He got sued for sharing public YouTube videos; nightmare ended in settlement

Nobody expects to get sued for re-posting a YouTube video on social media by using the “share” button, but librarian Ian Linkletter spent the past five years embroiled in a copyright fight after doing just that.

Now that a settlement has been reached, Linkletter told Ars why he thinks his 2020 tweets sharing public YouTube videos put a target on his back.

Linkletter’s legal nightmare started in 2020 after an education technology company, Proctorio, began monitoring student backlash on Reddit over its AI tool used to remotely scan rooms, identify students, and prevent cheating on exams. On Reddit, students echoed serious concerns raised by researchers, warning of privacy issues, racist and sexist biases, and barriers to students with disabilities.

At that time, Linkletter was a learning technology specialist at the University of British Columbia. He had been aware of Proctorio as a tool that some professors used, but he ...