Can a college in Georgia be legally required to let you have equal opportunity to take an exam when their required 3rd party software causes issues? Circumstances: I am a Sophomore at a University System of Georgia college, and am required to take Spanish for my degree. The professor requires students to purchase a license to 3rd party software in order to access all course content, instead of hosting the content on the provided college platform which has most needed capabilities. Start of the semester, I had to shell out about 100 bucks for the privilege of being able to access the course I already paid for. Part of the 3rd party software is testing that requires yet another browser extension for proctoring tests. One feature that this plugin has that the college-provided testing platform does not is that if it thinks you are attempting to exit the full screen proctoring page, after 30 seconds of continued attempts it will lock you out and end the exam. The issue: I was taking my final on my family computer which I have taken other proctored tests on before without issue, and when I was mostly done, a pop-up windows notification came up, putting the window out of full screen. The page and computer froze since the laptop is not high end, and by the time it unfroze, 30 seconds had passed and the exam was closed. I emailed my instructor about it immediately, requesting that it be reopened, but the next morning I got a reply that it could not be reopened without resetting all progress on the exam, which was not an option. They sent me two of the remaining questions which were reading comprehension and let me answer those, but other than that I cannot go back and finish the exam. I am worried that I might fail the class due to the weight the exam grade holds, and at the very least I think my grade will be significantly impacted for the worse. Are they legally required to give me an equal opportunity as other students to finish the exam, since it was their software that they forced us to purchase that had an issue which I couldn't control?
Probably Not In general, the law gives a school significant discretion on how to run its courses and grade its exams. And it is unlikely that getting into a lawsuit over a grade will be a good way to proceed. You could explain more fully to your instructor why you feel unfairly treated, and if not satisfied by the response, go to the department chair or other higher authority as the structure of the school may provide. I would suppose that the instructor had permission to require the 3rd party software, or that school policy gives an instructor that option. It might be worth confirming that, however. For future tests you might be able to shutdown or suspend all popups to avoid the problem happening again. A &quot;game mode&quot; sometimes will do that.
Yes, but maybe no. In many state universities that I am familiar with, there are contractual guarantees that exempt regular academic staff from the &quot;we pwn all your stuff&quot; rule, which does not extend to other staff. (I had to toss back a contract for subcontracted work once because they asserted automatic ownership of copyright). It depends on your contract, entirely. Which, if it is non-existent, is a bit problematic. Their claim would be based on &quot;work for hire&quot; law, 17 USC 101, where the central question is whether it is &quot;a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment&quot;. If this is a work for hire, they have more than a right to the proceeds of the work, they own the work and can sue you for publishing without permission. Work for hire means they own the copyright, and only the copyright owner can authorize publication. You do not legally have to have an attorney to request a release, but you should have one, because if you request a release, you are admitting that this is a work for hire. Your lawyer would tell you not to admit to such a thing. Of course, if you are reasonably certain that this is a work for hire and don't intend to contend otherwise, that kind of foot-shooting is not a concern. If your lawyer delivers a formal letter to your boss, the boss will almost certainly hand it to the university attorneys, and both parties will then take the hardest line possible, in defense of the interests of their clients.
Theoretically, a court could order the awarding of a degree. However, the probability that this will actually happen is extremely low: in general, courts only order specific performance when money awards are no substitute. To get anything, you would have to prove that the university was in some way negligent, that they had some duty of care to you which they breached. You could read the judgment in Siddiqui v. Oxford, where plaintiff lost and was only asking for money, to get a grasp of how courts deal with the question of educational negligence and failed exams / bad grades. It is possible that there is a cause of action based on breach of contract, given the seeming unilateral change in scope of examination. But you would need your attorney to study whether there was any contractual &quot;promise&quot; as to the scope of the exam.
I checked actual cost. It is just under $400 per month for one license. Here is a cost breakdown if you want some things a la cart and others blanket license. They are a LOT of money and are cost prohibitive unless they are used as a part of your legal practice. That said, everything available on Lexis or Westlaw are available at other, free sites. If you are looking for state and federal statutes, as well as precedent setting cases, those can be found on Findlaw (and other similar sites). Each state also publishes all of their statutes online, as well as law court decisions. The same is true of statutes and legislation. Legislative history can be obtained at any law library. These places also have free access to West and Lexis on their public computers. So they charge a premium for the convenience of having everything in one spot, as well as a variety obtain of other services that wouldn't be relevant to lay persons (like Accurint). I should amend to say Lexis/West does have things that you cannot just get online such as treatises practice guy, forms, etc. What I meant when I said that you can get pretty much everything for free online was statutes, case law, regs, etc.
IANAL, just a programmer with an interest in legal rules. Due to the very permissive nature of the MIT license, no, it does not appear that anything illegal has been done. Specifically, the section to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software (emphasis mine) grants everyone the right to modify your code and share those modifications, provided one includes the license. Since this person has included your license (including your copyright notice), they have followed the conditions of the license and are able to share your stuff. Legally. Ethically, I still think its ****. This might be a good starting point in selecting a license (note the Modification column). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses The CC-BY-SA license family, as mentioned by Ron Beyer in comments is on this list, for example. TL;DR: You unfortunately granted a more permissive license than what you wanted/needed to. This was a BadThing(TM), analogous to giving too broad of access rights to a method or class. Determine your desired permissions, then select a license that matches what you'd like to grant.
The matter is not clear-cut (and the university lawyers are presumably relying on that fact). The bold part and following overstates the situation, especially the unconstrained &quot;publishing anything&quot; edict. You can publish whatever you want that the university doesn't have a legal interest in. The clause that says &quot;If you have co-authors or co-researchers you must ask their permission before publishing, and include their names&quot; is true, and defines a limit on their control. If you don't have co-authors, it's none of their legal business. (There can be issues regarding publishing an affiliation, so let's put that on hold). They can, however, prohibit you from claiming an affiliation with Pod U, unless you submit your works to some internal vetting organization. This requirement should, however, be stated somewhere perhaps in the rules of the graduate school (not just the student handbook); or the other legally-enforceable rules. You should also pay attention to the exact words that they use. You must ask permission to publish work done with a co-author (that's a fact: it's a standard requirement in universities). It is important to be sure that the information you publish is correct (clearly that is not in dispute). They are allowed to ask you to get X's approval. The First Amendment does not prohibit them from urging you to follow a course of action.
What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.
34 CFR 106.15 covers admissions, and (e) says Subpart C does not apply to any public institution of undergraduate higher education which traditionally and continually from its establishment has had a policy of admitting only students of one sex. Subpart C, then, kind of redundantly prohibits "discrimination on the basis of sex in admission and recruitment", so that means there is no prohibition against single-sex public institutions of undergraduate education. The remainder of Title 9 applies, though. "Public" institution does not mean "government-run", it means "open to the public", which Wellesley is, although it is not government-run. I am not positive, but I think DLI is not a public school (even though it is operated by the US Army).