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The author, like many other commenters in the past week or so, is wasting words by saying "this is scary - what if it happened to Dropbox and I lost access to a

The author, like many other commenters in the past week or so, is wasting words by saying "this is scary - what if it happened to Dropbox and I lost access to all those files!" Let's not forget Dropbox is just a replica of local storage. That's the whole model. It's more meaningful to discuss whether or not this could happen to S3. I don't see anyone legitimately worried about that, because it's quite obviously a very legitimate business with tens of thousands of legitimate customers (just like Dropbox). Articles like these portend to get you thinking about the broader implications of a takedown, but in truth they cloud clear thinking with what are essentially scare tactics.

udp 15y ago
> Let's not forget Dropbox is just a replica of local storage. That's the whole model. It's more meaningful to discuss whether or not this could happen to S3. Well, every Dropbox account has a `Public` folder with direct HTTP access.
- hemancuso 15y ago
  Sure. But Dropbox could be taken down and you lose nothing
kijin 15y ago
Dropbox is just a replica of local storage. It gets scary when the operators of the "replica" has the ability to delete files from your local storage as well. Amazon did this with Kindle & 1984, which caused a sizable controversy at the time. Next thing you know, somebody sends a DMCA notice to Dropbox, they delete your remote copy, and your local Dropbox folder is automatically updated to reflect the change. Whoa, no thanks. Dropbox is also an apt comparison because part of the MegaUpload indictment has to do with their deduplication system. Dropbox is also very good at deduplication, which means that a single court order can cause all copies of an offending file to be remotely deleted from everyone's Dropbox folder.
- hemancuso 15y ago
  The primary difference with your 1984 example is in that case the content originated at Amazon. In the Dropbox model you provided it to start. If mozy was taken down do you think that it's possible they would wipe the drives of all users? I don't. Amazon also quite clearly keeps hashes of all keys in S3, which Dropbox rides on. Would you expect the government to be able to issue hash based takedowns to amazon across all buckets?
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Amazon also quite clearly keeps hashes of all keys in S3, which Dropbox rides on. Would you expect the government to be able to issue hash based takedowns to amazon across all buckets? I was under the impression that Dropbox, while having the ability to decrypt your files, encrypts them before they hit S3. If so, a hash-based takedown sent to Amazon would at best be able to take down a single encrypted instance of a piece of data.
    - bigiain 15y ago
      Except that Dropbox dedupe _everything_. So I suspect what happens is that everybodies bittorrented dvd rip of Avatar on dropbox is deduped and stored once on S3, admittedly encrypted, but all with Dropboxes encryption key and all with the same hash pointing at the same single encrypted instance of the file.
      - nknight 15y ago
        I believe Dropbox uses a method analogous to block-level dedupe. That is, files are split up into smallish chunks and then the chunks are what get "deduplicated". A "file" basically consists of a list of pointers to chunks. This makes things extra problematic because completely unrelated files might share chunks. Standard file formats may lead to duplicate headers. Or consider a political science textbook that contains a complete copy of the US Constitution, and a file that contains just the US Constitution. One is perfectly legal to distribute freely, the other may not be, but both might share some common blocks, and a federal judge with a shoot-first mentality might craft an order requiring the deletion of those common blocks.

udp 15y ago

> Let's not forget Dropbox is just a replica of local storage. That's the whole model. It's more meaningful to discuss whether or not this could happen to S3. Well, every Dropbox account has a `Public` folder with direct HTTP access.

hemancuso 15y ago
Sure. But Dropbox could be taken down and you lose nothing

kijin 15y ago

Dropbox is just a replica of local storage. It gets scary when the operators of the "replica" has the ability to delete files from your local storage as well. Amazon did this with Kindle & 1984, which caused a sizable controversy at the time. Next thing you know, somebody sends a DMCA notice to Dropbox, they delete your remote copy, and your local Dropbox folder is automatically updated to reflect the change. Whoa, no thanks. Dropbox is also an apt comparison because part of the MegaUpload indictment has to do with their deduplication system. Dropbox is also very good at deduplication, which means that a single court order can cause all copies of an offending file to be remotely deleted from everyone's Dropbox folder.

hemancuso 15y ago
The primary difference with your 1984 example is in that case the content originated at Amazon. In the Dropbox model you provided it to start. If mozy was taken down do you think that it's possible they would wipe the drives of all users? I don't. Amazon also quite clearly keeps hashes of all keys in S3, which Dropbox rides on. Would you expect the government to be able to issue hash based takedowns to amazon across all buckets?
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Amazon also quite clearly keeps hashes of all keys in S3, which Dropbox rides on. Would you expect the government to be able to issue hash based takedowns to amazon across all buckets? I was under the impression that Dropbox, while having the ability to decrypt your files, encrypts them before they hit S3. If so, a hash-based takedown sent to Amazon would at best be able to take down a single encrypted instance of a piece of data.
  - bigiain 15y ago
    Except that Dropbox dedupe _everything_. So I suspect what happens is that everybodies bittorrented dvd rip of Avatar on dropbox is deduped and stored once on S3, admittedly encrypted, but all with Dropboxes encryption key and all with the same hash pointing at the same single encrypted instance of the file.
    - nknight 15y ago
      I believe Dropbox uses a method analogous to block-level dedupe. That is, files are split up into smallish chunks and then the chunks are what get "deduplicated". A "file" basically consists of a list of pointers to chunks. This makes things extra problematic because completely unrelated files might share chunks. Standard file formats may lead to duplicate headers. Or consider a political science textbook that contains a complete copy of the US Constitution, and a file that contains just the US Constitution. One is perfectly legal to distribute freely, the other may not be, but both might share some common blocks, and a federal judge with a shoot-first mentality might craft an order requiring the deletion of those common blocks.