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Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

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Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#301

Post by edw »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #234
random42 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 viola…

Are laws purely a cultural phenomenon? Do laws have no association with morals? Your sentiments sound more like the product of an ideology and less like conclusions based on an anthropological, historical, philosophical, or any sort of open-minded inquiry into culture, societies, and human nature.

Additionally, you're conflating society, which is comprised of a group of people, with culture, which is a product of a group of people that aren't necessarily members of the same society.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#302

Post by GrandMasterBirt »

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…

Just a quick thing to point out. The rabbit is out of the hat (or whatever is the correct proverb for it). As with all technologies seen in years past, don't fight it on "legal" terms, and I don't mean legal as in suing the crap out of them (the Sony method), I also mean pleading to the community (the Valve method).

In reality if Dropship is illegally accessing a person's private files without "sharing" or making it public, fix that. The approach is quite novel in that you can create a one-off dropbox account, make it private, and claim someone "hacked" into your account to acquire it as it would appear Dropship's methods cannot be proven different than a hacking attempt, which means the uploader is not "responsible".

However to counter people's points, dropbox has no choice but to demand that any copyright violation even in private files is forbidden, otherwise they are hit with DMCA, the US laws give them zero wiggle room here.

Dropship is a nifty loophole in the DMCA rules allowing dropbox to become the legal rapidshare in the US, probably involuntarily and taking on legal risk they don't want in any way.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#303

Post by allwein »

jsprinkles wrote: post #238
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 pen…

At the time they requested the removal of the tool, they hadn't yet fixed the problem server side. I don't think it's egregious to request that the tool be taken down while they worked on fixing the problem. Much like how security exploits aren't just immediately published without notifying the company so they have a chance to fix it.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#304

Post by allwein »

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…

Dropbox already has provisions for restricting those accounts which use an excessive amount of bandwidth. They'd be able to block those files without needing to know the actual contents.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#305

Post by mtogo »

ugh wrote: post #192
mtogo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that Dropbox submitted the DMCA request under penalty of perjury, and that if it was in fact incorrect Dropbox has perjured themselves?

Dropbox did not send a takedown request. They (erroneously) claimed they had received one from a third party which is not perjury.

Check the timestamp on my post.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#306

Post by speleding »

naz wrote: post #201
trotsky wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we've fixed the deduplication behavior serverside to prevent "injection" of files you don't actually have, for a variety of reasons I think this was a good call, and not just for the piracy issues but for the substantial information disclosure and possible misappropriation of sensitive documents that it could have facilitated. This is something that's been on my radar for some months, and frankly seemed like a signif…

> ... the substantial information disclosure and possible misappropriation of sensitive documents that it could have facilitated They match duplicate files with an SHA256 sum and size in bytes. With those two factors, the probability of a collision is incredibly tiny and impossible to exploit usefully. If you tried a trillion combinations you might find a useless file, but by then you would be detected and banned fro…

It would still allow collision attacks though. There are probably a lot of legal and medical documents (recipes) that only differ in a few words, such as name and date of birth. By trying a bunch of combinations you can test if those documents exist.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#308

Post by ChuckMcM »

edw wrote: post #301
ChuckMcM wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 viola…

Are laws purely a cultural phenomenon? Do laws have no association with morals? Your sentiments sound more like the product of an ideology and less like conclusions based on an anthropological, historical, philosophical, or any sort of open-minded inquiry into culture, societies, and human nature. Additionally, you're conflating society , which is comprised of a group of people, with culture , which is a product of a…

I wasn't conflating society and culture. American society, the group of people who are citizens of the United States of America, is a superset of the Christian culture.

Christian culture defines a moral code by which they measure themselves. That culture is present in many societies and can influence (or not) the societal debate on governance (witness the current California constitutional ban on Gay Marriage as an example).

That leads to people who are culturally opposed to laws enacted by the society in which they happen to live.

Laws are enacted by the constituents of a nation-state as a means of defining roles, rights, and remedies. The process by which they are proposed, debated, and enacted is internally consistent but varies between governing bodies.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#309

Post by tlrobinson »

SwellJoe wrote: post #286
tlrobinson wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, even if the file contains code that could be used to the violate the ToS, that doesn't mean the user actually has violated the ToS.

And Dropbox hasn't done anything to any users of the code, as far as I know. What do you think Dropbox is doing to people who poke at the code or use it?

Arash's comment on the article:

"This is Arash from Dropbox. We removed the project source code from the user’s Dropbox 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."

I'm questioning whether possessing the file without using it against Dropbox is actually a TOS violation.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#310

Post by Goronmon »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #276
dhouston wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we have a variety of easy-to-use sharing mechanisms (public links, shared folders, etc.) that people have been using for a long time for legitimate uses. to be clear, we _never issued_ any DMCA takedowns to anyone -- the OP incorrectly received a bizarrely-worded email from us saying we had received a takedown notice from ourselves (no such notice ever existed) for which we've apologized.

>" to be clear, we _never issued_ any DMCA takedowns to anyone " That's just disingenuous legalistic manoeuvring though isn't it. You claimed that you had issued a notice, to yourselves, and it was outside of the email recipients ability (without issuing an injunction - or whatever the process is in your jurisdiction) to confirm your claim. They took your word on it. So fraud or a DMCA. But no you say it was just "a…

Actually, you are misrepresenting the issue here from what I understand.

No notice was sent to anyone. What the e-mail that was sent claimed was that Dropbox had received a DMCA takedown notice from a third-party and that's why the file was taken down. However, that was just an automated response to any file being taken down using whatever mechanism they had in place.

I'm not sure where the "law" is being used to bully people who can't afford it in this case.

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