Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#161

Post by wewyor » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:24 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #126

wewyor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was strike 1? I can understand them not wanting the files to be public, but as tptacek said this is probably fluffed up quite a bit. As far as I'm concerned the only issue with how they handled it is the DMCA takedown request, and if the CTO acted as said but that is less of a factor. If the files were never removed from the persons dropbox and only public urls disabled I'm okay with that. However if the files w…

Strike 1 was when they got caught lying about whether their employees could decrypt your files or not.

I suppose so, I always took that statement to be that employees didn't have easy access to your files (such as without decrypting from the servers).

It should have been obvious to anyone else remotely familiar with security that dropbox had/has access to your files from the simple fact that you could reset your password, as well as the web interface.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#162

Post by gergles » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:25 PM UTC

parfe wrote: post #68

cmatthias wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already deleted it. I'm not sure how I can prove it to you as I didn't get an email, and when I clicked the "Delete Account" button to commit to deleting my account it just bounced me to the dropbox homepage. But thanks for trying to call me out.

You don't need to prove it to me because I don't particularly care and it doesn't actually matter, so let's just say I believe you. This is a tempest in a teapot just like those mass "Quit Facebook" protests that spring up every time the privacy settings change. The entire controversy exists because a tiny, yet incredibly vocal, minority makes a huge deal of it only to drop it the next week. And from reading write up…

I had, and dropped a paid account to free. I wasn't above my quota, and was basically just paying as a "I like what you guys are doing" sort of feature.

I no longer like what they're doing, so the gravy train stops.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#163

Post by random42 » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:25 PM UTC

atacrawl wrote: post #143

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…

Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred. This is pretty disingenuous. You really think their assumption that Dropship would quickly turn Dropbox into an illegal file sharing haven is an unrealistic grasping of straws?

As mentioned before, IANAL, and I do not have deep/any knowledge of the laws Dropbox is incorporated in. However, "Presumption of Innocence" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence) aka "Innocent until proven guilty" is one of the universally applied (if not, also accepted), legal concept.

Can dropship be used for illegal file sharing? Yes.

Is dropship being used for illegal file sharing? No, until proven otherwise.

Legal penalties are applied for the cases depending upon what happens/happened, not what could happen.

That being said, my understanding of law is deeply based on my country's law. The case might be different in the country dropbox is incorporated.

EDIT - I got a lot of downvotes for this reply. Can someone (who intend to downvote this comment), please explain where I am missing the point and/or being wrong?

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#164

Post by TheAmazingIdiot » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:26 PM UTC

sycren wrote: post #147

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…

Out of interest, how do you plan to stop people using dropbox like rapidshare? It would be easy for one to upload a file divided into multiple rar files and distribute them to different dropbox accounts. The only way you would be able to block this is watching for a large amount of downloads of a particular file and finding out the context of the file which may prove impossible (and possibly illegal). In terms of the…

If I wanted to be a complete ass about using dropbox for piracy, I'd use GPG.

Share the GPG private key, the public key, the archive, and the password to use the key. It's too computationally expensive to automate opening these. And you could always spread the keys and keyphrase to where ever you want it.

But dropbox works well for what it is. I see no reason to trash it with pirated stuff.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#165

Post by random42 » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #155

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…

> 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 ser…

Yeah, I agree to enforcing the violation of ToS. I was writing for the DMCA take down notice for the possibility of illegal file sharing via dropship. (as mentioned by arash/drew in comments.)

I am actually curious to know what ToS were violated (based on which Dropbox decided to take the action), except that I have not read about the real reason on either the Original Article or the discussion on HN.

Can Drew/Arash clarify what Terms were being violated actually by dropship?

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#166

Post by calloc » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

sorbus wrote: post #97

ceejayoz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, they tried to kill an open source product, whose purpose was to facillitate illegal file sharing over DropBox. Where are you getting that information? My understanding it that its purpose was explicitly to facilitate legal file sharing over DropBox - Linux ISOs, for example.

Linux ISOs are always the example people come up with when they're defending protocols and methods which are primarily used for illegal purposes. The original post for DropShip gave, as an example, the trailer for a movie. Not the movie itself, but the trailer. That's the equivalent of saying "I've developed this great way to share files, such as videos, but am not going to explicitly say that it could be used for pi…

The trailer is from the free video that was released by the Blender foundation ...

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#167

Post by starwed » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:33 PM UTC

xnerdr wrote: post #104

anotherjesse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. I don't mind that he asked nicely and the file was taken down. I DO mind that a DMCA was issued.

There was no DMCA issued!

All that indicates there was is the message received by OP, which claims dropbox as both issuer and recipient of a DMCA notice. That makes no sense -- unless, as claimed by dropbox, it is simply an automated message generated by error.

I think a lot of people in this thread are under the impression that dropbox issued a DMCA request to github, which wasn't even what the OP was claiming.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#168

Post by joenorton » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #160

random42 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I vote fire the guy who used the automated script which sent the email.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#169

Post by phaylon » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

marshray wrote: post #153

arashf wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since the original dropship repo mentioned on razorfast is still available (and has a pull request waiting), and the comment didn't really contain any context, I wouldn't give it much weight yet.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#170

Post by dgreensp » Mon, Apr 25, 2011, 10:38 PM UTC

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #135

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…

"when we disabled public sharing of that file by hash" Sorry, I may sound harsh, it's not my intention, but I have to ask: how often does it happen that you disable public sharing of files you don't like?

From what I understand about Dropbox's anti-piracy system, he's talking about what they do when, say, someone posts a public link to "Spiderman.3.DVDRip.avi" in a forum in China. This obvious and illegal use of Dropbox is a big liability, not to mention source of traffic.