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HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

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Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#151

Post by brasic »

jeroenhd wrote: post #74

Not the first time they've taken down Github repos, some with a legal basis (partial problem text, though Fair Use might overrule that if the cases ever made it to court), others with no involvement at all ( https://github.com/egfx/React-Leaderboard still hasn't been restored, for example) More information about previous DMCA abuse here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239594 Personally, I would not trust a co…

Part of the DMCA takedown process is:

  > A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Has this penalty ever been enforced?

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#152

Post by jeroenhd »

paulgb wrote: post #148
jeroenhd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the DMCA is that if the claimant disagrees with your counter notice, the content stays offline for at least enough time for a lawsuit be be filed over the contents of the post, if the claimant is actually willing to take the matter to court. I don't think anyone will actually go through the expenses to go to court over a code snippet on Github, unless they're particularly principled, wealthy, and ret…

> The problem with the DMCA is that if the claimant disagrees with your counter notice, the content stays offline until a lawsuit is fought out over the contents of the post. Not quite. The obligation of the service provider when they receive a counter-notice is to inform the person who filed the original notice, and give them 10-14 days to file a court order to block the content. If they don't get that court order i…

You're absolutely right, I've edited my comment.

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#153

Post by gfd »

jeroenhd wrote: post #74

Not the first time they've taken down Github repos, some with a legal basis (partial problem text, though Fair Use might overrule that if the cases ever made it to court), others with no involvement at all ( https://github.com/egfx/React-Leaderboard still hasn't been restored, for example) More information about previous DMCA abuse here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239594 Personally, I would not trust a co…

Oh wow, a lot of fears people have in this thread apparently already happened.

For example they claim to own the copyright to find substring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239926

Absolutely disgusting.

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#155

Post by johnsillings »

kristianov wrote: post #115
tomxor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible solutions to affect some justice and reclaim your image: 1. Fire WorthIT Solutions (no RCA necessary, do not automate or outsource DMCA, even if it's human based automation) 2. Apologise to SymPy 3. Discuss internally the cost-vs-benefit (more than monetary) of embarking on copyright policing as part of your company's future strategy 4. Blog results of #3 WRT #3, sustainability comes to mind - if disseminati…

0. Dissolve HackerRank. All things considered, this company has done net negative impact to tech industry.

Why?

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#156

Post by tejtm »

zomglings wrote: post #38

I apologize in advance for the profanity. This really pissed me off. FUCK you HackerRank, for even entertaining the notion of litigating open source projects at scale for no good reason. FUCK you for taking down the the documentation for a harmless open source symbolic mathematics engine without any justification that I can see. What content of your shitty ranking company could SymPy possibly have infringed on? Also…

I will add a fuck YC for insufficiency ethics filters on who they support I suppose it can be hard to be perfectly prescient (I'm not) but that is what lawyers are for, include a don't be a dick later on clause, and enforce it.

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#157

Post by philderbeast »

rvivek wrote: post #42
endisneigh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious - why even bother? What will you do if someone torrents the solutions? Focus on figuring out another solution. Leetcode for instance puts the solutions out there.

It's not an either or. We need to do the takedown AND figure out a way where we can do things like randomizing questions but preserving the integrity of it to ensure a fair evaluation, etc.

No, no you dont need to do take downs, ever.

literaly everything your assessing is programming 101. its not something that you can or should be asserting any copywrite on.

infact I would challange you to register the copywrites on your questions/answers and see exactly how far you get with that process before you even consider sending a single DMCA notice.

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#158

Post by myvoiceismypass »

mjg59 wrote: post #72
rvivek wrote: post #37

Hello, I'm Vivek, founder/CEO of HackerRank. Our intention with this initiative is to takedown plagiarized code snippets or solutions to company assessments. This was definitely an unintended consequence. We are looking into it ASAP and also going to do an RCA to ensure this doesn't happen again. Sorry, everyone! EDIT: update here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31092085

> solutions to company assessments Sorry, are you asserting that you hold copyright over solutions that other people write?

Is someone going to start asserting copyright over people's varied fizzbizz solutions? Fucking bonkers!

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#159

Post by rvivek »

Hello again, Vivek, founder/CEO here. In the interest of moving swiftly, here are the actions we are going to take:

(1) We have withdrawn the DMCA notice for sympy; Sent a note to senior leadership in Github to act on this quickly.

(2) We have stopped the whole DMCA process for now and working on internal guidelines of what constitutes a real violation so that these kind of incidents don't happen. We are going to do this in-house

(3) We are going to donate $25k to the sympy project.

As a company we take a lot of pride in helping developers and it sucks to see this. I'm extremely sorry for what happened here.

Re: HackerRank (YC S11) DMCA'ed the SymPy Docs [fixed]

#160

Post by nickysielicki »

rvivek wrote: post #65
rdl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using a third party to perform an action which at core is counter to how the Internet works, AND you are using the same third party who has acted in bad faith before and did exactly the same thing to another victim of yours, and now you're deflecting onto the third party? This is entirely on you at this point.

I literally said this in the comment above -- "That said, ultimately, we are accountable for this because it's our reputation is at stake."

I don’t like this phrasing because it sounds like you only care because it’s on the front page of HN and it’s a bad look — “because [your] reputation is at stake”.

You should care because paying someone to disrupt totally innocent open source projects is a shitty thing to do. Filing false DMCA requests on your behalf is also illegal. I like to think that if this never got any attention and your reputation wasn’t at stake, you’d still be adamant about doing the right thing. “Perhaps even consider switching“ providers doesn’t reflect the urgency in getting this right.

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