Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#231

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:08 AM UTC

random42 wrote: post #220

rprasad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the presumption of innocence works. I say that as someone who has practiced both civil and criminal law. Presumption of innocence only applies to crimes. Copyright violations are not crimes, they are civil torts. (Though some actions incident to copyright violations, i.e., circumventing DRM, can be crimes.) Can dropshiip be used for illegal fire sharing? YES, in fact, that was the suggested and intende…

Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL. That being said, I realize Dropbox(or Corporate entities in general) is not government and/or legal system and it is not required of them to follow laws, which are applicable for governments. However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation. While the law is codified as P…

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#232

Post by hugh3 » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:09 AM UTC

random42 wrote: post #220

rprasad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the presumption of innocence works. I say that as someone who has practiced both civil and criminal law. Presumption of innocence only applies to crimes. Copyright violations are not crimes, they are civil torts. (Though some actions incident to copyright violations, i.e., circumventing DRM, can be crimes.) Can dropshiip be used for illegal fire sharing? YES, in fact, that was the suggested and intende…

Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL. That being said, I realize Dropbox(or Corporate entities in general) is not government and/or legal system and it is not required of them to follow laws, which are applicable for governments. However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation. While the law is codified as P…

* However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation.

While the law is codified as Presumption of Innocence, its underlying sentiment, from moral point-of-view, Judge/punish based on definitive actions not speculations, are applicable for all entities of the society.*

Not really. We give the government the obligation of proving things because we also give the government such extensive powers -- the government can lock you up or confiscate your property, so it damn well has an obligation to prove things before it does so.

We private citizens, though, don't have such extensive powers over one another, so we're absolved of having to prove anything. The worst I can legally do to someone off my own bat is to refuse to deal with them, and that's not that big a problem.

We don't have to prove anything in order to "punish" one another by refusing to deal with one another. If a dude comes into my bar looking drunk and rowdy then I can refuse him service; I don't have to prove that he's going to cause trouble, I can just kick him out on spec. If a guy asks a girl out, she doesn't have to prove that she'd have a lousy time in order to reject him. And if Dropbox suspects that you're gonna use their service for piracy then they're allowed to dump you as a client if they feel like it.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#233

Post by warthurton » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:10 AM UTC

I spent a few minutes going over the Dropbox Terms of Service.

The section I believe that they are referring to when they removed the public link is:

General Prohibitions You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services:

Post, publish or transmit any text, graphics, or material that: (i) is false or misleading; (ii) is defamatory; (iii) invades another's privacy; (iv) is obscene, pornographic, or offensive; (v) promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any individual or group; (vi) infringes another's rights, including any intellectual property rights; or (vii) violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation or would give rise to civil liability;

...

Attempt to decipher, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any of the software used to provide the Site, Content, Files or Services;

(Excerpted in whole for clarity. Full Terms at: https://www.dropbox.com/terms#terms)

Seemingly not only is posting the code for DropShip a violation, but just by me putting up this file ( http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1498040/2plus2equals5.txt ) in my public folder, I'm also violating the Terms, as I am publishing text that is false and possibly misleading.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#234

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:18 AM UTC

random42 wrote: post #220

rprasad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the presumption of innocence works. I say that as someone who has practiced both civil and criminal law. Presumption of innocence only applies to crimes. Copyright violations are not crimes, they are civil torts. (Though some actions incident to copyright violations, i.e., circumventing DRM, can be crimes.) Can dropshiip be used for illegal fire sharing? YES, in fact, that was the suggested and intende…

Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL. That being said, I realize Dropbox(or Corporate entities in general) is not government and/or legal system and it is not required of them to follow laws, which are applicable for governments. However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation. While the law is codified as P…

"Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL."

Not only are you not a lawyer, but you are also struggling with some basic concepts regarding the implementation of laws.

Laws, implemented as statutes, have no association with, or bearing on, morals which are purely a cultural phenomena.

I understand that you disagree with how Dropbox went about protecting themselves from civil liability, however the violated no laws by their actions.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#235

Post by gordonbowman » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:26 AM UTC

Pahalial wrote: post #116

You know, I really don't understand the rage around this case, or more specifically that it's supposedly all coming from people who otherwise love Dropbox. So let's examine what you're (potentially) doing by forcing this issue and so on: (1) Calling down a streisand effect on Dropbox. Perhaps you believe that code is meant to be free to such an extent that this is part of your goal, so, sure. (2) They clearly have no…

Well laid out. The worst crime here is taking up the invaluable time of Dropbox developers who could and should be focused elsewhere.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#236

Post by allending » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:32 AM UTC

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…

DMCA notices are no joke, especially for the receiver.

Your 'automated' system should probably be either:

a) manual

b) have a big ass 'THIS F-ING SENDS A DMCA NOTICE' warning before you disable a file.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#237

Post by mef » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:36 AM UTC

Am I the only one who finds it refreshing to see a business trying to protect itself with a friendly email rather than legal threats? Kudos to the Dropbox guys for walking that fine line with such finesse.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#238

Post by jsprinkles » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:41 AM UTC

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…

I would like you to answer a simple question because after reading Arash and your responses I have doubts about using Dropbox.

Since you fixed the problem server side, why did Dropbox feel it necessary to then attempt to stamp out the no longer functional tool? Would you remove the ability for people to download DeCSS from my public folder due to potential harm? Would you remove the ability for people to download penetration testing tools from my public folder due to potential harm? Would you remove the ability for people to download disassemblers from my public folder due to the potential harm?

The code could be an interesting technical exercise and the censorship you are being accused of arises from this pointless action. That is what people are questioning. Where does that rabbit hole end?

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#239

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:42 AM UTC

shasta wrote: post #56

Dropbox has a simple technical recourse to prevent de-duplication from being used for file sharing - issue a random challenge (a slightly more sophisticated version of "ok, what is the 100th word in the file?") before acknowledging a collision as a true duplicate. Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, the primary expense of this scheme would probably be accessing the file to verify the challenge results. Here's a que…

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#240

Post by donpark » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 1:55 AM UTC

Forget about DMCA and other excuses. Dropship-like hacks could have huge negative impact on Dropbox business model. I can't fault them for taking actions to protect their business.