How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#41

Post by cottonseed » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

dantiberian wrote: post #26

I've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached. I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong…

It's wrong? Who says? Why? Because it is illegal? Was slavery OK when it was legal? Is capital punishment? Smoking pot?

If you mean we shouldn't do it because it is illegal, that's fine, although personally I don't find that a compelling reason. I think some people here think maybe the copyright laws should be different then they are. Said that way, it isn't unreasonable opinion, compared to "OMG! You think piracy is acceptable!" There's a better level of conversation here: What do they think should be different? Why? Why do you think its wrong? What does wrong even mean in this case?

Care to enlighten us?

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#42

Post by Houshalter » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

qwerta wrote: post #34

dantiberian wrote: post #26

I've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached. I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong…

Would you please zip content of your hard-drive and uploaded it on dropbox? Also give me password from your gmail. I want to check if there is no illegal copy of my work in there.

No one is reading people's hard drives or gmail. They are comparing shared files, on their servers, against a hash of commonly pirated files. You are exhibiting the behavior parent comment was complaining about.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#43

Post by waterlesscloud » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #33

qwerta wrote: post #11

Yet another reason not to use cloud services. For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files. If they start blocking stuff at their own will they are judge and executor. Secondly there is lot of potential for abuse. Hacker could sneak hash collision into their database and essentially censor-ship any document he wants. And finally I do not understand why there has to be…

"For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files." Uh sure they do. Both legally and morally. It's their servers! Their right to snoop files stored on their servers is quite strong. Your right to store files on someone else's servers is zero. If you would like to pay someone to store your stuff on their servers that is a business deal which can be arranged and the fine p…

What if I transmit data over someone else's wires? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop at it?

What if it's stored within a government's territorial jurisdiction? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop?

Why not?

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#44

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

RaphiePS wrote: post #10

chimeracoder wrote: post #4

> Dropbox checks the hash of a shared file against a banned list, and blocks the share if there’s a match. Encoding an mp3 is not a deterministic process. So if multiple people start with the same .wav file ripped from a CD (which itself may introduce errors) and then downcode it, they will end up with files which sound the same but are slightly different (and therefore hash differently). So, it should be straightfor…

That brings up an interesting question. At what point does a modified file no longer fall under copyright? If I had a copyrighted ebook and changed a single "o" to "0" I bet I could still be busted for distributing it (although it appears Dropbox would no longer automatically catch me). But what if I changed every single "o" to a "0"? Re-arranged words? Chapters? Upcased every lowercase letter? My guess is that's it'…

If you start with the original work, you'd have to pretty much totally change it for it not to be considered a derivative work.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#45

Post by rakoo » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #28

dpweb wrote: post #6

If you don't control them, they're not yours.

So if you don't control, say, your family they are not your family?

I believe he was talking about possessions. You don't own humans.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#46

Post by waterlesscloud » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

dantiberian wrote: post #26

I've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached. I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong…

I'm very strongly anti-pirate and very strongly anti-dropboox snooping. It's quite possible to be both.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#47

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #43

forrestthewoods wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files." Uh sure they do. Both legally and morally. It's their servers! Their right to snoop files stored on their servers is quite strong. Your right to store files on someone else's servers is zero. If you would like to pay someone to store your stuff on their servers that is a business deal which can be arranged and the fine p…

What if I transmit data over someone else's wires? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop at it? What if it's stored within a government's territorial jurisdiction? Do they have the legal and moral right to snoop? Why not?

Yes to both, save for the limitations these parties themselves agree to. That is, after all, what the 4th amendment is: a limitation on the United States' sovereign rights.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#48

Post by dantiberian » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #35

dantiberian wrote: post #26

I've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached. I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong…

Although I'm not one of the outraged, I think this sentence from the article talks about two very different situations: > Only when a file is shared from user-to-user (or with the Internet at large) does the DMCA check system come into play. Doing a DMCA takedown on a broadcast share with the whole internet? OK. Fine. Doing it on a share with a specific other user? Not OK. Bad. IANAL, but: There are limited exception…

I think your fair use argument is reasonable. Interestingly fair use for sheet music (as one example) in an educational context is far more limited than you might think [1]. There are a number of limited exceptions for sharing copyrighted materials with a student but all of them would involve transforming the sheet music by only sharing part of it. In this scenario this would change the hash of the file and the file blacklist wouldn't pick it up.

[1] http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/musguid.html

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#49

Post by orthecreedence » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

psc wrote: post #30

orthecreedence wrote: post #21

Here's my rebuttal: http://turtlapp.tumblr.com/post/81222024691/how-turtl-has-no...

Just curious, are you storing the keys? Or at the very least the login info from which you could regenerate the keys? If so, there's no reason a government couldn't ask for you to hand the info over, so even though this is a step more complex that Dropbox, it doesn't add too much security. Now, if users provide their own key and it's never transmitted, that would be secure, but obviously the data would be un-decrypta…

You're right, storing keys would completely defeat the purpose. We don't do it. Master keys are generated from a user's login information, which we have no knowledge of.

Right now if you forget your login/password your account is lost unrecoverably. We have a feature slated that would let you download a file version of your account key, meaning if you lost your username or password, you could log in with the special key file and reset your info. Obviously, you'd have to keep the file encrypted/safe, but that's the user's responsibility ultimately.

Re: How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff

#50

Post by psc » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 9:58 PM UTC

qwerta wrote: post #29

jedberg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly didn't read the article. It only applies to sharing files, not storing them. All of your arguments do not apply to shared files.

It does apply, there is no evidence that receiver does not have a valid license. It could be even the same person using two accounts. By this logic we should shutdown Github and SourceForge, until we "clear up some legal stuff".

I agree with you that there are cases in which Dropbox might pick up false positives. I think the DMCA should be updated with harsher penalties for improper takedown requests ("copyfraud"). Still, the policy Dropbox has seems pretty reasonable. And you can always choose to encrypt your files locally or even not use Dropbox. After all, it's a company competing in a relatively free market. But I think for most people Dropbox is a pretty good choice and this takedown policy shouldn't be a reason for them to stop using it.