81–90 of 323 posts
I can see why Dropbox would be upset about the existence of such a thing, but trying to force people to take it down seems incredibly foolish. The whole issue will garner them negative publicity and people will see it anyways thanks to the Streisand effect. I had actually missed the original post, but now thanks to their takedown attempts I've downloaded a copy for myself as its very interesting.
Most interesting comment to that article: Thankfully all DMCA requests are filed under penalty of perjury. If he claims that he owns the copyright to material he doesn’t own, he has now opened himself up to civil litigation. Really. Seems so: http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/Internet-Law-and-Intellectual-P...
IANAL but the dmca provides hosting sites protection against users who infringe. By actively checking for infringement of users having dropship could they be openning themselves to legal complications if they lose "hoster" status?
Consider that maybe what's happening here is boring. Recognize that we all have a cognitive bias towards narratives, and especially interesting narratives. The discussion on this story is trying to build a narrative about Dropbox vs. open source developers. The real story is probably not that interesting. The CTO of a service as technically interesting as Dropbox certainly knows that he can't prevent the disclosure o…
"Thus far, the only thing Dropbox is purported to have done here is to politely ask a developer to remove an application; then, presumably believing that the mirror posts were simple nerd-rage, and that the author of the application agreed with Dropbox, Dropbox's CTO filed takedowns at Github" It's the "write a sentence long enough you hope they won't reach the end" rhetorical strategy! Lawyer: "Your honor, the only…
This is Arash from Dropbox. We removed the ability to share the project source code because it enables communications with our servers in a manner that is a violation of our Terms of Service. By our TOS, we reserve the right to terminate the account of users in this case. However, we chose to remove access to the file instead of terminating the account of the user. We recently built a tool that allows us to ban links…
Best thing you can do now: offer the dropship guy a job. He knows your product well enough to "break" it and he has the motivation to create something strong enough that it is causing a fuss. Learn from Geohot. Don't scare away people who want to play with and extend your product.
Consider that maybe what's happening here is boring. Recognize that we all have a cognitive bias towards narratives, and especially interesting narratives. The discussion on this story is trying to build a narrative about Dropbox vs. open source developers. The real story is probably not that interesting. The CTO of a service as technically interesting as Dropbox certainly knows that he can't prevent the disclosure o…
Understandable except the assertion of filing a dmca because he thinks that the reposts of code are "geek rage". The DMCA provides that you may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys fees) if you falsely claim that an item is infringing your copyrights. Using this powerful law as a scare tactic isn't acceptable. If you wish to claim that the code was infact infringing, then the conversation is different…
People make mistakes. In the grand scheme of mistakes, this is an extremely trivial one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I actually proposed this idea a while back but never went through with the implementation. I hope Dropbox turns a blind eye to this because I think its fair use of Dropbox. Instead of someone sending you the file and then you adding it to Dropbox manually, you can just send the hash for the file and receive without P2P. This is where the world of online storage might head anyways.
Or you can just share a folder with someone or give them the public link - and both are even easier solutions.
A) move the files to the public folder
B) watch out for bandwidth limits on the public folder
C) give your Dropbox account ID to everyone as it is tied directly to the URL
With this method, you get anonymous file transfers without bandwidth limits
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally feel that Dropbox removing files from someone's account is completely wrong, regardless of your ToS. Your service is there to backup files. When you delete references to files from someone else's accounts, you're violating the trust that people put in your service.
We didn't remove the file - we simply banned public access to it.
I'm on your side here, but you need to be as transparent as possible here. Are you also saying that your system automatically generates emails that make false claims about having received a DMCA takedown notice?
Most interesting comment to that article: Thankfully all DMCA requests are filed under penalty of perjury. If he claims that he owns the copyright to material he doesn’t own, he has now opened himself up to civil litigation. Really. Seems so: http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/Internet-Law-and-Intellectual-P...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We have received a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) from Dropbox that the following material is claimed to be infringing." Doesn't this seem to imply that Dropbox is the owner of the code and is both the DCMA submitter as well as the company executing upon it? An automated system would still require a company name that is requesting the DCMA to be entered, or your automated system is…
Sounds like the DMCA request was an accident. Maybe it's a form with a field "Company who requested file be removed: ". But it's amusing nonetheless. Are there other incidents of a company serving itself DMCA requests?
Understandable. Dropbox doesn't want to become a piracy website. Using a DMCA takedown request was a stupid way of dealing with the issue, though.
Why does everyone make the assumption that torrents and services like Dropship must be used for piracy? Major video game companies use torrents all the time to distribute patches and betas. A knife can be used to commit murder, but most often it is simply used to cut food. The problem with the way DMCA works is that it bars the development of new technologies because one of many uses could be harmful. The law stifles…
RapidShare/MegaUpload/etc. have a very large amount of copyrighted material on them, and Dropbox would be wise to avoid becoming the easiest alternative to them, even if it involves breaking some eggs.