Proctorio Facing Lawsuit Issued by EFF on Behalf of a Miami University Student After Company Used DMCA to Delete Student's Tweets

The Electronic Frontier Foundation or EFF has filed a lawsuit against Proctorio, a remote testing company, on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson.

Proctorio Hit by a Lawsuit

The lawsuit is intended to put a stop a campaign of harassment designed to undermine important concerns about Proctorio's remote test-proctoring software, according to EFF. This is the latest legal battle for the software company, which has fought back against online critics last year.

The lawsuit intends to address Proctorio's behavior toward Johnson in September 2020.

After Johnson found out that he needed to use the software for his classes, the student dug into the source code of Proctorio's Chrome extension and made a Twitter thread criticizing the practices of the company.

Johnson's Twitter thread included links to excerpts of the source, which he had also posted on Pastebin.

Mike Olsen, the CEO of Proctorio, sent Johnson a direct message on Twitter requesting that he remove the code. Screenshots of the conversation between Olsen and Johnson were published by The Verge.

After Johnson refused to delete the code, Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice and was backed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act or DMCA, and three of Johnson's tweets were removed.

In the lawsuit, the EFF argued that Johnson made fair use of Proctorio's code and that the company's takedown interfered with Johnson's First Amendment right.

Attorney Cara Gagliano, an EFF staff, said in a statement that copyright holders should be held liable when they falsely accuse their critics of copyright infringement, especially when the goal is plainly to intimidate and undermine them.

Proctorio's Privacy Issue

Proctorio is one of the most prominent software platforms that numerous universities use to monitor cheating during remote tests. Its use exploded last year during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when remote learning was implemented.

The platform proctored more than 16 million exams in the United States, according to TechCrunch.

The software records students through their webcams as they work, and monitors the positions of their heads while they take exams. The software flags suspicious signs to professors, who can review its recordings. It also enables instructors to track the websites students visit during the exam period and to prevent them from using functions like copying and pasting text.

Students and instructors around the country have criticized Proctorio, claiming that it violates student privacy and has the potential to discriminate against marginalized students.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC filed a complaint against the service last year, calling the company's process invasive.

A coalition of US senators, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Cory Booker, cited the same concerns about Proctorio in an open letter in 2020.

Proctorio had dealt with lawsuits before.

In October 2020, Proctorio sued a technology specialist at the University of British Columbia who made a series of tweets criticizing the platform.

The thread contained links to unlisted YouTube videos, which Proctorio claimed contained confidential information.

The lawsuit drew attention from the education community as hundreds of university staff, faculty, administrators, and students have signed an open letter in the specialist's defense, and a GoFundMe for his legal expenses has raised $60,000 from over 700 donors.

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Written by Sophie Webster