Google Drive could soon start locking your files • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#21

Post by kingcharles » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

ipsin wrote: post #8

szszrk wrote: post #2

So.. Drive will automatically un-share our files based on their own algorithms. I've got a feeling this will be mostly an automatic DMCA takedown tool.

Is there a legal requirement to do a DMCA take down of something the copyright holder doesn't know about? If you put something on Twitter mentioning certain cryptocurrency keywords (e.g. MetaMask), you'll get reply tweets from bots in a few seconds with fake support documents hosted on Google drive. My sense is that this is what they are trying to stop.

A lot of their takedowns come from user-flagging. If a user flags something, so that the item is now on the hosting site's radar, are they now responsible for it? They're only not responsible for things they are not aware of.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#22

Post by aledalgrande » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

Aside from legitimate DMCAs what I'm worried about is losing backupped files of any sort because some rogue individual files a complaint on stuff they don't own or because of an ML error and an inexistent customer service by Google. Also I don't really like the service to sneak onto any files I upload. What alternatives do we have for cloud file backup? I already do full backups, need something to sync files between devices.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#23

Post by vetrom » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

kingcharles wrote: post #20

nix23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need a answer?

Has to be a rhetorical question. I was once responsible for ripping 250,000 CDs, legally, on behalf of various record labels, from tiny to the big 5. I would love to store a backup of all that data in the big cloud services and see which ones deleted my legally-owned data.

Now imagine having to deal with disposition of the data and the ownership of the NAS throughout a bankruptcy.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#24

Post by 29083011397778 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

I have, uh, mp3 backups of all the music I have owned from my, um, ludicrously massive CD collection. Is it worth the risk that google might one day decide I am a pirate and block my account?

For reference, I use FLAC instead of MP3. Your collection may be larger, but my ~12,000 FLAC files take less than 500GB. So I'd say it's a question of value: You could have redundant copies of your music for ~$300 CAD with a pair of Samsung T5 SSDs, or you could someday lose every email, contact, photo, document, Youtube playlist, and MP3 you use Google for.

I'm not saying it's likely, but it only has to be a one-in-100-million chance for it to hit a couple Google users.

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#25

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

aledalgrande wrote: post #22

Aside from legitimate DMCAs what I'm worried about is losing backupped files of any sort because some rogue individual files a complaint on stuff they don't own or because of an ML error and an inexistent customer service by Google. Also I don't really like the service to sneak onto any files I upload. What alternatives do we have for cloud file backup? I already do full backups, need something to sync files between…

SyncThing, Dropbox

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#26

Post by ThinkBeat » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

How is this done?

Google claims files are encrypted at rest and encrypted during transfer.

Metadata inspection? Checksum during upload?

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#27

Post by dontcare007 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #26

How is this done? Google claims files are encrypted at rest and encrypted during transfer. Metadata inspection? Checksum during upload?

Google dropped "don't be evil", so....

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#28

Post by flatiron » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

I have, uh, mp3 backups of all the music I have owned from my, um, ludicrously massive CD collection. Is it worth the risk that google might one day decide I am a pirate and block my account?

rent a gcp instance for a bit, rclone mount your drive instance, create another rclone encrypted mount, copy from the unencrypted mount to the encrypted mount. delete unencrypted content.

go to your local pc and rclone encrypt mount your drive. now you have your linux isos and they are encrypted upstream

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#29

Post by aledalgrande » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

aledalgrande wrote: post #22

Aside from legitimate DMCAs what I'm worried about is losing backupped files of any sort because some rogue individual files a complaint on stuff they don't own or because of an ML error and an inexistent customer service by Google. Also I don't really like the service to sneak onto any files I upload. What alternatives do we have for cloud file backup? I already do full backups, need something to sync files between…

SyncThing, Dropbox

From another comment it seems like Dropbox also can snoop and remove your files. Will check SyncThing thanks!

Re: Google Drive could soon start locking your files

#30

Post by fknorangesite » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

pedro2 wrote: post #15

micromacrofoot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do the same thing for copyrighted material, they can match a hash and nuke a file off the service at the drop of a hat.

delete the file? not unshare it and keep it on the personal storage?

fwiw the article says

> These files will be flagged to their owner and restricted automatically, which means they can no longer be shared with other people, and access will be withdrawn from everyone but the owner.