Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 194 posts

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#101

Post by acdha »

Semaphor wrote: post #71
acdha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in the law, but it’s rarely enforced. Stepping up education for judges and support for people filing lawsuits against major companies would be a relatively easy way to start making the automated bots riskier to run.

Is it? I always thought there is only a fine for misrepresenting that you are representing the copyright owner. Not for falsely claiming a piece of work is indeed infringing.

Yes — see page 12 here:

https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

“Penalties are provided for knowing material misrepresentations in either a notice or a counter notice. Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed or blocked through mistake or misidentification, is liable for any resulting damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) incurred by the alleged infringer, the copyright owner or its licensee, or the service provider.”

Here's the actual text: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512#f

I'm not a lawyer but my understanding is that by now the courts have confirmed that it's not just enough to say that you own the copyright on the material: you also have to confirm that the person you're sending the claim to doesn't have a right to use the material as well and that includes fair-use. If you were, say, using a Disney clip in a film studies context they would likely be liable if a takedown bot sent a DMCA claim unless they could show that you did something like posting the entire film claiming it was for “study” purposes.

In this case, that's highly relevant since this repository was apparently released under an open source license so even if Pearson held the copyright they wouldn't be able to take away the permission granted by the open source license unless they could prove that it was never legally approved for release under that license.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#102

Post by visarga »

the8472 wrote: post #87
hedora wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is based on the doctrine of unclean hands. Judges decide on a case by case basis, based on the facts pertaining to the case. An artist finds their life’s work online, and issues a takedown notice, not realizing it contained a few songs they don’t notice? No big deal. A label pays a takedown notice mill, that produces completely bogus / mistargeted takedown requests on a regular basis? Scorched earth. They los…

> The law is based on the doctrine of unclean hands. Judges decide on a case by case basis, based on the facts pertaining to the case. Judges don't scale and they are a step function, not an incentive gradient. > An artist finds their life’s work online, and issues a takedown notice, not realizing it contained a few songs they don’t notice? No big deal. If he had to pay a small(!) fee for mistakes in his takedown it…

> That is not what is happening in reality.

How can you explain this kind of events:

> SoundCloud takes down D.J. Detweiler's 'remix' of John Cage's "4'33" for copyright infringement.

> White Noise Video on YouTube Hit By Five Copyright Claims

Not to mention that almost all classical music pieces recorded by students are under risk of being DMCA'ed for being so similar to copyrighted recordings. Classical music has many interpretations for the same piece and they are harder to tell apart than, say, pop music.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#103

Post by bch »

rococode wrote: post #94
bronson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I tried using a previous edition, the page numbers and most of the exercises didn't line up. "Thursday's test will be on pp 144-172 inclusive, and get to know exercise 5.17." It put me at a surprisingly big disadvantage. Pretty sure the publishers anticipated this.

That's often the only thing that actually substantially changes between editions. Shuffle the exercise numbers and change the font and spacing and voila, brand new edition completely incompatible with older versions!

If that’s true, can’t there be some consumer class-action applied?

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#104

Post by the8472 »

visarga wrote: post #102
the8472 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law is based on the doctrine of unclean hands. Judges decide on a case by case basis, based on the facts pertaining to the case. Judges don't scale and they are a step function, not an incentive gradient. > An artist finds their life’s work online, and issues a takedown notice, not realizing it contained a few songs they don’t notice? No big deal. If he had to pay a small(!) fee for mistakes in his takedown it…

> That is not what is happening in reality. How can you explain this kind of events: > SoundCloud takes down D.J. Detweiler's 'remix' of John Cage's "4'33" for copyright infringement. > White Noise Video on YouTube Hit By Five Copyright Claims Not to mention that almost all classical music pieces recorded by students are under risk of being DMCA'ed for being so similar to copyrighted recordings. Classical music has m…

Please consider a quote in its entirety. Takedown mills losing the ability to file claims is not what is happening in reality. Scorched earth (against takedown abuse) is not happening in reality. The first sentence is merely a setup of the scenario, the last two are the conclusion (which doesn't happen, at least not often enough to discourage the behavior).

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#105

Post by yccs27 »

mabbo wrote: post #89
IceWreck wrote: post #35

We should have a penalty/fine for fake DCMA requests. Big corps keep sending automated DCMAs with little consequence and often the little guys do have the resources to fight back.

Even simpler, require those filing a claim to put down a monetary deposit. If the accused disputes, they too file a deposit. The winner gets the money back and the platform gets to keep the losers deposit as a fee for having a trained, certified human make the decision. Make the fees scale up with the number of claims by an accuser. No one would file a frivolous claim. No one would dispute an obviously correct claim.…

This seems like the perfect way to enable frivolous takedowns, because the accused might not be able to pay the deposit to dispute the claim. Additionally, small artists might similarly become unable to enforce their rights.

(And if the deposit isn't too big, do you think a few dollars will deter billion-dollar companies?)

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#106

Post by olliej »

swiley wrote: post #99
mabbo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even simpler, require those filing a claim to put down a monetary deposit. If the accused disputes, they too file a deposit. The winner gets the money back and the platform gets to keep the losers deposit as a fee for having a trained, certified human make the decision. Make the fees scale up with the number of claims by an accuser. No one would file a frivolous claim. No one would dispute an obviously correct claim.…

This is a fantastic idea, I'm sure there are issues with it but none are immediately obvious.

It means that people without spare cash completely lose the ability to appeal.

I don’t know why a counterclaim should require a deposit - DMCA is already a guilty until proven innocent law, and merely counterclaiming doesn’t put your content back online.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#107

Post by dragonwriter »

mon77 wrote: post #98
dragonwriter wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they aren’t. If there is no merit to a copyright claim, there is no vicarious liability for Github to be insulated from by the DMCA safe harbor. It’s cheaper and less risky not to evaluate the merits of DMCA notices and just to blindly execute them, but it is erroneous to say that thet are legally required to act in that manner.

Yes, they are, and yes, there is. The claiming and counterclaiming process is independent of the merit of copyright under DMCA. Budget and risk are not part of the equation. Evaluating copyright applicability cannot be part of the equation; it’s not your content. The law specifies almost exactly what you must do with some vague concepts for interpretation (like expedient). If you don’t do those things even on an obvi…

> The claiming and counterclaiming process is independent of the merit of copyright under DMCA.

The DMCA process isn’t a mandatory process, it is a process to receive safe harbor from whatever liability would otherwise exist. If there would be no liability independent of the DMCA safe harbor, there is no mandate to follow the safe harbor process.

(If you disagree with this, here’s what you need to do, identify—with citation to supporting law—the available legal remedy that can be imposed on a provider who declines to adhere to the DMCA safe harbor process where there is no underlying copyright liability.)

Service providers make a choice to follow the notice process blindly as a risk management measure, not because it is legally required to do so.

(Which is also why the counternotice process is often less fully implemented, or why, e.g., Youtube has its own hyper-aggressive policy for certain content that goes beyond the DMCA process and lacks counternotice opportunity—the counternotice process is just as much part of the DMCA process, but because providers are able to structure their relationship with users in a way which avoids having any liability for takedowns which would benefit from a safe harbor, they can safely ignore that process.)

Source: the actual text of the DMCA safe harbor provision, and the reason it is called a “safe harbor”.

> You are sharing an opinion disguised as fact

No, you are engaging in standard industry blameshifting by misrepresenting risk management strategy adopted responding to incentives created by a law with an actual legal mandate.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#108

Post by olliej »

acdha wrote: post #101
Semaphor wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I always thought there is only a fine for misrepresenting that you are representing the copyright owner. Not for falsely claiming a piece of work is indeed infringing.

Yes — see page 12 here: https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf “Penalties are provided for knowing material misrepresentations in either a notice or a counter notice. Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed or blocked through mistake or misidentification, is liable for any resulting damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) incurred by the alle…

Knowingly is the problem - it implies intent so erroneous claims don’t fall afoul of it. Obviously attacks on critics do and should be penalized but that doesn’t happen either - it requires a lawyer that will cost much more than you’ll ever get. Until the law is amended to require the victims be compensated for time and legal expenses there’s still no real cost to fraud

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#109

Post by judge2020 »

maweki wrote: post #72
judge2020 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People got mad at Google for automatically honoring DMCA takedowns, which is what GitHub is doing, as they both have to if they want to maintain not being legally liable. Content ID is also a system people are mad with but has nothing to do with DMCA besides Google saying 'pretty please only enroll content you own into Content ID'.

For github this is not an automated process, nor is the policy based on a presumption of guilt: https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown-...

Assuming the claimant doesn’t mess up the complaint it might as well be automated - GH has only voluntarily not honored a request once with YouTube-dl (that I’m aware of) and that still was after YT-dl removed the README reference of using it to download music videos.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#110

Post by legerdemain »

harikb wrote: post #44
patmorgan23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plugging open source text books. There are many high quality option out there that are openly licensed. Openstax is a project by Rice University that has textbooks for most gen ed courses. openstax.org/

Thanks for the link. Didn’t know. Btw, this is why they lobby for state mandates. A single teacher cannot make an exception Situation in private school is not better. A prominent private high school in Bay Area, made me run around like a crazy man scavenging used books from all over the place because the recommended books were out of stock. They won’t publish the exact book name until after classes begin in August an…

Was this at Harker? I bet it was Harker.
Post reply on HN