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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]

#162
post #125
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

Dear Vivek, thank you for the note. I am the original author of SymPy. Most people who work on SymPy myself included do it in our free time. So far this has cost many hours of my and many other people's free time to try to figure out what is going on and to get this resolved. I also personally reject your allegations against us. I thought about this situation and how your company could make this right. If you would b…

Yes, absolutely. Apologies for the disruption we caused. We are going to make a donation and here are the changes we are making https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31092085

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for showing up here and replying. I can understand the net being cast too wide for a real problem you are trying to solve. It does have real consequences for already under-resourced communities, though. I appreciate the "fix-it-twice" attitude implied by the RCA promise (Root Cause Analysis for those who also had to look it up). Also, consider recognition and restitution for the unnecessary work you created fo…

Quoted post unavailable.

It is fucking happening.

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

#164
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

Allow me to strongly suggest you stop DCMAing things without a human-with-a-clue in the loop before firing.

I get it, I'm an automate-first type of person, too. But it appears your outfit has made a habit of doing this, and you're messing with innocent people for no good reason. Doing that in a `for` loop is irresponsible as hell, and frankly you deserve the bad press you're getting. I highly recommend you reconsider.

Legacy media companies do this kind of thing, too. I hope you're more interested in your reputation than they are.

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

#165

This same DMCA company (WorthIT Solutions) previously tried to DMCA the php docs range function page on behalf of HackerRank [0]. Pretty crazy. [0]: https://www.mail-archive.com/php-webmaster@lists.php.net/msg...

Not only that but the ENTIRE TEAM SECTION ON THEIR WEBSITE (worthitsolutions.co) IS A BLATANT LIE. Not one of those people is real. Every single biography link leads to Lorem Ipsum. It's a shady, secretive sweatshop operating out of Lahore, Pakistan.

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

#166
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

Can companies of guys like this one be penalized for sending automated DMCA requests?

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

#167
post #159

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…

It would probably be prudent to withdraw your other DMCA notices until you figure this out. You're being given the benefit of the doubt, and the other counternotice on Github doesn't exactly portray you in the best light either.

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

#169
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

Wait. Wait a minute. Just wait one little minute here...

Your company has issued a DMCA takedown notice for "plagiarized code snippets" against the library-in-questions own documentation? (The take down was issued against docs.sympy.org; linked directly within sympy's GIT repo README.md: https://github.com/sympy/sympy)

And this is an "initiative" your organization has undertaken? Have you thought this through?

Where should engineers who want to learn about sympy go to attain that knowledge?

Where did your team learn about and generate the assessment questions?

Where do you stop with this initiative? Would you issue takedown notices to MDN? Stack Overflow? What about VSCode Copilot?

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

#170
post #159

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…

Wow! Guess we will never know if this would have happened if it did not make it to the front page of HN.

Also @dang, has this post been pinned at the top of the page for everyone to see.

Edit: guess it's not..

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