15 ms·

Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

775 points by shaufler 13y ago

gregwtmtno 13y ago
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.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gklitt 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      There's an early xkcd with an answer for that: http://xkcd.com/129/ http://xkcd.com/129/
  - ihsw 13y ago
    > 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. Five years from now this kind of information will be encrypted using EME modules, in fact this whole Yale saga would've been a non-issue from the start had EME been well established.
w1ntermute 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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?
    - morgante 13y ago
      > 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? Unfortunately yes. A lot of the top technology companies are still saddled with the notion that academics matter.
    - cpwright 13y ago
      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.
blablabla123 13y ago
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.
- aaronem 13y ago
  I'm astonished you're the only person in this comment thread to have made this very significant point.
- ps4fanboy 13y ago
  I am sure students feelings are hurt when they pay tuition for a really poorly run/designed subject.
etanazir 13y ago
If you matriculate 1 semester at Harvard/Yale whatever - you've got the trademark - so why keep paying to waste your time?
ToastyMallows 13y ago
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/extension/inject.js https://github.com/seanhaufler/banned-bluebook/blob/master/e...
- EGreg 13y ago
  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 :)
  - drwl 13y ago
    > Scraping involves storing somethjng on a server. Not really sure I agree with your definition. Website scraping, in general, is taking specifically taking data from a webpage.
  - skywhopper 13y ago
    I don't know the full etymology, but I first heard the term "screen scraping" about 15 years ago in the context of writing a web application that interfaced with a mainframe application. The mainframe database was not directly accessible to the webapp platform, so instead a session was opened to the mainframe over telnet, and the web application itself issued commands over that telnet session, parsed the terminal output, and dynamically generated a web UI that displayed the data or form fields or what have you. Scraping these days may more often be a means of extracting data to an offsite cache/database, but ad-hoc on-demand scraping is consistent with the definition. Regardless, this doesn't really matter. I don't see how any restrictions on "scraping" can possibly be enforced. Screen reader programs that allow visually impaired individuals to browse the web are "scraping". Mobile browsers that reformat pages on the fly to optimize their display on a small screen are "scraping". Ad-hoc user-initiated scraping of this sort is really no different than just browsing the web directly. So whether one wants to argue that "scraping" is or isn't happening here, it hardly matters to whether this is ethical, and should not matter to whether it is legal (although on that topic, I'm guessing different judges would see it differently).
lionhearted 13y ago
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.
- superflit 13y ago
  I really wish some US americans value it more. Living for 3 years in US, loved the country and its infrastructure/legal system, country, people all of it. It is not perfect but still is one the best we have. Do you think NSA and military are ''bad'' you did not know what the other countries counterpart do (hint... worse and mean)
  - RivieraKid 13y ago
    What county did you live in before?
    - superflit 13y ago
      Brazil.... With the whole populism thing..
- 13y ago
ggchappell 13y ago
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.
- pistle 13y ago
  Ignorance, egotism, entitlement, etc. "Hey reddit, watch me fight the (wo)man!!" Maybe you could have inquired about or offered to help Yale's tool/product? Nah, I'll just jack it and cry foul because my little mash-up thing gets turned off. It sure sounds like there is nearly a contractual obligation by Yale to provide data a certain way. Whatever agreement made this possible could get undermined. Then NO data will be made available and poor Yale students can go back to just lists of courses.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    Just a little tip for posting on HN: try not to use any emotion in your arguments unless you are looking for downvotes.
    - pistle 13y ago
      Thanks, but I'm not motivated either way by popularity. What all these kids at Yale are doing is misguided and a waste of their youth and skills. They could have stepped up to try to make a name for themselves by understanding more than just the technical bits. They could have spent just a little time to understand their non-technical landscape prior to showing off technically and crying to reddit Kony 2012-style. They could have created a business around it. They could have attained departmental, IT, and/or administrative backing... along with all the improvements to access, support, and coverage that can bring. What looks better? We got shut down right out of the gate for having no idea how to go about securing our venture or... We brought our technical acumen to the right eyes and ears and sold ourselves to the king-makers in our little world. This is a dress-rehearsal for investors. What these kids proved was they want to be more Pirate Bay than Facebook. More pejorative hacker than Hacker News hacker.
mhb 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Why do you think its misguided?
  - mhb 13y ago
    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.
babs474 13y ago
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-social-fixer-browser-extension-to-remove-key-features/?r http://socialfixer.com/blog/2013/10/05/facebook-requires-soc...
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  I believe unedditreddit was removed due to trademark issues, but I could be wrong. As this extension does not have any of Yale's trademarks within and (demonstrably, based on source) does not impact the site, Yale should not have a leg to stand on. But your point about doing it in Firefox is a very good one. Firefox's extension addons site is much more democratic. And side-loading extensions within Firefox outside of addons.mozilla.org is something even an inexperienced user can accomplish.
  - babs474 13y ago
    That possibility probably didn't help, but eventually somebody from google told me they wouldn't bring the app back even if I changed the name. You bring up another interesting point about impact to the yale site though. This app does impact the yale site, by having clients issue extra ajax requests. It not an unreasonable load but I wonder if that might muddle the issue again. For unedditreddit I was able to completely prevent the app from creating extra load by distributing scraping among clients only already visiting the page. I wonder if the same idea could work for the evaluation data?
higherpurpose 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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 13y ago
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.
ericcumbee 13y ago
>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 13y ago
  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.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
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.
atmosx 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
- john_b 13y ago
  Maybe he just wants it. Or maybe he finds Yale to be a good environment for learning. It might not be about need.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Yale is actually pretty good as an environment for learning.
ilaksh 13y ago
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
- azakai 13y ago
  Your first url looks broken.
- Imagenuity 13y ago
  GreaseMonkey and Scriptish userscripts are run in the Chrome plugin TamperMonkey https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Or better yet, do a desktop app.
- frevd 13y ago
  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!
adharmad 13y ago
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.
ricardobeat 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
- aridiculous 13y ago
  I agree that interface decisions are political. If you allow students to sort by workload, you're sending the wrong message about academics. Or at least what a minority (I, included) believes academics to be about. The cynic in me is OK with YBB+ and its food menu ethos: most of the academic system has been turned into an exchange already, so might as well be publicly honest about it. That way, real scholarly students can avoid places like Yale at the undergraduate level, and go to places that actually still know what real education means.
johnohara 13y ago
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.
jahewson 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
room271 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mhp 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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.)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dahart 13y ago
    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! ;)
    - 13y ago
naaaaak 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
ufmace 13y ago
"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.
kriro 13y ago
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 13y ago
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.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
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 13y ago
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.
waylandsmithers 13y ago
Well done. A brilliant and ballsy display of civil disobedience. Godspeed.
nctalaviya 13y ago
Nice one shaufler... Good job
jdnier 13y ago
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-community-dean-mary-miller http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/open-letter-yale-communi...?

775 points by shaufler 13y ago

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.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gklitt 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    There's an early xkcd with an answer for that: http://xkcd.com/129/ http://xkcd.com/129/
- ihsw 13y ago
  > 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. Five years from now this kind of information will be encrypted using EME modules, in fact this whole Yale saga would've been a non-issue from the start had EME been well established.

w1ntermute 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
  - morgante 13y ago
    > 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? Unfortunately yes. A lot of the top technology companies are still saddled with the notion that academics matter.
  - cpwright 13y ago
    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.

blablabla123 13y ago

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.

aaronem 13y ago
I'm astonished you're the only person in this comment thread to have made this very significant point.
ps4fanboy 13y ago
I am sure students feelings are hurt when they pay tuition for a really poorly run/designed subject.

etanazir 13y ago

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

ToastyMallows 13y ago

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/extension/inject.js https://github.com/seanhaufler/banned-bluebook/blob/master/e...

EGreg 13y ago
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 :)
- drwl 13y ago
  > Scraping involves storing somethjng on a server. Not really sure I agree with your definition. Website scraping, in general, is taking specifically taking data from a webpage.
- skywhopper 13y ago
  I don't know the full etymology, but I first heard the term "screen scraping" about 15 years ago in the context of writing a web application that interfaced with a mainframe application. The mainframe database was not directly accessible to the webapp platform, so instead a session was opened to the mainframe over telnet, and the web application itself issued commands over that telnet session, parsed the terminal output, and dynamically generated a web UI that displayed the data or form fields or what have you. Scraping these days may more often be a means of extracting data to an offsite cache/database, but ad-hoc on-demand scraping is consistent with the definition. Regardless, this doesn't really matter. I don't see how any restrictions on "scraping" can possibly be enforced. Screen reader programs that allow visually impaired individuals to browse the web are "scraping". Mobile browsers that reformat pages on the fly to optimize their display on a small screen are "scraping". Ad-hoc user-initiated scraping of this sort is really no different than just browsing the web directly. So whether one wants to argue that "scraping" is or isn't happening here, it hardly matters to whether this is ethical, and should not matter to whether it is legal (although on that topic, I'm guessing different judges would see it differently).

lionhearted 13y ago

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.

superflit 13y ago
I really wish some US americans value it more. Living for 3 years in US, loved the country and its infrastructure/legal system, country, people all of it. It is not perfect but still is one the best we have. Do you think NSA and military are ''bad'' you did not know what the other countries counterpart do (hint... worse and mean)
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  What county did you live in before?
  - superflit 13y ago
    Brazil.... With the whole populism thing..
13y ago

ggchappell 13y ago

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.

pistle 13y ago
Ignorance, egotism, entitlement, etc. "Hey reddit, watch me fight the (wo)man!!" Maybe you could have inquired about or offered to help Yale's tool/product? Nah, I'll just jack it and cry foul because my little mash-up thing gets turned off. It sure sounds like there is nearly a contractual obligation by Yale to provide data a certain way. Whatever agreement made this possible could get undermined. Then NO data will be made available and poor Yale students can go back to just lists of courses.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  Just a little tip for posting on HN: try not to use any emotion in your arguments unless you are looking for downvotes.
  - pistle 13y ago
    Thanks, but I'm not motivated either way by popularity. What all these kids at Yale are doing is misguided and a waste of their youth and skills. They could have stepped up to try to make a name for themselves by understanding more than just the technical bits. They could have spent just a little time to understand their non-technical landscape prior to showing off technically and crying to reddit Kony 2012-style. They could have created a business around it. They could have attained departmental, IT, and/or administrative backing... along with all the improvements to access, support, and coverage that can bring. What looks better? We got shut down right out of the gate for having no idea how to go about securing our venture or... We brought our technical acumen to the right eyes and ears and sold ourselves to the king-makers in our little world. This is a dress-rehearsal for investors. What these kids proved was they want to be more Pirate Bay than Facebook. More pejorative hacker than Hacker News hacker.

mhb 13y ago

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 13y ago
Why do you think its misguided?
- mhb 13y ago
  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.

babs474 13y ago

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

JohnTHaller 13y ago
I believe unedditreddit was removed due to trademark issues, but I could be wrong. As this extension does not have any of Yale's trademarks within and (demonstrably, based on source) does not impact the site, Yale should not have a leg to stand on. But your point about doing it in Firefox is a very good one. Firefox's extension addons site is much more democratic. And side-loading extensions within Firefox outside of addons.mozilla.org is something even an inexperienced user can accomplish.
- babs474 13y ago
  That possibility probably didn't help, but eventually somebody from google told me they wouldn't bring the app back even if I changed the name. You bring up another interesting point about impact to the yale site though. This app does impact the yale site, by having clients issue extra ajax requests. It not an unreasonable load but I wonder if that might muddle the issue again. For unedditreddit I was able to completely prevent the app from creating extra load by distributing scraping among clients only already visiting the page. I wonder if the same idea could work for the evaluation data?

higherpurpose 13y ago

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 13y ago
> 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 13y ago

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.

ericcumbee 13y ago

>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 13y ago
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.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

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.

atmosx 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
john_b 13y ago
Maybe he just wants it. Or maybe he finds Yale to be a good environment for learning. It might not be about need.
muyuu 13y ago
Yale is actually pretty good as an environment for learning.

ilaksh 13y ago

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

azakai 13y ago
Your first url looks broken.
Imagenuity 13y ago
GreaseMonkey and Scriptish userscripts are run in the Chrome plugin TamperMonkey https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...
pjmlp 13y ago
Or better yet, do a desktop app.
frevd 13y ago
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!

adharmad 13y ago

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.

ricardobeat 13y ago

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 13y ago
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?
aridiculous 13y ago
I agree that interface decisions are political. If you allow students to sort by workload, you're sending the wrong message about academics. Or at least what a minority (I, included) believes academics to be about. The cynic in me is OK with YBB+ and its food menu ethos: most of the academic system has been turned into an exchange already, so might as well be publicly honest about it. That way, real scholarly students can avoid places like Yale at the undergraduate level, and go to places that actually still know what real education means.

johnohara 13y ago

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.

jahewson 13y ago

> 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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

room271 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

deleted 13y ago

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mhp 13y ago

"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 13y ago
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.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dahart 13y ago
  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! ;)
  - 13y ago

naaaaak 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

ufmace 13y ago

"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.

kriro 13y ago

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 13y ago

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.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

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 13y ago

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.

waylandsmithers 13y ago

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

nctalaviya 13y ago

Nice one shaufler... Good job

jdnier 13y ago

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-community-dean-mary-miller http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/open-letter-yale-communi...?