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Comment by gfd | Hacker News Reader

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 cheat detector and punish only the candidate. Don't take down and lose the goodwill of the entire programming community by abusing draconian laws.

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> You can't copyright algorithmic code snippets. It's like trying to copyright math.

You might first investigate just how small the piece of code was on which nearly all of Oracle's case vs. Google rested.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11722514

This is a misunderstanding of the case, as rayiner’s comment in that thread attests. That code was not the only code that was copied, there were also tens of thousands of lines of interface code that were the same. The case rested on whether the interface code was copyrightable. Oracle used that smaller sample as evidence that Google had copied carelessly from copyrighted material.

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.)

Most, if not all, of the problem statements won't even qualify for copywrite, they are generic problems that people have been stating for decades or more and as such are extreamly unlikly to be unique or original to hackerrank.

I am sure however you have already assesed this and applied for the appropriate registration for these works that you are claiming to own the copywrite to? right?

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

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