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Google Drive users stung by macOS '.DS_Store' copyright infringement issue

• _h9mb 5y ago
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  • user 5y ago
• prepend 5y ago
  I really don’t want my cloud storage provider to check my files for copyright violations. It’s not required legally and it’s something that I think is anti-user. Banks don’t have to check safe deposit boxes for stolen art. Self storage don’t have to check containers for stolen goods. Of course, I’m against illegal stuff, but I don’t want to waste a single second defending myself from false positives in these situations. Google has no way of knowing whether I own the IP so I could have paid for a license for the material on my drive or many other legitimate cases.
  • rectang 5y ago
    Why does Google Drive perform such scans? Is it because you might share the files with someone that they have to consider anything put on Google drive as being redistributed under copyright law, and thus subject to copyright restrictions? Or is the very act of putting something in cloud storage considered redistribution under copyright law, even if the file is never shared and you are the only user? A while ago, I backed up a bunch of my Mom's files from a failing computer of hers onto Google Drive. I didn't think anything of it at the time. If there are some copyrighted materials on there, is Google going to suddenly terminate my account after a retroactive scan? I think very hard about copyright and ensure that I uphold copyright in all my public works — for example, there are licensing details at the end of all my slide presentations for all images. Having to apply such a level of care to every action I perform on Google services is bonkers.
    • yellow_lead 5y ago
      Pretty sure the problem is some users have Google Drive's with GBs/TBs of pirated movies, etc, that are shared massively. >Is it because you might share the files with someone that they have to consider anything put on Google drive as being redistributed under copyright law, and thus subject to copyright restrictions? Yes
      • rectang 5y ago
        This seems like a fundamental design flaw for any cloud storage service which enables sharing. It would be a problem not only for Google, but for Dropbox, etc. There needs to be a sharp distinction between files for your own use and files that are shared with the world — as in a global setting for whole volumes to disable global sharing and thus avert the need for copyright scanning. If by making files easy to share at any moment, the service creates a need to perform continuous copyright scanning of all drive content and then to take punitive action when it is detected, then the service is really nothing like a private hard drive. The potential for catastrophic loss, not only of the drive contents but of everything you access through Google services, is much more terrifying than the possibility of corrupting a local drive and much harder to plan for.
        • gerikson 5y ago
          >Dropbox has adopted a policy of terminating the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe copyright or whose accounts are subject to multiple infringement allegations. If you repeatedly share files that infringe others’ copyrights, your account will be terminate https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/security/copyright-policy https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/security/copyright... > There needs to be a sharp distinction between files for your own use and files that are shared with the world Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Use a local backup if needed, use sneakernet to transfer files.
          • polski-g 5y ago
            What if you are authorized to have said copyrighted works?
  • shp0ngle 5y ago
    If you don’t want cloud storage to do this, you need to use cloud storage that doesn’t allow sharing between users. If it allows that, people will misuse it for piracy, which will lead to this.
    • flatiron 5y ago
      Or do what I do which is store my copyrighted materials encrypted in the cloud.
  • Mindwipe 5y ago
    Banks literally do have to perform money laundering checks on deposit boxes.
    • jes 5y ago
      Can you say more about this? I have never heard about this. To my knowledge, my bank cannot access my safe deposit box without my key or without drilling and replacing the lock my key opens. Am I mistaken about this?
      • jamjamjamjamjam 5y ago
        Yes
      • monocasa 5y ago
        They have their own copies of the keys.
    • volkl48 5y ago
      I don't believe this is correct. You can't launder money with a safe deposit box, so it makes no sense to have to conduct money laundering checks on one. Standard rental agreements explicitly state that the bank does not retain a key and is unable to open the box (without destroying the lock) in the event that you lose yours. For example: https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/safedepositbox_disclosures.pdf https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/saf... "The bank does not retain duplicate keys for any rented box".
  • hoschicz 5y ago
    Google Drive checks for copyrighted files only if they are shared.
  • Someone 5y ago
    > It’s not required legally That may or may not be correct in the USA, but the world has many jurisdictions with varying laws on copyright infringement, and cloud storage providers may be liable for copyright infringement claims. Even limiting this to the USA, we had - Metallica vs Napster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc.) - A&M Records vs Napster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26M_Records,_Inc._v._Napster,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26M_Records,_Inc._v._Napster....) Napster lost both cases. So, if you run a cloud provider who permits file sharing, it seems there’s a decent change you’re liable for copyright infringement by your customers. Also, https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/cloud-computing-a-brief-overview-of-15131/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/cloud-computing-a-brief-ov... says: Therefore, Canadian copyright law is currently unclear on whether cloud storage providers may be shielded from liability for copyright infringement ⇒ If I were to run a cloud provider who permits file sharing, I think my legal team would strongly advise to scan files _shared_with_others_ for copyright infringement. (In the ‘.DS_Store’ case, Google’s system seems to have some embarrassing false positives, but that’s a different issue)
    • GeekyBear 5y ago
      Napster was designed explicitly to enable copyright infringement. Cloud storage is not. A more valid comparison would have to involve the Supreme Court's ruling on VCRs, which could possibly be used for copyright infringement, but had substantial uses that were perfectly legal. >The Court's 5–4 ruling to reverse the Ninth Circuit in favor of Sony hinged on the possibility that the technology in question had significant non-infringing uses, and that the plaintiffs were unable to prove otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.#Majority_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive...
  • kingcharles 5y ago
    As poster above says, Google has no idea if I own the rights / have a license to the articles in question. I used to work in the music industry and had license to rip music and distribute it online from all the major labels. I don't want my cloud storage disappearing along with my Google account just because Google mistakenly thinks I'm a pirate.
  • belharius 5y ago
    Could it be an excuse to go through our data thoroughly?
  • nrvn 5y ago
    Would an e2ee storage be the answer to this? As an end user I would be sure that my data is encrypted in-transit and at rest. As a cloud provider I would take care of encryption and privacy promises and transparency and care about my bandwidth and storage costs. Risks: - bad cryptography/leaked keys. Mitigation: sound cryptography, open source model of development. - all possible attacks from the public about potential usage of the service for CP, terrorism and other deadly crimes. - the rest of the risks that apply to e2ee messaging as well. // just off the top thoughts
• hyperman1 5y ago
  Yesterday, while discussing backups, someone said end users should basically trust the cloud. This is why it is a bad idea. The risk is data loss, irrespective if it is because of hardware failure or because of cloud failure connected to overzealous legal enforcement, algorithm decision making failure,or service deprecation. Part of the risk equation is how big the chance is, and I would really love to see the numbers of hardware faulure vs cloud failure. Another part is impact. Hardware loss might be recoverable via specific services. Cloud failure, basically you're on your own, and they might revoke access to your email a.k.a. digital identity certificate, or even sick the copyright cartel on you, worst case ending in a police visit taking out the other backups.
  • viktorcode 5y ago
    Actually, this shows why using Google Drive as a backup storage may be a bad idea.
  • philjohn 5y ago
    And this is why I put together a NAS for my home, which then backs up to a cloud provider, encrypted - and if that provider decides to play silly shenanigans I can just as easily colo another box and back up to that as well as any other cloud provider. ZFS on Linux is stupidly easy to setup, something like URBackup for all your clients to backup onto the NAS and you've got a nice 1-2-3 (with 3 being offsite) backup scheme.
    • sofixa 5y ago
      > ZFS on Linux is stupidly easy to setup For a user familiar with Linux. Even many macOS and Windows based developers would need some time and research to set something like that up, let alone a non technical person.
      • j16sdiz 5y ago
        If this is a problem… Just buy a ready to use box from synology, qnap, western digital, etc… or just use a usb drive.
• chmod775 5y ago
  It is laughable to put something working this badly into your "service" at all. I realize this was probably 'forced' on some engineers at Google, but I'd still be embarrassed to say I've had a hand in this. A bit like being a supporting character in the worst movie of the year. At what point do you threaten to quit over being forced to ship crap like automatic scanning of people's private files? I am unable to empathize here at all.
  • friedturkey 5y ago
    Unfortunately, past experience at Google is still seen as a good sign in job applications. I think we're at a point where gap years should be a better sign than a stint at that company.
    • snovv_crash 5y ago
      Google's engineering is still top-notch. Their product management is what lets the company down.
      • jamjamjamjamjam 5y ago
        No it is not
      • bathtub365 5y ago
        Would building a broken copyright enforcement system fall under engineering or product management?
      • ohgodplsno 5y ago
        Google's engineering is, on average, passable. Thousands of brand new grads that have studied to pass 5 rounds of interviews and have no experience are only going to put out barely passable software. Hell, the very reason that Go is so simple is because, by Google's own admission, their sw devs can't be trusted with anything more complex. What you see coming out of Google that may look cool (when it's not a new chat app they'll kill in two years) has thousands of drones behind.
  • 5y ago
• lousken 5y ago
  Why does google want to get ahead of this? Pretty much all services use submit a notice and that's about it - why is google being so proactive at the cost of their users?
  • derekp7 5y ago
    From what I understand (I don't have sources for this, other than memory): Processing the DMCA notices has a cost. Nothing requires the DMCA notice to be in a machine readable format (although AI is getting better at this type of task), so it often requires a human in the loop. And they were getting sued by the copyright holders regardless of protections under DMCA. So they struck a deal with the copyright holders, that instead of them sending Google a DMCA, Google would provide an interface and automation to handle this, in return for the rights holders dropping their lawsuits.
    • lousken 5y ago
      https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-holders-asked-google-to-remove-5-billion-pirate-links-210206/ https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-holders-asked-google-to-r... https://torrentfreak.com/reckless-dmca-takedown-purges-legitimate-websites-from-google-search-210417/ https://torrentfreak.com/reckless-dmca-takedown-purges-legit... https://torrentfreak.com/fraudulent-dmca-circumvention-takedowns-target-prominent-websites-210902/ https://torrentfreak.com/fraudulent-dmca-circumvention-taked... Unless this changed very recently, notices are still being sent to google and just like google AI they fail horribly in that regard. So if that's the case i feel like the cost didn't disappear and probably not even lower and this is just an additional tool to make lives of google users hell. Plus the fact that google does have non existent support this makes their services really hard to recommend to anyone.
• noway421 5y ago
  Given that there's no support you can call, this leaves no recourse if you accidentally sync the wrong .DS_Store. In the reddit post screenshot, there's no button to open a dispute of any kind. I wonder if this also marks your Google account with a "copyright violator" tag and further increases the chance of an automatic ban with the anti spam AI account pruning system that they run. People who have 10 years worth of data and life linked to their Google Account should be pretty scared.
  • KingOfCoders 5y ago
    And if it's your company on GCP good luck.
    • jamiek88 5y ago
      That just scared the shit out of me. Up until an hour ago my company was completely dependent on googles whim. We often sync workstation backups including similar files to OP. Wow.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tpoacher 5y ago
  Is there a good word for when a solution is bad (in a 'defective by design' sense) but offloads all the "badness" to the competitor, ironically making it look good to casual users? Like mac introducing files that are hidden to a mac but littering the place in other systems. Or like Google nor caring about false positives as long as its customers (i.e. record labels) are happy. In any case, I don't lose much sleep when one bad design hits another. My advice is the same as in the general case: avoid such systems.
  • tokamak-teapot 5y ago
    The files don’t have to ‘litter the place’ on other systems. We have advanced technology that can hide such files from users.
    • vntok 5y ago
      Hiding special files doesn't remove them. They are still there, in every directory, sitting completely useless, thereby littering the place.
  • cesarb 5y ago
    > Is there a good word for when a solution is bad (in a 'defective by design' sense) but offloads all the "badness" I believe the expression you're looking for is "negative externality".
    • tpoacher 5y ago
      That's a good one, but I'm not sure if it captures the full extent of the idea; in this case, the negative externality is a 'feature' for the transacting party, whereas in general the phrase 'negative externality' simply implies some negative external consequence of the transaction was not duly considered during the transaction (at least as I understand it; am I wrong?). What I have in mind is things like, e.g. youtube amping their ad ratio by 100% when they started offering paid subscriptions. Or Apple intentionally not fixing features that cripple using windows on their new Intel processor. Or IOS shaming android users in their messaging app instead of providing appropriate support. Or MS Word detecting files written in libreoffice as 'corrupt' and offering to fix them. Or matlab introducing syntactical changes that break octave. Or Android making you go through hoops to use software outside of the play store. etc. In other words, if you're a company engaging in such a tactic, it's probably not that you haven't necessarily considered how a 'feature' might affect users of competing products; it's probably that you have considered it, and it's just that extra bit of friction to make them feel your own product is more streamlined and superior (for all the wrong reasons).
• derekp7 5y ago
  I was wondering if there is a file format that can be used as a defense against bulk scanning, but isn't necessarily an encrypted file where you would need a key to decode it. What I was thinking is encrypt the file, but store the key in the file in such a way that it requires an expensive computational operation to decode the key. When reading a single file it may take an extra couple seconds to open it, which could be ok for an end user, but it would make mass scanning impractical. One way of doing this I can think of is starting off with a random string that is recorded in the file header, then running it through bcrypt with a suitable cost factor, in order to derive the actual encryption key for the rest of the file.
  • keonix 5y ago
    Make it so decoding feasible only using some consumer hardware not usually found in servers, but omnipresent on consumer devices. GPU for example
• DeathMetal3000 5y ago
  I won’t use a drive service that is not e2ee. My files are my own business. There are multiple alternatives out there like sync.com (no, I’m not affiliated with them). Disclaimer: I also don’t store copyrighted material.
  • 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    Unless you are very careful not to, you probably do store copyrighted material, and there's a nontrivial chance that some of it is technically infringing. Copyright is much broader than most people realize, and the continued existence of the information economy largely relies on big copyright holders being reasonable and choosing their battles.
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
• kl4m 5y ago
  So what's the actual impact? You can't set sharing on your .DS_Store file as "Anyone on the Internet with the link"?
• _h9mb 5y ago
  Have zero trust. Use E2E encryption.
• tpl 5y ago
  People on the drive team should feel great shame for this. Catching a Google ban can be very very damaging to someone's life. Scans of files like this don't need to happen.
  • josteink 5y ago
    This is the #1 reason I would never, ever use a Google SSO for any non-Google property, service or account.
• sigzero 5y ago
  The title makes it sound like it is the macOS users fault and this is totally Googles fault.
• windex 5y ago
  Google is causing a huge number of headaches of late. The gsuite withdrawal, the forced retiring of perfectly usable apps, the lack of any customer redressal if you get caught in cross fire, the banning of political youtube channels in certain countries, ... I am actively moving email and data on to my own servers before even more things go down catastrophically.
  • Gareth321 5y ago
    I agree. I'm in the process of moving all my services to my own domain so if the worst happens I don't lose access to my primary email address. Anything I upload to GDrive is backup only. I would love if Rumble were to take off because YouTube's censorship over the last couple of years is becoming concerning.
  • kilroy123 5y ago
    I started the slow process of de-googling my life a few years ago. Google is so bad these days, it's not that hard to replace all the google things. Except one – YouTube. Gmail -> Fastmail Browser -> Firefox / Safari Phone -> iPhone Google -> DDG Google Calendar -> Fastmail calendar Google maps -> Apple Maps The list goes on and on.
    • anticensor 5y ago
      > Google maps -> Apple Maps No, Google maps -> Wikimapia/OSM.
• Saris 5y ago
  The scanning files is one thing, but the lack of this bug being resolved in a matter of hours is the real problem. This should not be an ongoing issue days later.
• Ansil849 5y ago
  Has Google publicly explained why they previously flagged files that has just the number '1' in them for copyright infringement [1]? I know they certainly didn't apologize for doing this, but did they at least explain it? At least internally? Did other Googlers ever hear an explanation? This complete lack of accountability, of acting with total impunity is what really rankles me about big tech. [1] https://twitter.com/emilyldolson/status/1485434187968614411 https://twitter.com/emilyldolson/status/1485434187968614411
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Haha, the fact that Drive engineers couldn’t put out a fix quickly does kind of imply something about the product/engineering design cycle. Google does have the reputation in the Bay of being a retirement home for engineers who don’t care that much about being good engineers. Looks like that’s well deserved.
• sloan 5y ago
  Oh my gosh, google, get your paws off of our files! You don’t get to read them, you see?!
• FpUser 5y ago
  Video file produced by us has been marked as copyright violation by the company I use to host large files (no we were not filming copyrighted subjects / objects). Repeated requests to restore access to file so our customers could download it ended up with customer support repeating the same thing ad nauseum. I have better things to do than waste my energy on this and since it was just a single file I just hosted it in a different place.
• can16358p 5y ago
  Copyright protections are really getting out of hand, and they are ridiculous: Nothing to do with this example but today I decided to watch a documentary on my iPhone on Netflix app, which I rarely use on mobile. I liked a scene, took a screenshot to send to someone who might be genuinely interested in watching the documentary (which would even mean potential new customers for Netflix). The screenshot was blank. Then googled it to find it's on DRM grounds. It takes one person to pirate and distribute a movie online to anywhere on Earth, yet these attempts block normal users from perfectly fair use. Anyone who is going to pirate things will find a way anyway. Just like the Google example: the whole piracy detection system harms all the perfectly legal, fair use users while pirates have tons of other ways of distributing files anyway. I wonder when this will end and copyright holders will understand that they're approaching this the wrong way.
• anothernewdude 5y ago
  Not every copy of a copyrighted file is an infringement. Why is google being insane about this?
• xiphias2 5y ago
  I had ,,backup and sync’’ for Google working OKish for me for accessing my Google Drive files in the past. I’ve got an upgrade called ,,Google Drive’’ which took down backup and sync, and then installed the software. After that it told me that it wants to sync everything on my disk, and there’s not enough space on my Google Drive to do it, and I can’t use backup and sync anymore. I could pay for more storage for Google, but I don’t want it to have all my data with all the problems that I see here, and I honestly don’t know what to do now to sync with my mobile, as Google Drive was great for me in the past. I see some people suggesting E2E solutions, but I’m not sure how great is the mobile experience for those, and how well they integrate with Google docs, which I love to use.