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

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301–310 of 348 posts

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

#301

What scares me the most about this story is how easily it could've been a small software shop running their entire operations on GitHub getting DCMA'd without any merit, and just losing access to an important repo within 24 hours. And imagine they don't know about Hacker News. Or they posted something which didn't get enough upvotes for the offending company to respond and resolve it quickly. As a software developer,…

Git is a distributed VCS, everyone has a clone of the repo, and at least one person has the latest main branch.

A lot of open source projects rely on GitHub for their community, funding and discoverability. Dismissing that would be dishonest.

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

#302

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…

GitHub don't seem to be getting near enough flak in this thread.

Unfortunately the way the DMCA is written means that GitHub is acting prudently here. If GitHub does not take down content they receive a valid DMCA request for, they lose their safe harbor and can be made a defendant for a future frivolous copyright suit. Nobody should be taking flak for refusing to become a party to someone else's litigation.

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

#304
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Vivek, I have received fake DMCA requests from WorthIT Solutions, Pakistan that you guys seems to have hired. It is sent for a simple blog entry discussing about programming algorithm! I recommend training them or replacing them.

I guess it is pretty much perjury penalty risk free to make such DMCA declaration from outside of US: >Declaration: I have taken fair use into consideration. I have a good faith belief that the use of the copyrighted materials as described above is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the cop…

Unfortunately, that penalty has no teeth, regardless of where the filer is.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and a couple of the stock photos of "Our team" are duplicates. Crazy. How does an outfit like this get hired?

The entire "Our Team" page is unchanged from the web site template they used: https://pitch.qodeinteractive.com/team-grid/

Is the theme pirated? That would be the icing on the cake

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

#307
post #96

After the youtube-dl incident, Nat Friedman (then-CEO) tweeted: https://mobile.twitter.com/natfriedman/status/13283656794734... > We are taking a stand for developers and have reinstated the youtube-dl repo. Section 1201 of the DMCA is broken and needs to be fixed. Developers should have the freedom to tinker. That's how you get great tools like youtube-dl. Now they are deleting obviously-compliant docs from nonsensi…

> To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims. We will immediately begin working with other members of the community to set up this fund and take other measures to collectively protect developers and safeguard developer collaboration. There was also the promise a $1m developer defense…

Apparently instead GitHub got us a one-day response window even on local holidays.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither HackerRank nor Leetcode invented this style of interview. The questions you're complaining about predate both sites. The sites were created to help you study for those questions, they did not significantly popularize the questions.

Except, there's a difference when you're in a room with somebody who can tell when the shitty site or the vague nature of a question makes it difficult to complete the request. They can also better gauge someone's understanding of subject matter, merely by talking through the question, approach, etc. The availability of these sites makes it seem like it's a standard, which adds to the problem. Some small company migh…

I agree with many parts of your comment. I have been in interviews where the interviewers themselves clearly had no fundamental understanding of the problem or solution. To be clear, I didn't either, but asking clarifying questions got me nowhere.

> Now, you don't want to fall behind by not making use of a widely-accepted "standard" practice.

Absolutely. I can understand Google asking you to write a k-way distributed sort off the top of your head, but I've had similar questions from an "enterprise gone unicorn" that were clearly still in the "wtf even is cloud" phase.

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

#309
post #193
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't copyright algorithmic code snippets . It's like trying to copyright math. You will have an insane amount of false positive from every repository that have ever implemented a prefix sum or binary search. (Or anything autocompleted using github copilot or alphacode which I believe is trained on competitive programming styled submissions from codeforces and atcoder) The solution would be to build some sort of…

I'm sorry. I should have clarified and I can't edit my original comment now. I meant plagiarized problem statements. Usually these sites have the entire problem statements from our website along with the solution (aka code snippets to solve.)

In those cases, does the presence of the solution not make it count as fair use?

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the "repo" (seems to be a Gist) referred to in this couternotice is still down.

I think it did come back up, and then went down again: https://github.com/github/dmca/search?q=TheRayTracer HackerRank/WorthIT didn't dispute the counternotice (AFAICT), but instead they re-filed the same DMCA notice again, four months later. I think the repo owner gave up at that point.

That's predatory. It's also up to GitHub to actually check the DMCAs they get and not juts blindly follow through with them, as they seem to do.
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