4 ms·

Wow, did not expect this from a savvy company like Dropbox. Filing a fake DMCA complaint? I think I'll take my files elsewhere.

deleted 15y ago
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- frossie 15y ago
  If I understood correctly, OP said that the Dropbox CTO stated the DMCA was "an accident". Why didn't they say it was "fake" if it was, ya know, fake?
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- cmatthias 15y ago
  Yes, there is: "We have received a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) __from Dropbox__ that the following material is claimed to be infringing." (underscores mine)
- andrewjshults 15y ago
  The article author is the one that calls it fake. Invalid probably would probably be a better choice of words.
adamhowell 15y ago
Well that makes one of us who can live without Dropbox. Drew would have to kill a baby panda with an elephant tusk for me to even begin thinking about switching.
- crocowhile 15y ago
  To say it all, in the past few years a number of alternative have emerged. I never bothered looking into it because I am so happy with Dropbox anyway but I bet I would find another to be happy with. This said: I stand with dropbox on this issue. Abusing their service to fake a p2p is definitely not the way to go and not that clever hack if you ask me.
- amock 15y ago
  Do you need Dropbox or just something like it? Dropbox doesn't seem to have very strong network effects so it seems like it would be easy to replace with a similar product. If you're willing to give up features that require hashes to be shared across accounts you could even have a secure replacement with client side encryption.
  - runjake 15y ago
    Your comment would've been much more helpful had you provided said alternatives.
    - mtogo 15y ago
      Four seconds on duckduckgo: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_online_backup_services https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_onlin...
      - runjake 15y ago
        Thanks for the sarcastic response, but I'm already familiar with that page. What I'm more interested in is what HN users like and dislike and recommend, as opposed to a bunch of features charted into a table with nothing valuable in terms of reliability, usability and actual security. Lately, I've been leaning towards Jungle Disk for file syncing & some S3 solution for cloud backups.
        amock 15y ago
parfe 15y ago
No you won't, but it feels good to grand stand.
- cmatthias 15y ago
  I already deleted it. I'm not sure how I can prove it to you as I didn't get an email, and when I clicked the "Delete Account" button to commit to deleting my account it just bounced me to the dropbox homepage. But thanks for trying to call me out.
  - parfe 15y ago
    You don't need to prove it to me because I don't particularly care and it doesn't actually matter, so let's just say I believe you. This is a tempest in a teapot just like those mass "Quit Facebook" protests that spring up every time the privacy settings change. The entire controversy exists because a tiny, yet incredibly vocal, minority makes a huge deal of it only to drop it the next week. And from reading write ups on freemium services, the vocal minority is also part of the non-paying majority. Dropbox has a technically exploitable feature which they don't want passed around for file sharing purposes so they stopped their own servers from helping. Big whoop.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - cmatthias 15y ago
      No, that's the problem... they haven't stopped their own servers from helping at all, because anyone with the hash can still access the file, which is the whole basis of how Dropship works. If Dropbox doesn't want Dropship to work, I think they should spend time actually updating their code to remove this exposure, rather than trying to get the code erased from the internet.
    - gergles 15y ago
      I had, and dropped a paid account to free. I wasn't above my quota, and was basically just paying as a "I like what you guys are doing" sort of feature. I no longer like what they're doing, so the gravy train stops.

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frossie 15y ago
If I understood correctly, OP said that the Dropbox CTO stated the DMCA was "an accident". Why didn't they say it was "fake" if it was, ya know, fake?
deleted 15y ago
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cmatthias 15y ago
Yes, there is: "We have received a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) __from Dropbox__ that the following material is claimed to be infringing." (underscores mine)
andrewjshults 15y ago
The article author is the one that calls it fake. Invalid probably would probably be a better choice of words.

adamhowell 15y ago

Well that makes one of us who can live without Dropbox. Drew would have to kill a baby panda with an elephant tusk for me to even begin thinking about switching.

crocowhile 15y ago
To say it all, in the past few years a number of alternative have emerged. I never bothered looking into it because I am so happy with Dropbox anyway but I bet I would find another to be happy with. This said: I stand with dropbox on this issue. Abusing their service to fake a p2p is definitely not the way to go and not that clever hack if you ask me.
amock 15y ago
Do you need Dropbox or just something like it? Dropbox doesn't seem to have very strong network effects so it seems like it would be easy to replace with a similar product. If you're willing to give up features that require hashes to be shared across accounts you could even have a secure replacement with client side encryption.
- runjake 15y ago
  Your comment would've been much more helpful had you provided said alternatives.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    Four seconds on duckduckgo: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_online_backup_services https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_onlin...
    - runjake 15y ago
      Thanks for the sarcastic response, but I'm already familiar with that page. What I'm more interested in is what HN users like and dislike and recommend, as opposed to a bunch of features charted into a table with nothing valuable in terms of reliability, usability and actual security. Lately, I've been leaning towards Jungle Disk for file syncing & some S3 solution for cloud backups.
      - amock 15y ago

parfe 15y ago

No you won't, but it feels good to grand stand.

cmatthias 15y ago
I already deleted it. I'm not sure how I can prove it to you as I didn't get an email, and when I clicked the "Delete Account" button to commit to deleting my account it just bounced me to the dropbox homepage. But thanks for trying to call me out.
- parfe 15y ago
  You don't need to prove it to me because I don't particularly care and it doesn't actually matter, so let's just say I believe you. This is a tempest in a teapot just like those mass "Quit Facebook" protests that spring up every time the privacy settings change. The entire controversy exists because a tiny, yet incredibly vocal, minority makes a huge deal of it only to drop it the next week. And from reading write ups on freemium services, the vocal minority is also part of the non-paying majority. Dropbox has a technically exploitable feature which they don't want passed around for file sharing purposes so they stopped their own servers from helping. Big whoop.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - cmatthias 15y ago
    No, that's the problem... they haven't stopped their own servers from helping at all, because anyone with the hash can still access the file, which is the whole basis of how Dropship works. If Dropbox doesn't want Dropship to work, I think they should spend time actually updating their code to remove this exposure, rather than trying to get the code erased from the internet.
  - gergles 15y ago
    I had, and dropped a paid account to free. I wasn't above my quota, and was basically just paying as a "I like what you guys are doing" sort of feature. I no longer like what they're doing, so the gravy train stops.