [available only at Yale]), Haufler decided to create a similar site which he hopes will force the school's hand to either allow or deny this kind of data-mashing presentation. He acknowledges that there are legitimate questions about copyright, but Haufler's site treads lightly in a way that Yu and Xus did not: "Banned Bluebook never stores data on any servers. It never talks to any non-Yale servers. Moreover, since my software is smarter at caching data locally than the official Yale course website, I expect that students using this extension will consume less bandwidth over time than students without it. Don’t believe me? You can read the source code. No data ever leaves Yale’s control. Trademarks, copyright infringement, and data security are non-issues. It's 100% kosher." And if the school disagrees? "If Yale denies this right, I'll see you at the punishment committee." Of note: the Yale Bluebook site itself grew out of an independent student project, but was later acquired by the school. Update: 01/20 00:26 GMT by T : Correction: Unlike Yu and Xu, Haufler's approach is not a full-fledged separate site, but rather a Chrome extension that presents the data from Yale's own site differently, rather than at any point re-hosting it. Mea culpa.
It's not a replacement website, it's actually just a Chrome extension that appears to helpfully mangle the official website.
Nobody likes a smartass. Not even at Yale.
Seriously, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that making an improved X has a side effect of making original X look shit and everyone associated with creating it look stupid.
Except, of course, if X is Coca Cola.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You see nothing of this sort in the summary because the summary is wrong. If you'd read TFA, you would've found out it is *not* a site, as stated by the summary, but rather a browser extension. Since it doesn't reside on any central server but rather in the browser of each individual student, it is indeed effectively uncensorable. However, it should be breakable: if Yale changes their website so that the extension no longer matches it and thus cannot scrape it, it should break.
"Uncensorable" is a bold claim
The "censorship" claim is made to get people riled up. This is not about censorship, but about copyright, which is a completely different issue.
The justification for banning the site was it "let students see the averaged evaluations far too easily". Is this what Yale thinks of its math education, that Yale students can't calculate an average unless their browser does it for them?
The "censorship" claim is made to get people riled up. This is not about censorship, but about copyright, which is a completely different issue.
Exactly, which is why Haufler's browser extension should be fine - though he will likely have to modify it on a regular basis to compensate when Yale alters their web site in attempts to foil him.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yale was censoring coursetable in the name of copyright since it used Yale's copyrighted text. They did this because they didn't like the way coursetable presented the data.
Sean Haufler made a clever hack which is a Chrome extension which displays data from the Yale websites in the same useful format as coursetable but does not require setting up a web site. It just mashes up text and data from Yale servers and presents it nicely in Chrome. It also seems to use some local storage which should decrease bandwidth demands.
Uncensorable since it's not a web site, runs entirely on the users browser and only accesses official Yale data (which students are allowed to access).
Nice hack.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This allows students to access the official Yale website and retrieve data that they officially have access to using their browser. I see nothing that could be called copyright infringement of any sort.
It does mangle up the presentation of the data into a more useful format but that is all done by the user on their browser.
Is there something that says that I don't have the right to view websites the way I want?
What about AdBlock, NoScript and Ghostery? They alter web pages under my control on my browser?
I get to view copyrighted web pages they way I want.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
completely different legal concept perhaps, but increasingly copyright law is being used to censor unwanted discussion
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
copyright, which is a completely different issue.
It's about Yale's misuse of copyright to censor. You cannot copyright raw data. You can only copyright the representation of that data. This has been proven time and again by court cases where phone book publishers tried suing online phone directories and lost. Cookbook publishers were also smacked down by courts because recipes themselves are mere data and instructions and thus not copyrightable. Sweat of the brow isn't enough to apply copyright.
YBB+ wasn't a copyright infringement in any way, shape, or form. If YBB+ had copied the layout and the graphics of the Yale page, then Yale would have been entirely correct. However, that's not the case. The data representation was /better/ and didn't copy YBB.
It's censorship when you pretend that you're on the right side of the law and you use that to intimidate someone into taking down his stuff.
You, sir, are the one who doesn't understand copyright.
--
BMO
Could someone contribute an executive summary? All I can gather is that Yale had its own "ratemyprofessor" implementation, it wasn't very accurate, and some students made a better one which was then blocked by Yale's network. Surely it's not really that simple? Where is Yale's statement on all of this as I'd love to know the rationale for blocking the site.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Do most universities over-react as Yale did -- or did the guy possibly just choose the wrong school for someone that isn't content to wait around for someone else to do things for him?
When Iwas a Berkeley undergrad in the late 90s, students creating new services or improving existing ones (without breaking rules against cheating or similar, of course) at Berkeley seemed far more likely to be praised than punished. That might be because the school still had mostof its Internet services handled by EECS majors hired for work-study jobs rather than paying outside companies to do the work (as is common now), or because it openly wanted students that felt driven to use their abilities/talents to improve the world around them. I have no idea whether Cal is still like that, however.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
He'll be lucky if Yale's disciplinary board is the only kangaroo court he faces. If Yale is sufficiently annoyed they'll call in the Feds to go all Aaron Swartz on his ass.
If you want to see these metrics more broadly in higher education, submit comments as part of the federal government RFI on higher education metrics. The response period closes soon!
Like they did before. All the professors told them it was a bad idea when the site was proposed. Someone should tell the people in charge of Yale that they have pretty smart professors. They would be more efficient and do a better job if they took their advice.
Students evaluate classes and professors in extremely bias ways. Usually based on well they did in the class. Class was too hard for some entitled rich teenager? I can see the review now... "This class sucks!" Do you remember college? Put yourself in the role of a professor. Would you really want your annual evaluation based on the thoughts of a bunch of immature emotional teenagers? The entire idea of using student evaluations is flawed. Sharing the data openly is just plain dumb.
However, it should be breakable: if Yale changes their website so that the extension no longer matches it and thus cannot scrape it, it should break.
Then it just turns into a pissing contest over who's willing to update their site/extension for longer.
Or maybe the extension is updated to cache the data on your computer and manipulate it there.
Cat and Mouse games will not suffice. Yale is going to have to face this head on.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's about Yale's misuse of copyright to censor.
I'd agree.
YBB+ wasn't a copyright infringement in any way, shape, or form.
Course descriptions are copyrighted.
Anyway, copyright is tangential to the main problem Yale had with the website:
They averaged the student evaluations and displayed it alongside the courses
This violated some agreement regarding course evaluations that the school had with the all teachers and here we are.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
However, it should be breakable: if Yale changes their website so that the extension no longer matches it and thus cannot scrape it, it should break.
Then it just turns into a pissing contest over who's willing to update their site/extension for longer.
Or maybe the extension is updated to cache the data on your computer and manipulate it there.
Cat and Mouse games will not suffice. Yale is going to have to face this head on.
Somebody explain to me just WHY Yale would have a problem with the same data presented differently. If they're going to this kind of trouble to stamp it out, it must pose a threat of some sort, so what is it?