
Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement - shaufler
http://haufler.org/2014/01/19/i-hope-i-dont-get-kicked-out-of-yale-for-this/
======
lionhearted
When I first left America, I disliked and felt disillusioned with the country.

I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and
I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places
in the world.

Sometimes it's hard to point to exactly why America is so amazing. And the
answer, maybe, is on display here.

An undergraduate student at an elite university just innovatively, publicly,
aggressively pushed back against the Dean.

He cited his values and reasoning for doing so. He took care to make sure his
work wouldn't damage their physical resources or break the letter of the law.
And then he openly acknowledges they could punish him, and welcomes the
attempt.

And it's not really even a big deal. It's just standard being-an-American
stuff.

All kinds of bad things in the States. And sometimes the spirit of defiance
can get tired or come across overbearing. But it's really cool that it's a
regular, run of the mill occurrence for people to push back against norms and
restrictions in American society without any fear of long-term repercussions.

It's also really, really, really weird. Seriously, stop and reflect on this
for a moment. I spend a lot of time in Asia, and doing this in just about any
Asian country would ruin a lot of your life prospects.

And for us, it's just a matter of course. How strange. And wonderful.

~~~
cliveowen
You could read it that way, or you could say that this miniscule altercation
between a student and the dean of an Ivy League university, both part of an
elite group that knows little about the real struggles the rest of the world
faces on a daily basis, has been elevated to something important while its not
and it's been given way too much attention than it deserves. How many college
campuses and universities in the world struggle with real problems with real
consequences to society like female students getting raped in dark alleys and
fraud/bribery/plagiarism and never get the attention they deserve?

The fact that this inconsequential squabble gets discussed so much and gets
portrayed as the fight between David and "Goliath The Man", instead of being
seen as a public tantrum being thrown by a spoiled kid living a cushioned life
inside a cocoon made out of hopes and dreams, makes me sick to my stomach.

~~~
dasil003
Taking that line of reasoning to its conclusion, there can only be one _worst_
thing that happened to someone in the history of the world, and every other
person's problems pale in comparison and are therefore inconsequential and
should be brushed off as first-world problems.

~~~
cliveowen
Sure, taking things to the extremes has been proved to be the best way to
start a discussion and the only sure way to show an unbiased view of the facts
at hand.

I'm impressed by your incredible level-headedness, sir.

~~~
superpatosainz
Sir, if I preoperly recall, that's exactly how you discard premises. Taking a
premise and applying it to a more extreme situation just battletests it. It's
done in justice and law courses, etc.

"If the common good justifies killing X agent, then it must be ok for a doctor
to kill a patient in their sleep, take his organs and save three people with
his two kidneys and heart."

Also, what Yale did wasn't right, and the students just defend themselves...
If, for example, you were robbed wouldn't you care? "Oh but there are
thousands more people poorer than me, I shouldn't bother".

~~~
iamdave
_" If the common good justifies killing X agent, then it must be ok for a
doctor to kill a patient in their sleep, take his organs and save three people
with his two kidneys and heart."_

Isn't that a variation of a semantic shift fallacy? [1]

\--- [1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change)

~~~
vanattab
I just read the link and I am not following your reasoning. Please explain.

------
babs474
Very cool, I love this approach as it is very similar to how my (now defunct)
unedditreddit app worked and how a clever app called socialfixer for facebook
works. Two thoughts.

1\. You are not unblockable. My app was removed from the chrome app store
after reddit complained, no review process, no appeals, good luck even
communicating with google. Installing an app not from the appstore is almost
impossible for a non-savvy user. I suggest looking at a firefox app, their app
story is much more democratic.

2\. I think this fight is important because a lot of companies/organizations
seem to be trying to establish the precedent that they own their website
experience end to end, from database to the pixels on your screen. That idea
taken to the extreme will lead to computers become opaque devices ala a TV,
rather than the hackable playground they are now.

[http://socialfixer.com/blog/2013/10/05/facebook-requires-
soc...](http://socialfixer.com/blog/2013/10/05/facebook-requires-social-fixer-
browser-extension-to-remove-key-features/?r)

~~~
cynwoody
> _Installing an app not from the appstore is almost impossible for a non-
> savvy user._

I would post a video demonstrating step-by-step how to install non-approved
apps in Chrome. Download the app. Open chrome://extensions. Tick Developer
mode. Drag the app from your Download folder to the extensions page. Enjoy
those nicely summarized ratings!

Actually, here are two existing videos on the subject:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf9mthhfzpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf9mthhfzpY)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVj_FJwI2Rw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVj_FJwI2Rw)

Hopefully, if a user is savvy enough to get into Yale, those instructions
would suffice.

~~~
erichurkman
Just be aware that your instructions may have to change soon; Google is slated
to start blocking all local extensions unless users install the Dev or Canary
channel builds on Windows [1].

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/07/google-block-
local-c...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/07/google-block-local-chrome-
extensions-windows-starting-january-limit-installs-chrome-web-store/)

~~~
cynwoody
Sounds like a matter† for the MSFT legal department. I'm rarely in MSFT's
corner, but this would an exception.

†[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act)

~~~
pgeorgi
Only to be told that they have to open up their Windows 8 Store App
installation model as well? I don't think so.

The no-freedom-to-install-whatever-you-want movement is deeply entrenched in
the IT behemoths.

------
ggchappell
An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your
arguments reek of ignorance.

> This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the
> argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech.

No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm
may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as _freedom of speech_ in the
legal sense refers only to what _governments_ may not suppress. Holding the
copyright to something does not in any way affect ones responsibility to
behave ethically.

> If Yale grants students access to data, the university does not have the
> right to specify exactly how students must view the data.

Under U.S. law they may very well have the right; I wouldn't know. What you
may have demonstrated is that they do not have the _ability_.

May I suggest that you do not couch your arguments in terms of fallacious
claims about freedom of speech. Rather, talk about _academic freedom_ , a
principle -- though not a legal one -- that Yale ostensibly seeks to uphold.

~~~
ganeumann
Freedom of Speech is not a legal right, it is an ethical right. It predates
its US First Amendment codification by several hundred years and is also
legally expressed in many other countries. To use your words, may I suggest
you do not couch your arguments in terms of fallacious claims about freedom of
speech?

I don't think commentators who decried Yale's hypocrisy were claiming that
Yale violated the first amendment rights of the students. They were saying
that the same people who fought vociferously for scores of years to secure
their freedom of expression were quite quick to trample it when exercised by
non-PhDs. I think this is a valid criticism.

~~~
tomp
> legally expressed in many other countries

citation?

I'm only asking because that's not the case in most of Europe.

~~~
ganeumann
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country)

Re: Europe: the European Convention on Human Rights says, in Article 10:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include
freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas
without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This
article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting,
television or cinema enterprises."

All of the members of the European Union are signatories to the ECHR.

Also, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says, in Article
11:

    
    
        1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
        2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
    

I'm not European, so my opinion on how closely governments stick to these laws
doesn't really apply. I'm just pointing out the laws.

~~~
tomp
Holocaust denial is illegal in many EU countries, and swastika/Nazi flags are
illegal in a few as well. So, obviously, freedom of speech isn't the highest
priority.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it." (attributed to Aristotle)

~~~
hugoroy
Defamation is illegal, so obviously freedom of speech isn't the highest
priority in the US.

(I'm just trying to show you that there are limits on what you can say without
legal trouble and what you cannot say without legal trouble: it all depends on
where you put the cursor and how the limits are enforced. But to point out the
existence of limits in order to demonstrate the absence of something is
flawed.)

BTW, one comment: Holocaust denial is illegal in France. But to be clear,
holocaust denial means refuting the facts established by the international
Nuremberg tribunal. So it's not like a completely open category. Now, whether
it's efficient is another matter…

"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to
avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more
speech, not enforced silence."

\-- US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

------
johnohara
Recent discussions seem to indicate that 14-21 y/o are reducing their
participation in social media, becoming more discerning over how they use
brain bandwidth, and generally simplifying their lives overall.

I know this is a bit OT, and I apologize, but his website (and others from his
age group) reflects this thinking. Straight, simple, and to the point. On to
the next thing.

It rejects a great many things about how we experience the web today and seems
to confirm a trend that his group wants clutter-free access to correct
information using tools and technology they are familiar with.

They don't want to be told by Yale that this is how "your" course catalog
works, or by WP that this is how "your" blog works, or by FB that this is how
"your" profile works, etc.

They are saying, "we'll show you how we want it to work."

You'd think the administration at Yale would recognize a "sit-in" when they
saw one.

------
ToastyMallows
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. The extension:

> (3) not scraping or collecting Yale’s data

Yet in the code[0], there's a function called getRatingsForCourse() that makes
an ajax call to url:
"[https://ybb.yale.edu/courses/"](https://ybb.yale.edu/courses/") \+ id. How
is this not scraping? Am I missing something here?

[0]: [https://github.com/seanhaufler/banned-
bluebook/blob/master/e...](https://github.com/seanhaufler/banned-
bluebook/blob/master/extension/inject.js)

~~~
EGreg
Scraping involves storing somethjng on a server. I am not sure a user agent
can be cited for copyright infringement. Perhaps caching in violation of a
server's policy can be considered that, I am not sure. Is there any precdent
for caching to be considered scraping and storing by the developer of the
client software?

If not, I have an interesting idea for an offline travel app :)

~~~
huhtenberg
> _Scraping involves storing somethjng on a server._

Duh, of course it doesn't. Scraping is taking data in one format from there
and presenting it in a different format here.

~~~
moocowduckquack
That seems wide. I thought it was human readable to machine indexable, not
human readable to human readable.

------
w1ntermute
Pretty smart move on this guy's part, as it's a win-win situation for him. If
they kick him out, the positive attention he gets for fighting the man will
just enable him to start working 4 or 5 months early.

~~~
scep12
He seems smart enough to get a good job regardless. The small win of publicity
probably isn't worth the loss of a diploma, especially for a senior with
(presumably) only one semester left. Given the time and money he's invested in
his degree, I'm not sure he'd agree that it's a "win-win."

~~~
ritchiea
What is the meaningful difference between a Yale degree and 7 semesters of a
Yale education? If your answer is "some employers wouldn't consider you as an
applicant without the proper degree" do you want to work for that sort of
employer?

~~~
cpwright
The meaningful difference is that you have 7 semesters of sunk cost, and can't
write that you graduated on your resume. In other words, you are a drop-out. A
BS is a filter that you'll find for lots of jobs (or graduate school); and
although there are places that will hire you, it makes things harder than they
would have been otherwise.

If you want to get a bachelors degree from another school (1) it is likely to
be somewhat harder to get into another school if you've been expelled from
another, (2) other schools will have a residency requirement such that you'll
need a couple of years to complete a degree even though you were only months
away at the original institution.

~~~
aianus
Sunk costs are sunk. Unless the marginal utility of that piece of paper is
worth compromising your ideals and dropping another $20k in tuition, the
sensible thing to do would be to drop out.

Given that he's already got the brand, the majority of the education, and the
network of going to Yale, I'm not sure it is.

~~~
cpwright
If you don't graduate you don't have the brand. He might be able to establish
an independent brand with his plugin, but that is certainly more risky.

I generally don't think the Ivy league tuition compared to the differential of
quality state schools is worth it when you are starting out, but in this
particular instance the differential between a Yale degree and any other
degree would probably be less than having to go elsewhere and end up
equivalently as a sophomore/junior.

~~~
nmodu
>"If you don't graduate you don't have the brand. He might be able to
establish an independent brand with his plugin, but that is certainly more
risky."

>"A BS is a filter that you'll find for lots of jobs (or graduate school); and
although there are places that will hire you, it makes things harder than they
would have been otherwise."

I would disagree with both statements.

Part of the value (really, most of the value) of attending these schools is
the network that you build while there. And yes, he can always write on his
resume that he attended Yale from "Sept 2009-January 2013" (if he were to drop
out). I attended a top university and dropped out my last semester to pursue
tech related endeavors. I have reaped enormous benefits from this decision.

Once you are accepted to a top university, 90% of the "brand"-ing is complete.
If you are resourceful (as this young man clearly is), the rest will take care
of itself.

With regards to your second comment, the idea of a "BS as a filter" is losing
credibility at an exponential rate. It might seem counter intuitive, but a top
tech employer would take a second look at a Yale dropout who wrote a popular
plug-in. A majority of applicants at these firms already come from the best
schools in the country. On it's own, even an ivy-league degree isn't as great
of a filter as you might think. (Note: This applies to jobs with the highest
concentration of ivy-league applicants)

------
ilaksh
Make it a userscript instead of a Chrome extension and then Google can't block
it from their store because it will be distributed openly.

[http://http://userscripts.org/](http://http://userscripts.org/)

[http://userscripts.org/about/installing](http://userscripts.org/about/installing)

~~~
frevd
Make it a Javascript (just put into Favorites an icon that links to
javascript:(function(){...})() which creates and inserts a script block into
the currently open site (Yale site in this case) which loads the big .js from
a server. Users browse the regular Yale page, click on their icon in the
Favorites bar and the page extends so it can look and perform however you want
it to look and perform - unblockable!

------
gklitt
Really clever response to clearly decouple the copyright issue from the
freedom of speech issue. I'm curious to see how the university will react to
this.

~~~
smtddr
The data will stop being presented in a form that's easily parsed. Instead,
it'll be in PDFs rather than within text+HTML that this guy's extension can
move around.

(And the counter to this is a server somewhere that the extension can send the
PDF to, that runs pdftotext on linux... so he should prepare for that ...or
just prepare to be expelled).

~~~
pmorici
With the rise of javascript in the browser to a first world programming
language it's hard to imagine anything they could do that would put the
information out of reach.

~~~
csense
There's an early xkcd with an answer for that:
[http://xkcd.com/129/](http://xkcd.com/129/)

------
blablabla123
Evaluations hurt the professors' feelings and pride, so they are not
published. Politics is probably the only area in which evaluations (a.k.a.
votes, surveys, news articles/comments) are published.

~~~
ps4fanboy
I am sure students feelings are hurt when they pay tuition for a really poorly
run/designed subject.

------
mhb
_Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate
Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech_

This misguided appeal to freedom of speech does not strengthen his argument.

~~~
ps4fanboy
Why do you think its misguided?

~~~
mhb
Because freedom of speech concerns the relationship of the government and its
citizens. In this situation, more appropriate terminology could be _academic
freedom_ or _censorship_.

------
gregwtmtno
It would be great if they added the price of course material in there. Maybe
with real time pricing from Amazon or something like that.

------
ufmace
"If Yale censors this piece of software or punishes the software developer, it
would clearly characterize Yale as an institution where having authority over
students trumps freedom of speech."

I'm inclined to say that events in the last decade or so have made it more
clear that pretty much all educational institutions everywhere have always
been about making sure their authority over students trumps freedom of speech.
Or rather, freedom of speech is only allowed on things that the administration
approves of.

------
ricardobeat
I partially agree with the university's reasoning on this; displaying course
ratings like it's a food menu is disencouraging thought, not something you
expect from an academic environment, and it can't have a good outcome
regarding course selection. They just should have found a better way to combat
that instead of brute force.

~~~
trop
This is key to say: this is more than a freedom of speech (or freedom of
entrepreneurship) issue. It's a question of whether college classes should
become commodities distinguished only by convenience of access (e.g.
scheduling) and a rating from prior consumers of the class/professor. It
probably doesn't help that the period during which students check out classes
is called "shopping"...

There's something deeply conservative (in a grumpy old-school sense of the
word) about trying to preserve a non-metrics based view of an education...
Facebook's early days is, of course, also a subtext to this. FB was, of
course, built by a comp-sci undergrad at an elite college who became
fabulously wealthy by hacking friendships into data structures. Are we rooting
for similar hacks going straight into the pedagogy?

------
adharmad
I wonder whether organizations today are really so dumb that they need some
education before making public knee-jerk reactions. Regardless of the rights
or wrongs of the case, (and most of the readers don't understand or care) Yale
would avoided all the bad publicity if they had just let the whole thing
slide.

------
atmosx
I admire the courage and stance of Sean Haufler on this.

But out of curiosity, looking at his profile, why would someone who had an
internship at Google and worked at FourSquare would need a CS(!!) and
Economics(???) degree from Yale?

I might understand the _Economics_ part, what about the _CS_ part???

~~~
Morgawr
Maybe because he likes academia and values knowledge?

I don't know, personally I could go out there and get a job if I really really
wanted to, but at the same time I love research and love studying challenging
stuff. Some people go to University by choice, not because they _have to_
obtain a piece of paper.

------
at-fates-hands
I was most surprised by the professor who defended the school's ban on the new
website. I always pegged Yale as a pretty Liberal college, so I was surprised
at the professor's decision to support the school.

------
jgoodwin
I would play up the extension as an accessibility enhancement, and cite the
ADA and accessibility guidelines. This makes the point about the users' 'right
to transform data' more clearly -- access and transformation is about
usability, and usability is a legal right.

The administration will greatly fear an ADA action, or arguments that come
even close to them, while drawing parallels. Students crying 'Freedom!' is old
hat, and will get a less effective response.

------
etanazir
If you matriculate 1 semester at Harvard/Yale whatever - you've got the
trademark - so why keep paying to waste your time?

------
room271
How did this make it onto Hacker News? Squabbles like this happen at every
university (or at least the ones I have been to). Universities are often quite
conservative places with a tendency to restrict student activity beyond what
is sensible and students often fight back.

This is a run of the mill occurrence.

~~~
cynwoody
I can think of at least two reasons for it to be on HN:

(1) Replicating as a browser extension the functionality to which Yale objects
qualifies as a damn good hack.

(2) The original issue is about internet freedom, a matter of concern to the
HN community.

------
jahewson
> Yale also told Harry and Peter that the CourseTable website infringed upon
> the school’s copyrighted course data. It appears to be true; CourseTable
> hosted Yale’s course descriptions and student evaluations, or, if not the
> exact evaluations, they at least hosted derivations of them.

It doesn't appear to be true at all! I'd argue very strongly that these are
not creative works, and have zero commercial value, I don't believe they are
eligale for copyright protection in the first place. This kind of muddled
thinking that anything anyone writes down is magically covered by copyright
needs to be resisted.

~~~
Bahamut
Zero commercial value is a highly dubious claim. If the website happened to be
refined to be so popular that students wouldn't want to go without it and they
would be able to charge for the service, then commercial value would naturally
be present.

~~~
jahewson
By zero commercial value I mean that the current market price for this
information is $0 because it is being given away for free. So it meets one of
the key criteria of fair use.

However, I probably shouldn't mention fair use at all, because I don't believe
that these course descriptions are eligible for copyright protection,
therefore any reuse does not need to be justified as fair use.

------
jdnier
Yale acknowledges you're effort: "Just this weekend, we learned of a tool that
replicates YBB+'s efforts without violating Yale’s appropriate use policy, and
that leapfrogs over the hardest questions before us. What we now see is that
we need to review our policies and practices." \--Dean Mary Miller's response
(Jan. 20) [http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/open-letter-yale-
communi...](http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/open-letter-yale-community-
dean-mary-miller)?

------
higherpurpose
As long as Google doesn't ban the extension from the Chrome Store and doesn't
completely block installing 3rd party extensions to Chrome in schools or
something.

I actually don't find that unlikely these days. They've already started to
make it hard to install it from other sources. I could see them "sweetening
the deal" for ChromeOS/Chrome in schools to not be able to install external
extensions at all.

~~~
slig
> They've already started to make it hard to install it from other sources.

They _had_ to because idiots were installing malware left and right by
clicking and installing random malware extensions without realizing what
they're doing.

------
the_french
This is really awesome, we've been building similar solutions to our course
websites at McGill. However, the administration does not seem to care yet
(that might be due to the low adoption) about the different unofficial APIs
and sites. The idea of adding course ratings / workload descriptions is really
good we might have to implement a similar system on our end.

------
mhp
"If Yale grants students access to data, the university does not have the
right to specify exactly how students must view the data."

I disagree strongly with this statement. If the data is owned by Yale, they do
in fact have the right to specify exactly how students must view the data.

Although it's frustrating to see copyright holders doing illogical or
inefficient things with their copyrighted data, it is their right to determine
the method and mechanism by which their data is consumed. Just because it is
_possible_ to transform their data into a mashup, doesn't mean it's legal,
ethical, or permissible. It doesn't matter if this transformation happens
entirely within a viewer's computer, or if it happens on another server - if
the copyright holder doesn't want their data to be transformed that way, it is
their right.

~~~
ars
No it isn't. There is no such right.

Copyright holders _want_ such a right, but they don't have it.

The entire concept of copyright in the first place is artificial - there is no
moral copyright. So the only rights you have are the ones copyright gives you,
and no more.

Not to mention there is no database right in the US, so they don't even have a
copyright on the course database in the first place! (They do on the
description of the courses, but not on the list of them.)

~~~
dahart
Actually, separate moral rights on copyrighted works do exist.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights)

They likely do not apply to a University's course catalog and, but FYI moral
rights are real.

Also, under US copyright law, all 'works' & 'creations' are automatically
protected, and the creator owns the copyright. This very likely can and does
apply to databases the same way it applies to art or music. It would be a
_really_ bad idea to assume you have the right to copy someone's database just
because copyright law doesn't mention databases specifically! ;)

~~~
ars
Those moral rights are the opposite of what I mean. They are restrictions on
the copyright owner. The moral rights I meant are if copyright exists from a
moral point of view rater than a legal one - and it doesn't.

> It would be a really bad idea to assume you have the right to copy someone's
> database just because copyright law doesn't mention databases specifically!
> ;)

It does mention it specifically. It specifically mentions that it doesn't
exist. There is no database copyright in the US. (There is in other
countries.)

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_copyright](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_copyright)

~~~
dahart
> They are restrictions on the copyright owner.

What do you mean? Moral rights do not restrict the Moral Rights holder in any
way, and they do restrict the ways that _any_ other person is allowed to
present, re-present, or modify the work.

Moral rights can only restrict copyright holders when the copyrights have been
transferred from the creator of the work to another party, and in that case,
Moral Rights restrict all people who didn't author/create the work equally, it
has nothing to do with who holds the copyrights.

> It [US copyright law] specifically mentions that it [database copyrights]
> doesn't exist.

You have a good point! I was at least partially, if not completely incorrect.
:)

But, it would still be a bad idea to assume you have the right to copy
someone's database. It might not be a violation of copyright law, but there's
a good chance it is a violation of some law. The sui generis database rights
link happens to give a separate reason for why it would be a bad idea to copy
someone's database. :)

I also just had to check... ;) The text of US copyright law does mention
databases twice.
[http://www.copyright.gov/title17/circ92.pdf](http://www.copyright.gov/title17/circ92.pdf)
It specifically mentions, in definitions, that databases are not works of
visual art, and that databases are not considered a "digital audio recording
medium". It does not seem to specifically exclude databases categorically, but
considering the language in the 'sui generis' article you linked, "Uncreative
collections of facts are outside of Congressional authority". The keyword is
'creative', and if a database were shown to be the primary form of a
"creative" work, copyright law may apply.

------
ericcumbee
>The story does not end here, however, since there’s a way to distinguish the
freedom of speech issue from the copyright claims.

Except Yale is a private school. The 1st amendment only protects people's
speech from government sanction.

~~~
fleitz
He's addressing the copyright issue, the problem is with out the copyright
issue Yale has to make a claim based on censoring speech.

Once Yale starts censoring speech you gain friends with tenure and/or alumni.

He isn't trying this in the court of law, but the court of public opinion.

------
kriro
Copyright on course description. Nice, that's nice. How do supposedly smart
people not get the very simple idea that open is good in academics (and in
general but let's not get carried away).

------
annasaru
School owns the data. But students are the data consumers, and hence have a
right to control how it's presented and consumed. And students are also
customers. What is the school afraid of.

------
mixmastamyk
He should have had his pal over at Harvard upload it. Why give the
administration power over you? Relying on the goodness of executives is big
gamble, imho.

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waylandsmithers
Well done. A brilliant and ballsy display of civil disobedience. Godspeed.

------
naaaaak
The Dean’s response is such a typical academia response. It showcases the
hypocrisy of these institutions and the fiefdom of a bureaucrat.

Too many academic institutions claim they are all about learning and growing
and leadership, until you do something they disapprove of in the slightest
way, usually because it rocks their boat in the slightest way. We’ve seen how
Stalin-esque they act when they don’t get their way, time and time again with
varying degrees of force. From the UC Davis pepper spray incident to the MIT
Aaron Swartz incident. This might not be on the same level (yet), but it’s the
principle. A series of reasonable actions being met with disproportionate
bullshit responses.

Teach them a lesson about learning, growing, and leadership. Don’t surrender
and don’t give in. Do absolutely everything within the bounds of the law to
fuck up their desired outcome on the principle of their actions. That’s what
they are trying to do to you and the YBB+ devs. So take away all of their
power and continue. Circumvent all of their censorship. You or some
scholarship are paying far too much to this institution to have it behave like
this.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised someone at Yale noticed and decided to make this
an incident. Most universities are usually too distracted by the
disproportionate effort they invest in their football or basketball teams over
academic programs, or are too busy ensuring book publisher monopolies and
price gouging, but those are problems for another day.

~~~
mhandley
If I understood the Dean's position correctly, it was that they didn't want
students making course choices based on a single one-dimensional metric, but
would rather the students saw the bigger picture before deciding. I can
understand this viewpoint; some very good courses have a bi-modal distribution
of ratings - students either love or hate them. The trick is to figure out
which you'll likely be. You can't see this from the mean.

Where I teach (not at Yale), we've been having difficulty getting the
administration to publish teaching metrics at all. This sort of public
argument doesn't help matters. I wouldn't be surprised if Yale simply stops
publishing the metrics at all if they perceive they're being widely abused.

~~~
aragot
Students ought to grow wary of unwise comments and ratings they find on the
"People's Web". Good students will go to the right classes independently of
the few bad comments. In fact, they probably make the difference much better
than their dean, because they're used to consumer forums.

Rather than cutting the source, if the Dean doesn't trust student's maturity,
the Dean should educate them about how to read several sources of information
coming from the Internet.

------
nctalaviya
Nice one shaufler... Good job

