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>Dropbox has adopted a policy of terminating the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe copyright or whose accounts are subject to multiple infringement alle

>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?
chordalkeyboard 5y ago
> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. it is absurd for copyright to prevent a legitimate user from storing media on a cloud filesystem.
djsweet 5y ago
> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. As the article illustrates, it’s not actually that simple. Cloud services that terminate accounts (and probably instantly delete everything, to comply with GDPR, CCPA, etc.) for perceived copyright infringements will always and necessarily suffer from a false positive rate. We’ll likely never truly learn what this false positive rate is, but that it will always exist is reason enough to give pause to the thought that services should “just terminate their account” if they think it’s infringing on intellectual property laws. The only good answer here is an unqualified “Use a local backup”. The terms of use for non-business cloud storage absolve the providers of all responsibility for data loss, even when they have incorrectly taken punitive action against you.
rectang 5y ago
> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. This is more difficult than you are making it sound. Considering the way most people use their computers, the only way to avoid copyright infringement entirely in your use of cloud storage is not to use cloud storage the way you use your local drive but instead to assess every last file that you upload as if you were publishing it on a public website. Sure, you can avoid uploading pirated movies (perhaps by never downloading any of them in the first place). But in fact, original works are typically copyrighted by default as soon as they are created, even if the copyright is not formally registered — and we depend on a patchwork quilt of implicit and explicit licenses for viewing and use of files on the internet. Have you ever saved a quote from somewhere? That was probably copyrighted; your use is probably legitimate, but a naive algorithm might not think so.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  If you modified the tags a little, wouldn't that keep the song from matching checksum of another file?
  - rectang 5y ago
    Fooling the algorithm is not a robust solution. Infringement-detection algos get better hit rates all the time (fewer false negatives, although often at the price of more false positives) — consider all the work that has gone into detecting musical duplicates even when resampled, pitch/time-shifted, rerecorded, etc. The robust solution is to treat files which are redistributed and therefore trigger copyright provisions completely differently from files which are not redistributed. Furthermore, for the purposes of punitive action, sharing a copyrighted file with a limited whitelist of other users might reasonably be treated as a less of a screwup than making a file accessible to the entire internet. And therefore it should not be frictionless to share a file with the internet.
- fps-hero 5y ago
  Honestly, the situation is far worse and nuanced than that. You can not determine whether content is infringing on copy write because of content alone. Copyright depends on context. Situation 1. You buy a PDF ebook. You have legal rights the person use of this file, but you upload it to your cloud storage and it gets flagged. You cannot determine if the intent of uploading the PDF was to facilitate pirating, or because you have a pirates copy, or because you have the rights to it. Situation 2. You hire a wedding photographer, and they supply you with photos that you do not own the right to distribute because they retain copyright. This is the same as the above situation, but personalised. Would you like your cloud provider to delete any file, including your wedding photo backups, because it with matches a hash in a database? Situation 3. Copyright fair use. Much has been written on the subject, but this is where copyright falls over in a digital age. Fair use is complete indistinguishable from piracy from a flagging files by content perspective.
cesarb 5y ago
> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Everything is copyrighted. The comment you just wrote is automatically copyrighted. "Do not upload copyrighted materials" means you can only upload things made over a century ago (which either were made before copyright existed, or were copyrighted but their copyright expired). Want to upload your vacation photos? Too bad, they were made this year, so they are copyrighted, and will be copyrighted for several decades after you're already dead.
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
  If our comments are copyrighted by us can HN legally refuse to remove them (like they often do)?
  - krallja 5y ago
    No, you have licensed your content to Y Combinator. It’s in the TOS: > By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Spooky23 5y ago
All files are copyrighted. In fact, my .DS_Store files are generated by my computer against my content and belong to me. Some 10x engineer at google write code that flags it, how is that my problem?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cperciva 5y ago
  Not all files are copyrighted. For example, files which are not creative works -- including those which are mechanically created -- are not subject to copyright.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Yup, it's a common misconception that everything is copyrighted. Copyright requires creativity. An empty text file/image is not copyrightable, the pile of #include directives at the top of a C file is not copyrightable, etc. You need to create something that isn't just mechanical, regardless of whether the computer does it or you do it manually. At the point where creative decisions start to influence the process, that's where copyright comes into play.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      > the pile of #include directives at the top of a C file is not copyrightable That used to be the thought, but Google v. Oracle ended with de mininimis defenses struck down, and imports still copyrightable, just Google was afforded a fair use defense to copying.
      - maratc 5y ago
        As far as I remember the SCotUS verdict was "we don't want to say if it's copyrightable or not, but if it were copyritable it would fall under fair use".
gaius_baltar 5y ago
> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Do not store a single "1" in a file, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30060405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30060405

polski-g 5y ago

What if you are authorized to have said copyrighted works?

chordalkeyboard 5y ago

> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. it is absurd for copyright to prevent a legitimate user from storing media on a cloud filesystem.

djsweet 5y ago

> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. As the article illustrates, it’s not actually that simple. Cloud services that terminate accounts (and probably instantly delete everything, to comply with GDPR, CCPA, etc.) for perceived copyright infringements will always and necessarily suffer from a false positive rate. We’ll likely never truly learn what this false positive rate is, but that it will always exist is reason enough to give pause to the thought that services should “just terminate their account” if they think it’s infringing on intellectual property laws. The only good answer here is an unqualified “Use a local backup”. The terms of use for non-business cloud storage absolve the providers of all responsibility for data loss, even when they have incorrectly taken punitive action against you.

rectang 5y ago

> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. This is more difficult than you are making it sound. Considering the way most people use their computers, the only way to avoid copyright infringement entirely in your use of cloud storage is not to use cloud storage the way you use your local drive but instead to assess every last file that you upload as if you were publishing it on a public website. Sure, you can avoid uploading pirated movies (perhaps by never downloading any of them in the first place). But in fact, original works are typically copyrighted by default as soon as they are created, even if the copyright is not formally registered — and we depend on a patchwork quilt of implicit and explicit licenses for viewing and use of files on the internet. Have you ever saved a quote from somewhere? That was probably copyrighted; your use is probably legitimate, but a naive algorithm might not think so.

birdyrooster 5y ago
If you modified the tags a little, wouldn't that keep the song from matching checksum of another file?
- rectang 5y ago
  Fooling the algorithm is not a robust solution. Infringement-detection algos get better hit rates all the time (fewer false negatives, although often at the price of more false positives) — consider all the work that has gone into detecting musical duplicates even when resampled, pitch/time-shifted, rerecorded, etc. The robust solution is to treat files which are redistributed and therefore trigger copyright provisions completely differently from files which are not redistributed. Furthermore, for the purposes of punitive action, sharing a copyrighted file with a limited whitelist of other users might reasonably be treated as a less of a screwup than making a file accessible to the entire internet. And therefore it should not be frictionless to share a file with the internet.
fps-hero 5y ago
Honestly, the situation is far worse and nuanced than that. You can not determine whether content is infringing on copy write because of content alone. Copyright depends on context. Situation 1. You buy a PDF ebook. You have legal rights the person use of this file, but you upload it to your cloud storage and it gets flagged. You cannot determine if the intent of uploading the PDF was to facilitate pirating, or because you have a pirates copy, or because you have the rights to it. Situation 2. You hire a wedding photographer, and they supply you with photos that you do not own the right to distribute because they retain copyright. This is the same as the above situation, but personalised. Would you like your cloud provider to delete any file, including your wedding photo backups, because it with matches a hash in a database? Situation 3. Copyright fair use. Much has been written on the subject, but this is where copyright falls over in a digital age. Fair use is complete indistinguishable from piracy from a flagging files by content perspective.

cesarb 5y ago

> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Everything is copyrighted. The comment you just wrote is automatically copyrighted. "Do not upload copyrighted materials" means you can only upload things made over a century ago (which either were made before copyright existed, or were copyrighted but their copyright expired). Want to upload your vacation photos? Too bad, they were made this year, so they are copyrighted, and will be copyrighted for several decades after you're already dead.

waffle_maniac 5y ago
If our comments are copyrighted by us can HN legally refuse to remove them (like they often do)?
- krallja 5y ago
  No, you have licensed your content to Y Combinator. It’s in the TOS: > By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Spooky23 5y ago

All files are copyrighted. In fact, my .DS_Store files are generated by my computer against my content and belong to me. Some 10x engineer at google write code that flags it, how is that my problem?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cperciva 5y ago
Not all files are copyrighted. For example, files which are not creative works -- including those which are mechanically created -- are not subject to copyright.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Yup, it's a common misconception that everything is copyrighted. Copyright requires creativity. An empty text file/image is not copyrightable, the pile of #include directives at the top of a C file is not copyrightable, etc. You need to create something that isn't just mechanical, regardless of whether the computer does it or you do it manually. At the point where creative decisions start to influence the process, that's where copyright comes into play.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    > the pile of #include directives at the top of a C file is not copyrightable That used to be the thought, but Google v. Oracle ended with de mininimis defenses struck down, and imports still copyrightable, just Google was afforded a fair use defense to copying.
    - maratc 5y ago
      As far as I remember the SCotUS verdict was "we don't want to say if it's copyrightable or not, but if it were copyritable it would fall under fair use".

gaius_baltar 5y ago

> Even simpler: do not upload copyrighted materials to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Do not store a single "1" in a file, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30060405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30060405