What do we do about Stealing Code?

[Drake]

I for one know of one person who has stolen code and claimed it as their own. Is there anything that can be done about that at this point? Or are we just supposed to lay back and let the thieving continue until a mod or admin comes along and fixes it?

[Paul]

Ha, a dude in my class was like "hey paul, check out my program, pretty cool eh?"... me: "... Thats mine..., nice try". He was seriously going to hand in this program I posted in the codes section, and he also tried other stuff too. Seriously, what are the chances that someone else in ontario is doing the exact same assignment at the exact same time. >_<

[Martin]

Here's what you can do: PM a mod if you know the person's username.

Secondly, tell your teacher to look at this website.

[Notoroge]

Martin wrote:

Here's what you can do: PM a mod if you know the person's username.

Secondly, tell your teacher to look at this website.

[Mazer]

There isn't actually much you can do.
Tell a mod? Who cares? Their account gets banned, but do you think they planned on contributing anything here?

Of course if it is your own code that's being stolen (I've had the same thing Paul described happen to me, which was hilarious) then by all means, let the guy know just how stupid he's being.

[Cervantes]

Hey, cheating can be funny.

Drake: are you talking about people stealing other's code, posting it on compsci.ca, and claiming it as their own? Or people stealing and submitting code that they got from compsci.ca? They are quite different in terms of how to deal with them.

[Drake]

I'm talking about people stealing code and posting it up onto here claiming it is their own. This person didn't even have the decency to change any of the variables, they just coped and pasted the program onto the forum and said it was theirs.

[Mazer]

Ah. In that case, I take back what I said. If it's you who gave the person the code, you may wish to reconsider how much you trust the person. And yeah, tell a mod I suppose. But it'd be best to try and settle it yourself (and if you can prove it's your own code).

[Drake]

It's not my code. It's the code that came with Turing. Or, at least my version of Turing. He just took it and claims it as his own. Sure, in the program they do say that they want you to tinker around with the program and whatever, but nowhere do they say 'please claim this code as your own and attempt to obtain credit for it'. Or even anything close to that.

It's the Missile game that Turing comes with, just in case you wanted to know.

[Martin]

Or you could just ignore it. Be happy that they're not going to get anywhere in their life. Let them have their fun.

[Amailer]

And what happnes if they do get somewhere in life... bill gates

[Martin]

Bill Gates is actually a very smart person. Perfect 800 on the math SATs. Hate him if you want, but he's still a smart man.

[[Gandalf]]

Still, in this world, if you know the right people and do the right things you can get to high places even being an idiot.

Besides, would you want someone else handing in your program as their FP, them getting the marks and credit? I wouldn't.

[md]

Martin wrote:

Bill Gates is actually a very smart person. Perfect 800 on the math SATs. Hate him if you want, but he's still a smart man.

And a perfect 800 on the other part too; although he took it twice to get it.

[Hikaru79]

Amailer wrote:

And what happnes if they do get somewhere in life... bill gates

There may be many things wrong with Microsoft and its business practices, and it may be very en vogue to dislike Bill Gates, but there is no doubting that Bill Gates did a lot to get to where he got in life, and he is doing a lot to justify being there.