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Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

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Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#181

Post by sorbus »

calloc wrote: post #166
sorbus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

Yeah, I know. I feel that my point still stands, though it is somewhat weakened.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#182

Post by burgerbrain »

apgwoz wrote: post #176
burgerbrain wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Assume for a moment that this makes the nightly news. How many people in "average joe" America who don't know about Dropbox will checkout it out and say, "oh man, this is useful! and they even have a free account!" Do they care about this DMCA garbage, or what Dropbox actually did/did not do? Maybe, but the national news won't report it correctly anyway. Here's how it might be spun: "Hackers, today, are up in arms wi…

This won't make the nightly news. This will only be reported to the types of people who 1) already know about dropbox, and 2) understand the significance of DMCA takedowns made in bad faith.

Bad publicity.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#184

Post by [deleted] »

tghw wrote: post #40
arashf wrote: post #21

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…

Would you mind highlighting what part of the ToS this sort of thing violates?

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#185

Post by metageek »

sycren wrote: post #175
TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If dropbox opened the archives (to check) then it would be against the British data protection laws (and probably most other countries) if they were not given the access by the owners. I have no want or need to trash it with pirated material either.

Even in the US, it might be illegal under the ECPA.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#186

Post by SwellJoe »

joenorton wrote: post #168
res0nat0r wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about not firing anybody and just get back to work?

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#187

Post by ugh »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #115
rick888 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A knife can be used to commit murder, but most often it is simply used to cut food." Most of the time, a knife is used for cutting food and it can be used for murder. Most of the time, torrents are used for piracy and they can be used for legitimate and legal files. Search for "torrent" on Google. The majority of the results are search engines for pirated material (and in many cases, direct links to the torrents). S…

I would tentatively disagree. You are indeed correct that most Torrent Sites are mainly piracy distribution hubs. However, torrent sites are not indicative of torrent traffic by _Clients_. * From what I understand, Blizzard uses torrents to spread patches for World of Warcraft. It is also used, I believe, in Steam as well. * I would also argue that, although copyright violations, transfers of TV shows are already don…

My guess is that Dropbox cares about its image and wants everything piracy related to be kept at arms length. It’s not their business model. They want to be a trustworthy service everyone – from nerds to their moms and dads – wants to use.

I would argue that the prevalence of piracy harms, for example, Rapidshare’s image as a serious filesharing service. That’s not an issue for Rapidshare because piracy is their business, but it isn’t the business of Dropbox.

This is consequently not so much about the nature of piracy and much more about the image of Dropbox.

Whether or not Dropship would actually be a good tool for piracy is very much an open question (and one you can certainly argue about), Dropbox seems to think it is.

(I also want to note that even if only one percent of all torrent traffic is piracy related, it’s still wrong to compare it to knives. There are so many knives in the world, the fraction of knives which are used to harm people must be infinitesimal. And, to clarify something else: I would be vigorously against any legislative attempts at banning torrents. Legislatively, that’s just not the right way to go. But that’s the law and Dropbox is no government.)

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#188

Post by JCB_K »

Second, dealing with piracy is the responsibility of Dropbox. It’s not the problem of an innocent hacker who wrote some useful code that could benefit legitimate users and advocates the use of his software for “sharing photos, videos, public datasets, git-like source control, or even as building block for wiki-like distributed databases."

Could someone give me 1 example of a use case here? The only reason I can think of to share the hash of a file instead of a direct link, is because it's an illegal file, and you don't want to link straight to it. Why else would you go through the effort of hashing all 4mb blocks of the file, and sharing those elsewhere?

Of course, this is a dangerous gray legal area, but I think it's fair to say that the only reason to use this is because of illegal files. Also, they didn't take legal action (which wouldn't be right, as no one has been proven of doing illegal stuff), they just asked nicely, so it seems. Dropbox is right to act on this, as it could potentially ruin their platform.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#189

Post by argos »

res0nat0r wrote: post #180
random42 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Can Drew/Arash clarify what Terms were being violated actually by dropship? http://www.dropbox.com/dmca#terms Access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the Site (including but not limited to user folders not designated as 'public' or that you have not been given permission to access), Dropbox's computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Dropbox's providers; Attempt to access or search the Site, Co…

yes, but that has nothing to do with having the code, as I said in a port below... using it would be a violation, but why block open source code.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#190

Post by random42 »

uxp wrote: post #172
random42 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Presumption of Innocence is only valid when being held or otherwise detained due to suspicion of guilt by the government, at least in the USA. Dropbox is a private service, and any notices stating that users cannot sync certain files when they use their product under penalty of removal of their account can be enforced, just like any brick and mortar store can enforce a "no shoes, no shirt, no service" policy and refu…

Sure, they have legal rights to do so. However, just because it is legal it does not make it fair (Ref - Sony vs. Geohotz).

Punishing for the suspicion of crime, rather than actual crime, just because you are can get away with it, is evilish and not nice. I expect better from Dropbox, we all know and love.

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