Yikes. It's been said several times, don't use Google for anything important. The minute something goes wrong, you're so SOL and they literally could care less.
Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
41–50 of 269 posts
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#42We need a distributed volunteer backed free replacement. Is IPFS or gnunet ready for that yet?
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
But seriously how long is it before Google implements a hashing algorithm (not too dissimilar from Apple's) to check if a user has not uploaded content with a copyright on it and taking some form of action on the user. This feels like a slippery slope to be on.
Apple's CSAM would scan your offline photos. Google scanning photos you upload to their cloud seems fine to me. Not a slippery slope.
Very much a slippery slope.
Their cloud doesn't mean its their content. If said content is public, I mostly agree, but not if its private.
When I hire a storage box and put stuff in it, I don't own the storage box. Yet still it cannot be searched by anyone, not the company nor the authorities, unless there is a credible criminal suspicion.
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you actually own the copyrighted content or have permission to have it?
Of course, that is an edge case which Google would need to figure out and perhaps, one of the many reasons they haven't done it.
> that is an edge case which Google would need to figure out
How do you figure out legality of having a document from the document? Unless it's child porn, where it's implicit, this simply isn't computable.
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#45This came up on HN a few days ago with a similarly hyperbolic editorialized headline. Google has always restricted objectionable content from being shared on Drive, Docs, or wherever the platform has sharing features. Google is, obviously, not going to act as a free static hosting service for your malware and porn.
What's new is that customers with paid accounts are going to be notified when their content has been restricted from sharing. Before this change it was silent from the user's perspective.
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#46This is deeply disturbing news. It is already a problem that people get their Google accounts closed without any explanation from Google and with no response from Google when they try to contact them. A story about Elin Killie Martinsen, a Norwegian journalist and writer who lost access to her book manuscripts this way, was recently run in the national newspaper Aftenposten (https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/8Qj1lG/uten-forklaring-b...). The article is in Norwegian but to summarize she got this answer from Google; "There appears to be malicious content in your Google Account. This is a serious violation of Google's policy and may be illegal" with a link to this page https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?p=disabled_... .
To the writer this was incomprehensible because she couldn't understand that any of her files could even be close to violating anything.
I am already seriously considering discontinuing my subscriptions of their storage services, and this post about restricting files doesn't give me comfort.
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
But seriously how long is it before Google implements a hashing algorithm (not too dissimilar from Apple's) to check if a user has not uploaded content with a copyright on it and taking some form of action on the user. This feels like a slippery slope to be on.
Google already scans for CSAM on stuff uploaded to drive. The idea that they'd start using it for copyrighted material is a spurious claim considering they've made no indication of doing so in the past.
Google drive already scans hashes. https://torrentfreak.com/google-drive-uses-hash-matching-det...
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, that is an edge case which Google would need to figure out and perhaps, one of the many reasons they haven't done it.
> that is an edge case which Google would need to figure out How do you figure out legality of having a document from the document? Unless it's child porn, where it's implicit, this simply isn't computable.
Maintaining a hash of say music files that are owned by large record label companies or a conglomerate like VeVo, match every audio file uploaded with the hash and if it matches, flag it, get it reviewed and if it matches, delete it?
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#49I believe this may be due to the popular spamming method lately which is tagging people into a Google Docs and share it so everyone receives a notification (the spam message). It works better than regular email spam since apparently Gmail doesn't treat Google Docs notification email as spam (at least not as often).
Nah Google doesn’t care about that. Spammers have been doing it for years on Google Drive/Docs and Microsoft Sharepoint.
You're restating GP comment about why Google may need to do this.
Re: Google Drive may restrict files identified as violating ToS
#50This is deeply disturbing news. It is already a problem that people get their Google accounts closed without any explanation from Google and with no response from Google when they try to contact them. A story about Elin Killie Martinsen, a Norwegian journalist and writer who lost access to her book manuscripts this way, was recently run in the national newspaper Aftenposten ( https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/8Qj1l…
It's really bothering when the account just also happens to be your core email service so suddenly you have no way of recovering other accounts.
Moving off Gmail is likely impossible for most non-technical folks.