How my school rejected an app made for students
theiostream.tumblr.com
theiostream.tumblr.com
Well, maybe, in the real world, if anyone even noticed, you might get sued. It would be baseless, but you wouldn't have the resources for a court battle, so you'd just tuck your tail and run.
The lesson here is that institutions can be pointlessly authoritative assholes. Between the offended IT schmucks who were churning out their own, awful app, and the administrative types who are seeking to cover their own asses, legally speaking, it really couldn't work out any other way.
Oh, and since they can just kick you out of school, with no meaningful recourse, you're really getting a lesson in what it's like to be the little innovator.
It doesn't make it a moral issue though. Tell em: "look, first off, I will remove it, but don't fool yourself: this in no way is a moral/ethical issue. You simply have control because if I don't follow your desires or rules, I get disciplined in one way or another. So there's nothing ethical to it. It's an agreement between me and you that I can be apart of your school if I follow your rules. It's too bad you're so shortsighted here and arbitrarily inventing this rule that before didn't exist."
Anyway, you've been at this school for 8 years and you're programming great stuff--aren't you due to graduate some time soon. Like I said, release it again then. ..But also leave school. You don't need school to be a big success. You'll have way more time to devote towards what you really love. email me at james@faceyspacey.com for a paying remote job right now. I got work for you doing stuff you will love.
Biggest problem with education. It is not about learning how to learn, enterpreneurism or any other fun thing you could think of. Is about learning how to obey, and letting those in charge take care of things (even if they're done terribly by people who actually don't like/care for it).
edit to add something else: I think more schools should allow for software to be made by the students. They understand the needs of the other students better.
The code isn't on Github yet, but I've developed an open source website framework and mobile app framework for schools and other educational institutions, because ed tech kinda sucks from what I've experienced. Hopefully I'll be working on larger aspects if schools would allow non-trivial software to be developed by students who could do it better than the school.
Your app made someone over at the IT dept feel inadequate. Remember, some older IT person is trying to protect their job, no matter how crappy they're doing it. Your app, as you had mentioned, was much better than the one that they made.
This, unfortunately, is the way the world is. Think about patent trolls, incumbents suing start ups that threaten to shake up the industry, etc.
The way they all sat you down (quite literally like going to the principal's office) was simply bullying.
Keep your chin up and look beyond this. This app is not the fight worth expending energy fighting for.
If the school's website is publicly accessibly, as-in anyone can find it online, then it's public information and you can use it at your will so long as you state where the information came from (ie. not your original writing, etc).
if you are in the US, check your schools student handbook/policies... closely... if you found there is nothing restricting you, I would argue to pursue your app (and be prepared for pushback from the school).
This same story has played out at various levels and it gets repeatedly delivered to this audience through the prism of a "victim." Virtual pitchforks get raised, etc.
The talented young programmer makes some assumptions and, benefit of the doubt, "naive" mistakes in standing on the shoulders of others. Then, he cries about how his massive effort is wasted and the powers that be have dashed the dreams of someone obviously superior in skill and/or intellect to "the man."
And again... the victim pretty obviously ran afoul of cultural norms, if not fairly well-known ethical and legal lines. In this case, even the narrator tells you that the adults are merely using this a teachable moment. He would get sued and lose. He also decided he couldn't wait for approval... just had to go run out and assume things - things which would mean everything was in his favor. Until it wasn't.
That data wasn't his. He turned "free" data into a paid app. He forced the hand of the school to shut him down. He still hasn't learned one of the most important lessons for devs... Don't build exclusively on top of a single platform that is out of your control and/or has no incentive to support you.
I would have broken his parser a couple times before dropping the copyright argument on him. More teachable moments were available.
I could make a paid HN aggregator... legally. So long as I provided proper attribution.
The OP provided attribution. The OP never claimed the data was his. The entire purpose was to aggregate the schools data into an easily accessible format for students.
Cultural norms or not, the OP violated no laws. It's pretty plain and simple.
Yes, the school could play games and break this parser if they decided. Worse has been done before. It would be a teachable moment... but not for the reasons you seem to be concluding.
Try this... Play an artist's song, in its entirety, on a radio station. Tell the audience where that song came from. Play another song... attribute. Never pay ASCAP license fees... see how long you are on the air.
Or... copy/paste the entirety of a newly released book to your tumblr. Attribute accordingly. No worries, right?
The original creator has copyright. They license or transfer it, frequently contractually, to publishers who control the rights to how copies of the material may be created and distributed.
There are fair uses for portions and/or derivatives of content, but this use would not fall into those categories. Let's not forget that the kid sought and was denied permission for his app. He just assumed that silence in his time window implied permission. That's not nearly long enough for copyright to expire.
Also, they could feasibly be dicks and say that his viewstate parser was a copyright circumvention technique putting him in the crosshairs of DMCA 1201 - Circumvension of Copyright Measures.
So, you are plainly and simply rejecting a lot of readily available information on well-understood restrictions around copying other peoples' content.
Maybe you are confused with Creative Commons licensing or something?
The OP did not subvert anyone's revenue model.
Simply aggregating data is not violating any copyright laws nor protections. If so... most news sites would be in serious trouble. The OP was simply aggregating data into an easily accessible format for students.
The original creator retains copyright, but they can't prevent someone from linking to nor providing access to publicly accessibly information. If they truly want nobody to have access in this manor, they would have to block public access or restrict it in some form.
To use your book example. If the copyright holder of a new book posted the text in full on their website with no restrictions or payment necessary, and I reposted that text, provided attribution and a method to access the original content, then I would not be in violation of any law.
Irrelevant. Saying "you weren't making money off of it so I decided to copy it and do so", isn't a valid argument.
>Simply aggregating data is not violating any copyright laws nor protections.
Yes it is. No high-traffic news site does this. Maybe you are confusing this with news sites that pay for the AP feed and the right to do so?
>To use your book example. If the copyright holder of a new book posted the text in full on their website with no restrictions or payment necessary, and I reposted that text, provided attribution and a method to access the original content, then I would not be in violation of any law.
Nope, you are still violating the copyright unless they explicitly give permission to repost it. You are conflating someone deciding to charge for something and someone keeping the right to prevent redistribution. They are very different things.
A copyright is automatic in the US. You have to explicitly license content with something like the creative commons license before people can safely copy things and repost them.
It has nothing to due with revenue. Note my non-commercial language above.
If you write something and present it anywhere that copyright is implied or described, you, as the content creator, maintain control of your work. If someone scrapes it and re-presents it, even with proper attribution and you have not provided an explicit license, you can still require the third party to remove, revoke, forfeit, and/or destroy the copy of your content.
Posting their book, in full, online would not relinquish the author's copyright. They have to pretty explicitly grant license for other uses. See Creative Commons licenses. Those are pretty loose and they only require attribution.
And what's with all this method of access stuff now? I thought it was JUST proper attribution. Now you need to provide a method of access too? You're making this worse.
[0] http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/craigslist-3taps-lawsuit-de...
If the school's technical partner was threatened by this app, they could bring suit... not the school.
[1]: pre-emptive reply: no, it's not public, half the article is talking about how he's circumventing their authentication system. this is NOTHING like a news aggregator.
So yes, his app is mostly like a news aggregator.
what would happen if they did is a thought experiment i'll leave up to you.
He isn't selling their technical partner's content. He is selling the reader, the content is already freely available to whoever can use the app anyway via a browser and their login credentials. There is a big difference.
[1]: it's irrelevant whether the school or the partner owned it, he did it without permission (and i highly doubt the reader has the license to do whatever they wanted with that data either).
This app is just an HTTP user agent, as far as I can tell.
The hacker mentality doesn't just abruptly stop once we're not dealing with programming issues.
Being relentless and constantly pushing to get what you want is a way of life.
looking into this a bit more it would seem these services are provided by http://www.educacional.com.br/home/home.asp
what i'm saying is no, the school didn't reject this app... their partner – your competition – did.
edit: oh wow, i've realized i had missed half the article (i stopped reading at the first screenshot)... you're charging for an app that stores passwords, scrapes 3rd party content, practically bragging about how you removed the company and school's branding... and you're upset?
And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself.
Which is probably why the school shut you down.
You are serving as a proxy for credentials into a system where the school is legally liable to protect the privacy of the students, families, and staff. Yeah. You get shut down NOW. It doesn't matter where your code is or how great your work is. you are taking control of something that they are required to protect.
If someone can hack iOS or your app and steal credentials, who's ass is on the line for discovering, disclosing, remediating, rebuilding trust, resigning, etc.? All those people have enough work without your app. They are responsible for what they create. They can't be responsible for your work. If they knowingly let it exist, they will have to take responsibility for any fallout that may come from it.
Who is going to be handling all the calls when people change their passwords at the site, but your app locks their accounts out by trying to use the cached credentials?
They have plenty to lose with your app. You are learning many things.
"All those people" are responsible for a public API; in this case, it is a text-based api over HTTP only, meant for human consumption, but it's an API nonetheless. This app does not bypass that API. If they don't like how the API is being used, they need to change it; but of course you can't close it completely. This is the analog hole of the Internet.
Web browsers are just a client for that particular kind of API. It's ridiculous to limit which clients can access an API, as long as they do so correctly. Of course, you can make it difficult or impossible for unapproved clients to access the API, that will achieve the goal; that's what DRM does. But by not putting those controls on the API you're allowing new competing clients to connect with it.
It's not a public API meant for human consumption. It's a viewstate object, which is meant for currying data back and forth inside controls, etc. in an ASP.Net application. It's not an API. He had to hack that format which is feasibly a DMCA violation as well.
Weev would be a horrible example to bring up.
I'm not sure we're going to close a gap here if you feel all copyright is stripped the moment data can be presented in an anonymous user's browser.
This is the reason, no need to look into it further. They probably sunk a lot of money in what turned out to be a crappy app. Knowing how these things work in Brazil, I wouldn't be surprised if the company developing it had ties with the school's administration. If so, a crappy app wouldn't usually be a problem... until this guy's app appeared. Then, the development costs will have to be justified.
Notice how they didn't complain that the student was making money. They don't care about that. All they care about is not looking bad, while furthering their agenda.
If you really want to fight for it, perhaps you can get support from the student body and the teachers that have liked the app before?
If not, well, at least you learned a lot by completing it, congratulations on that!
(maybe we should all publish the app to prove the point)
It boils my blood to see a school administration so blatantly and wrongly take advantage of a student that they claim to be educating and preparing for the future. If anything, the administration should be in full support of the OP. If the OP can tolerate the pushback, and there is nothing in his school's policies forbidding, he should pursue the app. Let the administration spin their wheels. They can't sue him. And if they tried, they would lose. It's just absurd.
i find it hard to believe they would be spiteful, but maybe i am being too optimistic.
They should be thinking, "We should be also serving this data in a parsible format such as JSON or XML so apps like this are easier to create and to avoid breaking things if we change our HTML"
Also, facts such as grades or sports results cannot be copyright at all.
Aggregators like Hacker News and Reddit don‘t copy content as a whole, they just provide links. Providing a preview of the content, as Facebook does, might be considered either fair use or citation—but in neither case they’re copying and republishing the entire content.
Attribution does not magically remove copyright.
If I'm not mistaken, Google got sued for providing short excerpts of news from various news outlets and decided to settle out of court.
The schools position is analogous to claiming that someone is pirating your freely downloadable PDF document because they used Nitro instead of Adobe Reader to view it.
Creating the application & working with the district was a great learning experience for me - perhaps the most useful thing I did in high school. I'm sure you learned a good bit by creating the app - those skills will certainly help you in the future.
Luckily for me the staff/administrators we talked to really embraced the idea and brought me on and made it into the official iOS application for the school district and then open-sourced it. We pitched the ability to check grades, get push notifications, and check documents. It's important to note, however, that I went to school in Silicon Valley - so that's probably a factor.
You've already demonstrated a lot of skill by creating the app. (It looks a whole lot better than my v1)! - Chalk this up as a good learning experience - Keep it up!
Ditch the proprietary soft when possible if you want to get as far away from BS as you can. FOSS is one of the few refuges where you can believe in humanity as much as you might. You have the "challenge" to think about how unethical your choice of platforms is ;-D
Now he is selling the app so profiting off of someone else's copyrighted work is pretty much a no go. But what if he gave it away for free? What the result of a copyright lawsuit be exactly?
The OP may be subject to some school policy... but that's it. The administration is plain wrong and the OP should pursue his app if he can withstand the administrations push-back/threats.
You can always link-to and/or provide access to existing work (copyrighted or not) so long as you provide proper attribution (state the original content authors/creators)
Now, you can always link to Hulu in your browser and direct your visitors to Hulu. Hulu as the (C) holder can then decide if you're geographically suitable to recieve this content.
How about building a proxy webpage that provides access to Hulu (let's call it EU-Hulu)? We'll build a complete Hulu clone that works in EU by tunneling video streams via VPN to our page and stream them from our web video players.
I don't think that adding attribuition (ie providing a "THIS CONTENT IS FROM HULU" and their logo) to the page would solve our legal problems. If anybody can confirm that this is in fact legal, I know what I'll be developing in the near future: EU-HULU, EU-Spotify, EU-...
Copyright law is very very very strict. If it's not explicitely stated it's forbidden. Even by taking code from a pastie repository, where it's clearly made public, you're braking the authors Copyright unless he specifies Licensing terms that allows you to copy paste it into your app. Source code for all closed source software could be made public and that doesn't mean you're allowed to use it in any way.
To go even further - Hulu, while it openly shares video content to US citizens is unavailable to the rest of the world. We all know that you can bypass the limitation by employing VPN, but you're breaking the Copyright law nontheless. It's their choice if they want to limit access to their copyrighted materials.
If OP built a Web browser clone, he would be in the clear. He instead took data from the webpage, mangled it into his own app and sold it for 0.99$. Now while I do not agree with the tactics employed by the school (they should embrace it instead), image we would be talking about Wikipedia and 6.99$ BestEncyclopedia app, developed by Apple, which downloads the data and presents it a very nice way (they'd call it Cylopedia-Flow with huge images and Helvetica all the way).
Right now you'd be very pissed at Apple.
This is not at all comparable to the OP's app, which (if I've understood the post correctly) is a special purpose HTTP client. If its user can use that app to get the data he wants, then he can also use a normal browser. It's using the user's credentials. There is no middle man tapping into a restricted stream and republishing that to the world.
> image we would be talking about Wikipedia and 6.99$ BestEncyclopedia app, developed by Apple, which downloads the data and presents it a very nice way (they'd call it Cylopedia-Flow with huge images and Helvetica all the way).
> Right now you'd be very pissed at Apple.
Nope. There are many wikipedia clones already. There is nothing wrong with them. And there are many special purpose http clients to show specific sites in a user friendly way. Nothing wrong with them.
And accompanying source code: https://github.com/theiostream/viewstate
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/941594/understand-rails-a...
EDIT: Oh, ok. Re-reading the article, he was parsing the ViewState because there was some data hidden in there (a serious flaw actually), instead of scraping the site normally! Clever!
In Brazil, copyright law is slightly different (emphasis mine):
"The current body of Brazilian copyright exceptions and limitations may be divided into three groups, relating to: 1) partial or full reproduction; 2) derivative works; and 3) performing rights. The three tables in the following sections provide an exhaustive list of the limitations present in Brazilian copyright legislation.[2] The dominant view in Brazilian literature is that exceptions and limitations lists are to be strictly construed, with no credence given to implied limitations. This is a primary tenet of Brazilian legal scholarship with respect to copyright; it is taken as dogma in academic writing and, as a result, often by courts as well[3]."
What I understand is that unless it is explicitly laid out as an exception, court houses would look at it as infringement.
"The reproduction of small excerpts of preexisting works of any nature, or of an entire work of visual art, is allowed within the context of a larger work. The reproduction itself must not be the main object of the larger work, and must not interfere with the normal exploitation of the work or cause unjustified harm to the legitimate interests of the author[3]."
Your app is doing quite a lot with the screen-scraped data. You're not just presenting it unadulterated, but you're transforming it to present it in a way easier to consume. Don't know if that constitutes enough for the scraped data to "not be the main object of the larger work".
"To integrate any given computer program into others, be it at application or operating system level, is permitted if done for personal use and unavoidable considering the user’s needs. Integration must be done for the exclusive use of the person who carries it out[3]."
You could argue that your application is doing nothing more than displaying available information to people that already have access to it in a way that answers the user's needs, but I don't think it would fly here because integration is not "done for the exclusive use of the person who carries it out".
"Higher-education institutions in Brazil usually do not provide clear policy guidance on course readers and textbook copying. In practice, the unlicensed reproduction of copyrighted material is essential to academic life. Course readers, copies of book chapters and even entire books can be found in files hosted by copy shops, ready for on-demand reproduction. Professors usually keep personal files as well, in which they include all of their courses’ required and complementary reading material. Students are frequently seen carrying spiral-bound photocopied textbooks to class. This is all done without prior authorization from rightsholders[3]."
I find it extremely ironical that an "industry" that thrives (IMO correctly) on copyright infringement, would go against a screen scraper for copyright infringement of facts.
[1]: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
[2]: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazi...
[3]: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazi...
Article 7(2) states, quite clearly, that the information in compilations and databases is not protected. Article 47 says that paraphrases aren't infringing - but no need to rely on that as Art.7 is so very clear. FWIW Art.8 says that calendars and diaries are also excluded from copyright protection (but be careful, as I understand, it Brazilian law doesn't treat lists as examples but as strictly complete).
The school's claims seem to be unfounded. Perhaps the OP could ask them - in view of their education(!) - if the school can show how the app is infringing the school's copyright in view of the Articles saying that information is not protected.
But as other's have noted it may be that you need to simply accept their position in order to protect yourself from expulsion or other negative actions the school could take.
You _could_ seek a copyright attorney/lawyer who will act for you pro bono!? Especially if you wanted to take this to the newspapers.
One issue that is unclear to me is the authorisation process. Does the app somehow scrape the users data centrally or do the users use the app as the interface to access the data that is on the web pages.
It's possible that the website terms of use state that scraping is not allowed. But I don't know with certainty how that one would pan out in my own country nevermind in Brazil. Either way that wouldn't be "copyright infringement".
- - -
[1]: http://entertainmentlawbrazil.com.br/brazilian-copyright-act...
Mention this post in any job interview in Silicon Valley and you will likely get hired.
As for the school, just remember that you are interacting with low paid government employees who will never taste success.
In my opinion, you've done nothing wrong.
Media would love this story, but it may make your life miserable. How long until you are out of that school?
I did learn that the school stored user/password information from Active Directory in a flat file for one of the legacy applications...that was scary.
What makes you think he will be making a profit on a $0.99 app ?
Likely he was not making any profit at all. Are you suggesting he shouldn't try to claw back some of his costs ?
And now they reject his app; he takes it down and definitely won't claw back anything. Now he is down $200 + time and effort. Yeah, screw him for trying to make money off the backs of anyone.
Did you read the story ? He tried to talk to the school but after several school employees told him they liked his app they changed their tune and decided he was ripping them off. T hey could have worked to understand what he had done and offered him his costs to open up the app but they decided not to.
Does it suck? Yeah, sure. That's irrelevant.
Let them take it to the appstore and see if they can really get it down due to copyrights. I don't think they can sue you about anything, you'r just using public data...
Also something else, take it up with your parents or whoever has you at that school, and consider changing schools. Make it a scandal for them. School trying to sue defendless student after having a bright idea for an app using public data...
If somebody was making money of my work, I too would be pissed.
If someone were making money off my work, I'd be impressed.
Is this your legal opinion or a moral judgement.
IMO, and in the opinion it seems of Brazilian copyright law (see my other comment), copying information should be excluded from the monopolistic protection given to artistic works.
Presenting information that has been given away freely (gratis) is alternative forms seems pretty harmless. Here especially as the compilation of the information has been paid for, in some way, by the pupils families (or communities if supported by taxes) and the re-use of the information is for those pupils. Yes, the OP is charging for the app, but then no-one need buy it if they find that the new presentation of the information is not worth the price asked.