8 ms·
I'm curious if it was related to the file name. I created a few 1-byte files with just "1" in them, with different names, including "output04.txt". No problem
by tyingq 5y ago
I'm curious if it was related to the file name. I created a few 1-byte files with just "1" in them, with different names, including "output04.txt". No problems so far. Also uploaded variations with "\n" and "\r\n" after the "1". And enabled sharing to anyone with the link. No issues so far.
Google drive does support metadata like a description and comments. I wonder if someone posted some copyrighted text in a comment?
Update: Recreated it. Most of them are now flagged. Took about an hour for that to happen. So far, all that have just one byte, being a "1", and also the one that contains "1\n".
The one with "1\r\n" hasn't been flagged. The file names of the flagged files: "one.txt", "onev2.txt", "output04.txt" and "output05.txt".
Screenshots of the email and Google drive: https://imgur.com/a/RHnEJcj https://imgur.com/a/RHnEJcj (note the little flags on the Google drive view, and the file sizes)
Just added some files with "0" and "0\n", we'll see if "0" is copyrighted :)
- tyingq 5y agoUpdate: It has now flagged the file with "0\n" in it. So it's official, Both 0 and 1 are copyrighted :) https://imgur.com/a/xMgh6Xn https://imgur.com/a/xMgh6Xn
- Crosseye_Jack 5y agoWell that MP3 the RIAA flagged was FULL of ones and zeros, so it only makes sense they would get flagged ;-)
- bl4ckneon 5y agoDoes that mean someone copyrighted binary? :p I guess that mean that this comment and everything digital is copyrighted.
- jrockway 5y agoTechnically any creative work you author is copyrighted, so your comment was copyrighted anyway. Whether or not large tech companies will punish people for infringing upon your copyright is yet to be determined.
- johannes1234321 5y agoI don't know about US lawy but in German law there is a requirement on some originality. ("Schöpfungshöhe") The barrier is low, but a 1 certainly doesn't receive the protection.
- Sharlin 5y agoYep. A HN comment a couple of sentences long, OTOH, is probably just on the threshold where whether it counts as a protected work depends on just how “unique” the comment is.
- johannes1234321 5y agoAs we are on HN, not reddit, thus comments are more than "yes" or "lolz" they are most likely protected. However one implicitly gives a license to YCombinator - at least to publish it. And what other rights can be upheld would be interesting.
- teachrdan 5y agoRelevant Onion article here: https://www.theonion.com/microsoft-patents-ones-zeroes-1819564663 https://www.theonion.com/microsoft-patents-ones-zeroes-18195...
- PixelOfDeath 5y agoRelevant real Microsoft patent on the IS NOT OPERATOR: https://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=DN/20040230959 https://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2...
- labster 5y agoWhy is satire so much better at predicting our dumb reality than sci-fi? This is definitely the darkest timeline.
- a9h74j 5y agoGPT-3 says: In mathematics, there is a search for a satire-to-satire mapping function with the longest cycle length. These are called N-quines.
- Ygg2 5y agoBecause rational people like to think people are rational. Rational people then go on and write their great sci fi works. People writing satire know people are irrational. Otherwise they wouldn't be writing satire, would they? To quote George Carlin: Take an average idiot on the street, then realize half of people are dumber than them.
- ImprovedSilence 5y agoHaha wow. In another testament to the times, the length of yesterday’s satire seems as long as todays “long form”, and much more developed than todays two line satire “articles”. /end soapbox
- Talanes 5y ago
- blibble 5y agoI hope you did that from a burner account!
- gtirloni 5y agoExactly my thoughts. I'd not want to risk angering the Google gods with this experiment, considering your account can be disabled by yet another automated system with no way to contact a human.
- jfoster 5y agoBetter do it from a burner device on a burner internet connection, to prevent Google from detecting any link between your burner account and your real account.
- rezonant 5y agoRemember, "there is no review for this restriction"
- meshaneian 5y agoI believe 0 and 1 belong in the public domain, at least under US copyright law - there appears to be a significant amount of prior art.
- lostcolony 5y agoNot sure if prior art is relevant, per se (usually quoted in the context of patent law but IANAL), but, certainly, any copyright has expired by this point.
- josho 5y agoSeeing as the default font used by google's file reader is Roboto and that typeface has only been around since 2014, so my expression of 0 using Roboto is copyrighted 2014. I do not know how any of you _hackers_ stole my original work, and I certainly do not authorize it's use. Immediately send me your full name and address so that I can have my lawyers contact you.
- dwaite 5y agoIt might be that the 1s and 0s are derivative works, such as being derivatives of sin(x) and cos(x) for x->0.
- judge2020 5y agoFYI while Drive and YouTube's Content ID systems operate based on copyright, they are not entirely bound to it since they only actually have to comply with DMCA requests (barring any lawsuits that claim Google has the resources to create automated copyright detection systems[0]). Even when claiming copyright, they can remove and block access to content for any reason they want legally. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/business/media/viacom-and-youtube-settle-lawsuit-over-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/business/media/viacom-and...
- rezonant 5y agoThey theoretically are based on copyright, but in practice the way it works is a few trusted entities are allowed to submit content and claim it as their own. If you have access to a Content Owner dashboard, you can claim literally any content you want from there- you'll just be putting your access to that dashboard at risk if you claim content that isn't actually yours to claim and Google gets wind of it. This is how movies and music are added to the system for copyright enforcement purposes- they are effectively uploaded to YouTube and never published (this is called an "asset" in Content Owner parlance)
- steelframe 5y agoCareful there. My law firm in east Texas happens to own the patent rights to a system and method of concatenating a plurality of 1s and 0s for the purpose of generating an encoding of a creative work, and as such you are in peril of infringing on one of my claims with your concatenation of 1s and 0s!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- politician 5y agoGeneral Mills owns the copyright on 0s, sir. (Cheerios)
- CleaveIt2Beaver 5y agoBut do they own an NFT of an 0?
- gcanyon 5y agoThat’s it, kids, the internet is now illegal — until we switch to a quaternary system using only 2’s and 3’s <taps forehead smartly>
- kelnos 5y agoWouldn't that still be binary, just using different symbols?
- purplebreak 5y agohttps://xkcd.com/257/ https://xkcd.com/257/
- a9h74j 5y agoSuspicious -- just when Google is announcing success with qbits and quantum computing.
- a9h74j 5y agoDoes this mean every binary file is now a derivative work?
- kingcharles 5y agoSilence copyrighted too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
- zapdrive 5y agoMaybe it's because you have "one" in the file name: "zeronewline".
- melissalobos 5y agoIt may take some time for it to index and check the file, youtube for example takes ages to process video, I would imagine google drive is lower priority. Check back in a week or two and see if it changes.
- can16358p 5y agoDoes it flag comments for copyright infringement? What if I comment on some file with some copyrighted content in the text, just implying something about that IP, with the copyrighted text in my comment? How can this be infringement?
- tyingq 5y agoNo idea. I was just trying to guess at why it might flag a single byte file as a copyright infringement.
- hulitu 5y agoThey changed their algorithm. Now it will flag files full of 0s.
- folbec 5y agoMy bet is someone did a DMCA claim on a file containing 1, either by mistake or as a joke. Then Automated Stupidity took over.
- DebtDeflation 5y ago"A review can not be requested for this restriction."
- TillE 5y agoI'd guess some giant folder of mostly-copyrighted material, which happened to include those files for some reason.
- a_f 5y agometadata match on an album track number?
- rapnie 5y agoIt's AI. Automated Ineptitude.
- ImprovedSilence 5y agoNa, it’s gotta be something dumb on the big G’s part. I bet their unit tests for their DCMA search have test cases with simple files like 1 and 0, and those cases are just put into the “copyright” database.
- mooman219 5y agoIt looks like those files are marked as public. Does it trigger for you on files not being shared?
- tyingq 5y agoI didn't try that. I marked them public because I assumed that's what triggers the scan.
- obmelvin 5y agoDoes it just prevent you from sharing the files or does it prevent you from accessing the file as well?
- tyingq 5y agoJust tried that, and I get a "request a review" link. Interesting. "Unable to share This item may violate our Terms of Service - Request a review" Clicking on it, though, gives no joy: "451. Sorry, Google is unable to process your request. This item was taken down for legal reasons and cannot be appealed. Please visit the Legal Removals Requests page for more information." https://imgur.com/a/5YHQtLi https://imgur.com/a/5YHQtLi
- wolpoli 5y agoGoogle search publishes the DMCA letter that takes down search results. It's sad they don't do the same here.
- kortex 5y agoSomeone just needs to copyright the number 451 and then they won't be able to return that HTTP response! Checkmate, google!
- salawat 5y agoSomeone already did. Fahrenheit 451. The flashpoint of wood pulp paper. You... didn't think that wasn't specifically chosen for that reason, right?
- OneLeggedCat 5y agoJust tested this myself. Got the same results as you while using different file names. Difficult to believe that Google has become so internally dysfunctional that it hasn't fixed this technical embarrassment twenty hours after first being being seen, and then five hours after being reported on front page of Hacker News.
- judge2020 5y agoIt only affects sharing so it isn't a disaster if this happens, probably P3 medium if you went by their bug bounty priorities.
- LightG 5y agoAltenatively, just the next brick laid upon the pyramid of "Google sux".
- tyingq 5y agoThat is what I saw, I can still access the file. I do wonder, though, if there's some threshold of flagged files where they suddenly enact some other punishment.
- bigiain 5y agoI'm sure that right now, competitive YouTube scam artists are sending competing channel owners files with just "1" in them, in the hope they get their Google accounts machine-deleted and their youtube channels taken down with zero recourse...
- Barrin92 5y agoAt the scale at which Google operates, even if they fixed it within a minute it probably takes some time to test and roll these things out. Sometimes I wonder if people think that infrastructure for billions of people is some sort of magic where you push the fix button and magically everything's solved across the globe.
- 5y ago
- CJefferson 5y agoTurns out Google also hates 500, 174, 833, 285 and 302 (from generating files from -1000 to 1000).
- tyingq 5y agoThat's interesting. 500 and 302 popped into my head as common HTTP status codes. The others don't seem notable to me.
- CJefferson 5y agoAnother bunch of numbers got flagged (186, 451, 336, 173, 266). I deleted the experiment, just in case I got my account deleted for too many naughty numbers.
- Mathnerd314 5y agoThat probably looks even more suspicious.
- apocalyptic0n3 5y agoThis is relatively new then. As part of some testing last summer for how to handle a migration from one Drive to another, I generated a folder that had I think 10k files in it. They were all named 1.txt, 75.txt, 8492.txt and their contents matched the filename (i.e. 1, 75, 8492). They never got flagged for me. That was for a Google Workspace account, though, and they were deleted a few days later once I was done with the tests.
- tyingq 5y agoI did notice it flagged "1", "1\n", but not "1\r\n". Then, it didn't flag "0", but did flag "0\n". So line endings seem to matter as well, but not in some consistent way.
- SecurityLagoon 5y agoThey are probably on some kind of hash list accidently. Its probably not about the content as such.
- avisser 5y agoI wonder if this is an incredible hash collision. hash("1") == hash(disney_movie.mp4)
- p1mrx 5y agoAssuming is's a cryptographic hash function, that sort of collision just never happens.
- askvictor 5y agoWell, it has to happen at some point. Exceedingly unlikely, but never say never.
- Sharlin 5y agoh(1) == h(some_real_data) does not have to happen at some point. Collisions are unavoidable, but the point of a cryptographically secure hash algorithm is to ensure that for all h(x) == h(some_real_data), there are no values of x that can be found by brute force, or by cleverness either for that matter. Of course, it’s always possible that the particular hash function used could be hilariously broken…
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pertique 5y agoPerhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but doesn't the existence of collisions guarantee that h(1)== h(some_real_data) unless the hash function is hilariously broken? Cryptographically secure hash functions state that it's unlikely to occur, but the fact that you can take data a greater size than the output will guarantee that you'll have collisions. If you have collisions and the hash function is generating output that is uniformly distributed across the possible output space, you will hit h(1)==h(some_real_data) at some point (edit: given that "some point" is a mathematical concept, not an actual point in time. Of course, there's no guarantee that we'll ever get collisions for hash functions with massive output spaces. But I'd argue that's a limit of computing, not of the math behind the functions themselves)
- knodi123 5y ago"A review cannot be requested". What a soulless suck machine.
- JorgeGT 5y ago"In order to review, please reach the top of HN"
- hlbjhblbljib 5y agoYou do not have sufficient social credit to request a review, please become a better person and try again.
- kingcharles 5y agoThis is the sad way of things now. Only those with a large enough megaphone get support. I'm in a battle with Cash App support and the only way I got my issue escalated was to find the personal cellphone of a manager there and call him. This is not how things are supposed to work :(
- nullc 5y ago> become a better person It's much faster and more effective to achieve high visibility by being a bad person, if you haven't noticed. We get what we incentivize.
- duxup 5y ago“A review cannot be requested for this restriction.” Absolute madness cannot be reviewed… Reason cannot be applied.
- kingcharles 5y agoThings are getting out of control. Reason has left the building. Here for instance is a clunker I've had from Cash App support (I'm disputing a package I never received which was returned to the merchant and the merchant won't answer any communications): "M.J. from Cash Support once more. To be clear, I am not misunderstanding the location of the package at this point, and understand that it has been returned to the sender now. ... As I mentioned in my previous message, should FedEx update their delivery information to indicate a non-delivered status, we can then process a dispute on your behalf. You can reply back to me here directly should you file the missing package claim with FedEx, they conduct their investigation, and update the package status to reflect non-delivery. At that point we can then move forward on getting a dispute processed for you." LOL. They know the package has been delivered back to the merchant but they still want me to file a missing package claim for it. The absurdity of the situation is lost on them. All these large companies hire now is soulless drones with no mind of their own. "Follow the script on the screen, never deviate, even in the face of absurdity. Forever onwards, loyal drone."
- rtsil 5y agoIt's terrifying, to be honest.
- discordance 5y agoMake sure to encrypt your 0’s and 1’s
- melenaboija 5y agoI really want to think there is few people left out there leaving their 0’s and 1’s unencrypted in the cloud, I hope this post gets enough hype to solve the problem
- vaillancourtmax 5y ago> I really want to think there is few people left out there leaving their 0’s and 1’s unencrypted in the cloud This describes most everybody.
- mr_toad 5y agoJust encrypt the 1s. The 0s are nothing.
- rst 5y agoThe filename is "output04.txt".
- kgwxd 5y agoDid you do that with a throwaway account? You'd be playing with fire getting a bunch of files flagged on your primary account.
- pyuser583 5y agoClearly a violation of U2’s copyright.