[nickofbh]

I can speak to this since I actually took this class last semester (Fall 2014).

Homework boilerplate is distributed to students through private SVN. This typically includes some method headers or libraries. We then complete the assignment to specifications and commit it through SVN, where it is graded programmatically. Therefore, we can't modify some of the headers.

The class has been taken over by a new professor. As such, it is being totally restructured and the assignments are largely being changed now. However, when I took the class with 250+ other students, plagiarism was rampant.

As far as I'm aware, the course staff has indeed contacted individual repo owners on Github for take down.