Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

razorfast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 323 posts

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#151

Post by dhouston »

nokcha wrote: post #146
random42 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred. Remember use of torrents are not illegal per se, sharing files which you do not copyright of, and piracy is. > there were no legal threats or any other shenanigans to the author or people hosting. (EDIT - No applicable. Read Drew's edit.) DMCA…

>DMCA takedown notice is a legal threat. I think Drew was mistaken when he called it a "takedown notice". That term has a specific meaning, and judging from the linked article, what DropBox actually sent to the OP was not a takedown notice. Instead, it was just a message saying that DropBox had received such a notice from a third party and consequently disabled access to the allegedly infringing file.

correct -- fixed this distinction in my reply, thanks

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#152

Post by jrockway »

dhouston wrote: post #106

drew from dropbox here. i hope you guys can give us the benefit of the doubt: when something pops up that encourages people to turn dropbox into the next rapidshare or equivalent (the title on HN was suggesting it could be the successor to torrents), you can imagine how that could ruin the service for everyone -- illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. the inte…

Asking people to remove stuff from HN? That's utter bullshit, and if true, I'm basically done with Dropbox. Asking people not to talk about something (with access to your service as the gun to their heads) is not something I will tolerate in someone I do business with.

I don't actually use Dropbox for anything, though, so perhaps my thoughts don't matter.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#153

Post by marshray »

arashf wrote: post #138
marshray wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me, I'm trying to get my head around this. You developed a file sharing system that allows anyone to obtain the full contents of a file by simply knowing its hash? Then when developers make tools to allow using this for simple cross-account file transfer you send DMCA takedown notices, claiming you are the rightful copyright holder of their code, to places like GitHub? You seem to equate other file transfer serv…

No DMCA takedown requests were sent to GitHub. We simply nicely asked the author of Dropship to take down the link and he fully understood our position and took the code down. The only erroneous use of DMCA was when we attempted to take down the link on Dropbox, which was an entirely honest mistake.

I see. So the comment on the razorfast.com site:

I forked Dropship, just in case, and my GitHub repo of it was deleted. I was not notified of this. NOT happy with DropBox, and ESPECIALLY not happy with GitHub.

Is perhaps not accurate then.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#154

Post by [deleted] »

arashf wrote: post #138
marshray wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me, I'm trying to get my head around this. You developed a file sharing system that allows anyone to obtain the full contents of a file by simply knowing its hash? Then when developers make tools to allow using this for simple cross-account file transfer you send DMCA takedown notices, claiming you are the rightful copyright holder of their code, to places like GitHub? You seem to equate other file transfer serv…

No DMCA takedown requests were sent to GitHub. We simply nicely asked the author of Dropship to take down the link and he fully understood our position and took the code down. The only erroneous use of DMCA was when we attempted to take down the link on Dropbox, which was an entirely honest mistake.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#155

Post by SwellJoe »

random42 wrote: post #123
dhouston wrote: post #106

drew from dropbox here. i hope you guys can give us the benefit of the doubt: when something pops up that encourages people to turn dropbox into the next rapidshare or equivalent (the title on HN was suggesting it could be the successor to torrents), you can imagine how that could ruin the service for everyone -- illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. the inte…

> illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred. Remember use of torrents are not illegal per se, sharing files which you do not copyright of, and piracy is. > there were no legal threats or any other shenanigans to the author or people hosting. (EDIT - No applicable. Read Drew's edit.) DMCA…

> Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred.

No, they aren't. They're enforcing the terms of use that Dropbox users agreed to when signing up.

I don't think asking folks to take stuff down was the correct solution...I think fixing the bug was the right solution, which they've also done. But, I don't see how Dropbox is "punishing" anyone, when they're just asking people to use the service as it is intended.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#156

Post by drusenko »

anotherjesse wrote: post #60
tptacek wrote: post #41

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…

Am I reading the article wrong? The way I read it, Dropbox did NOT issue a DMCA notice to Github; it's system just automatically triggered a notification to a Dropbox user that Dropbox had received a DMCA notice for that file.

It's a simple notification email that does almost nothing in the framework of the DMCA and simply notifies the Dropbox user that their file has been removed. It looks like their file removal system is a bit rigid in that it always assumes that a DMCA notice was received by Dropbox, even when they didn't receive one.

So, there seems to be absolutely nothing wrong here -- literally just a simple mistake.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#157

Post by burgerbrain »

apgwoz wrote: post #81
thecoffman wrote: post #2

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.

Since when is any publicity ever bad? Isn't this Marketing 101?

Yeah, I wish I had a time machine so I could go pick up some SCO stock.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#158

Post by zhoutong »

dhouston wrote: post #106

drew from dropbox here. i hope you guys can give us the benefit of the doubt: when something pops up that encourages people to turn dropbox into the next rapidshare or equivalent (the title on HN was suggesting it could be the successor to torrents), you can imagine how that could ruin the service for everyone -- illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. the inte…

It's biased to say that torrents and rapidshare are equivalent to illegal file sharing. Illegal file sharing is just how people use these platforms, but not these platforms themselves. Dropbox is just another file sharing platform which directly exposes to the threat of illegal file sharing.

The de-duplication feature greatly helps pirates to gain access to files that don't belong to them, or even other people's privacy. If illegal file sharing service is something against your wishes, what you can do is to concentrate your effort to fight against copyright infringement (if you'd like to), instead of killing an innocent open source project that simply helps cross-account file sharing.

I used to love Dropbox's de-duplication feature, and I think that helps a lot of people with low bandwidth connections. Since I started noticing the existence of such feature, I'm already aware of:

1. My files are no longer mine. Anyone who knows the hash can access my files immediately.

2. Dropbox's claims about encryption are totally pointless in this case. Encryption is not going to help.

3. Requests from government agencies are going to be fulfilled very promptly.

4. Even hackers can access my files with the knowledge of only the hash, why can't employees of Dropbox?

I don't understand the "strict access policy" on employees inside Dropbox. Are there any difference between Dropbox's de-duplication and eDonkey's hash-to-file P2P?

To me, Dropbox is doing something here that against their wishes.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#159

Post by phaylon »

anatoly wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't appreciate being told that I'm being deliberately disingenuous. I have no dog in this hunt. I've never spoken to any of the founders of Dropbox. Maybe you didn't mean to be this dramatic in your response? Or maybe I said something that specifically set you off, in which case, let me know so I can amend my comment.

Your comment does appear disingenuous, though I'm sure that's not deliberate. Neither false DMCA notifications nor github takedown requests are legitimate responses to "simple nerd-rage" when it's about MIT-licensed code. I'm sure you understand this and you say as much elsewhere in your comment; but your sentence appears to trivialize these actions by including them after a soothing "the only thing... purported to h…

> Your comment does appear disingenuous, although I'm sure that's not deliberate. Neither false DMCA notifications nor github takedown requests are legitimate responses to "simple nerd-rage" when it's about MIT-licensed code.

I don't think anything like that has really happened. There was no DMCA takedown notice, only the (false) message that Dropbox had received a notification from itself, issued when they blocked public downloading of the file. Probably because that's the only way to block hashes they have right now. And as far as I can tell the github repo was removed by the original author, after they asked him.

Edit: Fixed bad quoting.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#160

Post by res0nat0r »

random42 wrote: post #125
slackerIII wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great, and that's all you should've done in this case I doubt that is what the lawyers said.

Then they should fire the lawyer who a-OKed to send the invalid DMCA takedown notice(s), which makes Dropbox culpable for it.

Correction: They should fire the automated script which sent the email.
Post reply on HN