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I noticed a bunch of DMCA takedowns coming from UCSD's CSE131 class in the DMCA repo: https://github.com/github/dmca https://github.com/github/dmca If you sear

I noticed a bunch of DMCA takedowns coming from UCSD's CSE131 class in the DMCA repo: https://github.com/github/dmca https://github.com/github/dmca If you search for cse131 you'll find a bunch of repos still up. This kind of whack-a-mole is typical of DMCA and requires a lot of resources to manage.

justinlardinois 10y ago
That's interesting. I can understand a professor wanting to control access to the starter code they provide to students, mostly to prevent cheating, but I've never heard of it coming with an explicit license. I know a few of my former UCSC classmates have school projects up on GitHub and haven't gotten any grief about it.
- codezero 10y ago
  Yeah, I am pretty sympathetic to the instructor (a license is a license after all!), but at the same time wonder if the starter code and subsequent exercises being open makes the course too easy, and/or harder for the professor to grade aptitude, it may be a problem with the course itself.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    I'm not sure what the point grading aptitude in intro courses even is though? Either you learn the material or you don't - in case of the later you are going to really struggle in upper level courses.
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      In which case the department would much rather have your lack of learning cause you to fail the lower division course, so you either retake the course and learn the material or switch to a different field of study.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Speaking from experience, it may not be a professor's concerns. Campus administration occasionally runs amok and specifies licensing and IP standards for individual courses out of fear of lawsuits, producing all sorts of weird results like this.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Can you DMCA a student's repo for hosting their own solution to a coding exercise? In programming books, when the exercise is often closely related to the sample code submitted (e.g. "Exercise 3.2. Rewrite the above sample to use a for loop instead of a while loop"), I imagine a large number of independently-derived solutions might look very similar.
- codezero 10y ago
  I'm not 100% sure. I do know that sets of questions are able to be DMCAed, so solutions to problem sets are likely to fall under that, though IANAL. I have worked for a company that took down answers to such questions in response to a DMCA. Our lawyer pointed out a specific clause that made it risky. In almost any DMCA case, there is some set of case law that backs up one side or the other, and all you're doing is deciding whether you think the content is valuable enough to go to court over to protect. It's usually not worth going to court over :/ To be really tested, it'd have to go to court. I noticed when searching a lot of solutions were still up for this course, so maybe the solutions alone are OK, and it's only the base code being DMCAed. That said, there is a lot of base code still up too, so it's likely that this person just hasn't come around on their whack-a-mole cycle yet.
- lettergram 10y ago
  Yes, kinda. At least UIUC did that to students who had libraries from the coding exercises. For example, the cs225 course provides an image processing library, and you need it for the assignment, so if you put the library in the repo they DMCA'd. Similarly, many courses give you a framework of code. If you filled in the framework they would DMCA. They did this a bit, but there was a pretty massive back lash. I don't think they are doing it atm
williamscales 10y ago
Can't one just write new assignments each year? Of course the students will share the answers. These ones are just sharing the answers publicly. You can DMCA all the public repos but there will still be groups of students who pass the answers on to next year's class. In fact, I'd argue that in the case of the solutions being shared publicly, at least everyone can benefit equally instead of only those who are part of the clique doing the sharing. The only real answer is to either write new assignments each year, OR, simply assume that all students will have the solutions to the assignments. A good way to tell if students are really doing the homework is to have a 10 minute homework quiz in class where the students answer a question very similar to a homework problem. Those who have truly done the homework will be done quickly and those who haven't will struggle mightily.
- munin 10y ago
  > Can't one just write new assignments each year? the budget / resources doesn't exist for that
  - williamscales 10y ago
    That seems like the real problem, not the study habits of the students.
    - munin 10y ago
      nobody knows how to fix it though, so we're all just sitting around waiting for the higher ed bubble to pop.
Fiahil 10y ago
As a former TA, I can say that finding out if a student completed a project/exercise on its own is _very_ easy. Poking around the code asking questions for around 2 minutes is largely enough. Instead of DMCA-ting github repos, I find it way more effective to have a five minute talk about what is "cheating" and what is not at the beginning of the semester. Collaborative brainstorming is encouraged, helping struggling others is fine, giving them solutions is not (because you're just stealing their reward). After a while they would eventually stop looking up solutions and just ask their peers for some advice/code review. My job became surprisingly easy when I started treating students like adults.

justinlardinois 10y ago

That's interesting. I can understand a professor wanting to control access to the starter code they provide to students, mostly to prevent cheating, but I've never heard of it coming with an explicit license. I know a few of my former UCSC classmates have school projects up on GitHub and haven't gotten any grief about it.

codezero 10y ago
Yeah, I am pretty sympathetic to the instructor (a license is a license after all!), but at the same time wonder if the starter code and subsequent exercises being open makes the course too easy, and/or harder for the professor to grade aptitude, it may be a problem with the course itself.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  I'm not sure what the point grading aptitude in intro courses even is though? Either you learn the material or you don't - in case of the later you are going to really struggle in upper level courses.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    In which case the department would much rather have your lack of learning cause you to fail the lower division course, so you either retake the course and learn the material or switch to a different field of study.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Speaking from experience, it may not be a professor's concerns. Campus administration occasionally runs amok and specifies licensing and IP standards for individual courses out of fear of lawsuits, producing all sorts of weird results like this.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Can you DMCA a student's repo for hosting their own solution to a coding exercise? In programming books, when the exercise is often closely related to the sample code submitted (e.g. "Exercise 3.2. Rewrite the above sample to use a for loop instead of a while loop"), I imagine a large number of independently-derived solutions might look very similar.

codezero 10y ago
I'm not 100% sure. I do know that sets of questions are able to be DMCAed, so solutions to problem sets are likely to fall under that, though IANAL. I have worked for a company that took down answers to such questions in response to a DMCA. Our lawyer pointed out a specific clause that made it risky. In almost any DMCA case, there is some set of case law that backs up one side or the other, and all you're doing is deciding whether you think the content is valuable enough to go to court over to protect. It's usually not worth going to court over :/ To be really tested, it'd have to go to court. I noticed when searching a lot of solutions were still up for this course, so maybe the solutions alone are OK, and it's only the base code being DMCAed. That said, there is a lot of base code still up too, so it's likely that this person just hasn't come around on their whack-a-mole cycle yet.
lettergram 10y ago
Yes, kinda. At least UIUC did that to students who had libraries from the coding exercises. For example, the cs225 course provides an image processing library, and you need it for the assignment, so if you put the library in the repo they DMCA'd. Similarly, many courses give you a framework of code. If you filled in the framework they would DMCA. They did this a bit, but there was a pretty massive back lash. I don't think they are doing it atm

williamscales 10y ago

Can't one just write new assignments each year? Of course the students will share the answers. These ones are just sharing the answers publicly. You can DMCA all the public repos but there will still be groups of students who pass the answers on to next year's class. In fact, I'd argue that in the case of the solutions being shared publicly, at least everyone can benefit equally instead of only those who are part of the clique doing the sharing. The only real answer is to either write new assignments each year, OR, simply assume that all students will have the solutions to the assignments. A good way to tell if students are really doing the homework is to have a 10 minute homework quiz in class where the students answer a question very similar to a homework problem. Those who have truly done the homework will be done quickly and those who haven't will struggle mightily.

munin 10y ago
> Can't one just write new assignments each year? the budget / resources doesn't exist for that
- williamscales 10y ago
  That seems like the real problem, not the study habits of the students.
  - munin 10y ago
    nobody knows how to fix it though, so we're all just sitting around waiting for the higher ed bubble to pop.

Fiahil 10y ago

As a former TA, I can say that finding out if a student completed a project/exercise on its own is _very_ easy. Poking around the code asking questions for around 2 minutes is largely enough. Instead of DMCA-ting github repos, I find it way more effective to have a five minute talk about what is "cheating" and what is not at the beginning of the semester. Collaborative brainstorming is encouraged, helping struggling others is fine, giving them solutions is not (because you're just stealing their reward). After a while they would eventually stop looking up solutions and just ask their peers for some advice/code review. My job became surprisingly easy when I started treating students like adults.