4 ms·
How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff
- pkill17 13y agoAs long as the files aren't being removed and marked inaccessible by the owner, I see no malicious intent by Dropbox here. I'm sure they were pressured by the MPAA and other similar organizations to actively remove/refuse to host these files, and Dropbox implemented this instead.
- justin66 13y agoDropbox certainly has a very dedicated advocate in Techcrunch. I wonder why.
- ayberkt 13y agoExactly. Quoting Dropbox's terms of service: > We need your permission to do things like hosting Your Stuff, backing it up, and sharing it when you ask us to. Our Services also provide you with features like photo thumbnails, document previews, email organization, easy sorting, editing, sharing and searching. These and other features may require our systems to access, store and scan Your Stuff. You give us permission to do those things, and this permission extends to trusted third parties we work with. However congenial this sounds, they reserve the right to look at your stuff —— worth noting.
- dwightgunning 13y agoI thought the same. It reads like a well crafted press release. It's factually accurate and fair game, sure, yet it doesn't sit quite right with me.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> Dropbox checks the hash of a shared file against a banned list, and blocks the share if there’s a match. Encoding an mp3 is not a deterministic process. So if multiple people start with the same .wav file ripped from a CD (which itself may introduce errors) and then downcode it, they will end up with files which sound the same but are slightly different (and therefore hash differently). So, it should be straightforward to test whether Dropbox does anything more sophisticated than what's described in the article.
- RaphiePS 13y agoThat brings up an interesting question. At what point does a modified file no longer fall under copyright? If I had a copyrighted ebook and changed a single "o" to "0" I bet I could still be busted for distributing it (although it appears Dropbox would no longer automatically catch me). But what if I changed every single "o" to a "0"? Re-arranged words? Chapters? Upcased every lowercase letter? My guess is that's it's based around "intent" which is hard to quantify, but it's still interesting to ponder.
- cheese1756 13y agoIt would fall under the same rules as fair use. If the modified file is close enough to the original that it could deprive the creator of a sale, then it is certainly infringement. If you made it so different that it would not deprive the creator of a sale (for example, if you re-arranged every single word so that the words in the book were in an entirely random order), that would most likely be fair use.
- Retric 13y agoIt's not quite that simple, something can be a derivative work even if none of the original content remains and it's purpose changes dramatically. Generally speaking fan-fiction infringes copy-write when someone trys to make money off of it. However, the same work may be free and clear if you don't try and make money from it. Teachers can generally copy something to use in class as an example. However, they may not copy the same content every year after that. Same action, but slightly different context.
- patdennis 13y agoIt's an interesting philosophical question, but intent is something that judges are much better at deciding than computer programs. And laws are generally written to be executed by judges (or, by extension, the threat of litigation). Fun to think about, though. Especially if you start thinking about writing alternate endings, etc.
- qwerta 13y ago
- akerl_ 13y agoThis whole story brings increasing clarity on the difference between "we don't look at your files" and "we can't look at your files", as outlined by Colin Percival: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... Obviously, the sharing and interoperability of Dropbox are key features, but for lots of use cases I'd much prefer technical barriers to policy barriers. The article claims that technical barriers exist at Dropbox as well, but considering they hold all the encryption keys, and I have to trust they're even encrypting in the first place, any "technical barriers" they erect are really no more assurance than policy.
- dpweb 13y agoIf you don't control them, they're not yours.
- lalos 13y agoThey use the same logic to save time when uploading a file that has already been uploaded by another user. Check hash of large file, see if it is already on the server and then just link it to your account.
- unlimited_power 13y agoI believe they stopped doing multi-user deduplication a while ago.
- faddotio 13y agoThey are _scanning_ your content!! Mobilize the "scropboxed!" campaign!
- qwerta 13y agoYet another reason not to use cloud services. For start dropbox is infrastructure provider and they have no right to snoop inside your files. If they start blocking stuff at their own will they are judge and executor. Secondly there is lot of potential for abuse. Hacker could sneak hash collision into their database and essentially censor-ship any document he wants. And finally I do not understand why there has to be protection from working with copyrighted stuff. Most of work I created is copyrighted, nearly every open-source product have copyright. Even if there would be a movie there, it does not strictly mean it is illegal. Most people have right to create backups of their DVDs. Many jurisdictions allow to create copy for personal use and so on.
- jedberg 13y agoYou clearly didn't read the article. It only applies to sharing files, not storing them. All of your arguments do not apply to shared files.
- qwerta 13y agoIt does apply, there is no evidence that receiver does not have a valid license. It could be even the same person using two accounts. By this logic we should shutdown Github and SourceForge, until we "clear up some legal stuff".
- psc 13y agoI agree with you that there are cases in which Dropbox might pick up false positives. I think the DMCA should be updated with harsher penalties for improper takedown requests ("copyfraud"). Still, the policy Dropbox has seems pretty reasonable. And you can always choose to encrypt your files locally or even not use Dropbox. After all, it's a company competing in a relatively free market. But I think for most people Dropbox is a pretty good choice and this takedown policy shouldn't be a reason for them to stop using it.
- qwerta 13y agoI agree their policy is reasonable for filesharing service.. But it makes dropbox useless for me as backup storage or hosting provider. I would not trust filesystem or provider which randomly deletes/blocks my data.
- NotOscarWilde 13y agoAlmost all the recent news and tweets sidestep around the main question, which should be answered in a FAQ somewhere: If I have copyrighted data on my Dropbox folder, and the system detects it, what happens? If I sync the copyrighted data with several of my computers, does that count as sharing? Yes, I know what hashing is and yes, it seems the original reporter of the DMCA may have shared the file link through email or a website. Still, I need assurance that my data (including the copyrighted ones) will be backed up at Dropbox and available for my use at my leisure, indefinitely -- provided I don't "share" them in any public way. Side note: all of my data on Dropbox is encrypted by a separate system, so it's unlikely that I'll be affected, but I still am interested in the issue.
- viseztrance 13y agoI can't help of thinking that Google's and Microsoft's cloud offerings have a more honest EULA.
- cottonseed 13y agoYes, it is sketchy. The architecture of Dropbox is sketchy. The only acceptable solution is end-to-end encryption with an open protocol. I've moved from Dropbox to btsync and started contributing to the ClearSkies project.
- ds9 13y agoMaybe I'm being daft here, but why don't would-be file-sharers just encrypt files and send their friends passwords along with the links? Neither the provider nor the copyright holders would be able to tell who was sharing what, unless they monitored IM, email etc.. Of course it does seem that anyone can abuse the DMCA with impunity, so strictly speaking this wouldn't stop the "notice and takedown" actions. It would however prevent the automated detection and might increase cost and difficulty for copyright complainers.
- elpool2 13y agoYeah, anyone can easily modify a file so it doesn't match the blacklisted hash and share it with their friends. Once you start sharing it with millions of people across the internet though, the copyright holder is likely to find out about and issue another DMCA takedown. So this is a system that doesn't prevent small scale sharing, but might be somewhat successful at preventing large scale infringement.
- orthecreedence 13y agoHere's my rebuttal: http://turtlapp.tumblr.com/post/81222024691/how-turtl-has-no-idea-when-youre-sharing-copyrighted http://turtlapp.tumblr.com/post/81222024691/how-turtl-has-no...
- psc 13y agoJust curious, are you storing the keys? Or at the very least the login info from which you could regenerate the keys? If so, there's no reason a government couldn't ask for you to hand the info over, so even though this is a step more complex that Dropbox, it doesn't add too much security. Now, if users provide their own key and it's never transmitted, that would be secure, but obviously the data would be un-decryptable if the key is lost.
- orthecreedence 13y agoYou're right, storing keys would completely defeat the purpose. We don't do it. Master keys are generated from a user's login information, which we have no knowledge of. Right now if you forget your login/password your account is lost unrecoverably. We have a feature slated that would let you download a file version of your account key, meaning if you lost your username or password, you could log in with the special key file and reset your info. Obviously, you'd have to keep the file encrypted/safe, but that's the user's responsibility ultimately.
- 27182818284 13y agoI was under the impression they knew, but didn't care. In the past I had uploaded GB-sized HDTV stuff and had it instantly uploaded and available to a friend. I figured they just hashed it, realized someone else already put it up, and added that file to my account or otherwise linked it into my account.
- dantiberian 13y agoI've seen a lot of outrage about this on Twitter, what annoys me most is that these people who are outraged for the most part consider piracy to be acceptable. Then when a company tries to enforce copyright law and protect the rights of the content owners they go on a tirade that their personal privacy is being breached. I know that the rights holders haven't been blameless in their history but piracy is still wrong and getting upset about people trying to stop it is wrong. EDIT: I also think that Dropbox's method of detecting copyrighted files is a perfectly reasonable way of doing it. By now we all (should) know the rights we give up for the convenience we get when using consumer cloud services. I think Dropbox are well within their legal and moral rights to do this.
- qwerta 13y agoWould you please zip content of your hard-drive and uploaded it on dropbox? Also give me password from your gmail. I want to check if there is no illegal copy of my work in there.
- Houshalter 13y agoNo one is reading people's hard drives or gmail. They are comparing shared files, on their servers, against a hash of commonly pirated files. You are exhibiting the behavior parent comment was complaining about.
- qwerta 13y agoWho says I would be reading it? I will just compare all that content with my hash checker, and delete all illegal stuff. Do not worry I use ultra strong 8 bit hash :-) It is user who has to deal with blocking, false positives and other negative externalities of this. Copyright holders are just passing on their costs to entire society.
- Houshalter 13y agoWhat costs? That you can't share pirated movies over dropbox? Big deal. Funny speaking about externalities on copyright. The entire purpose is to get rid of externalities.
- siliconc0w 13y agoEnter service to add random metadata to your files to trivially thwart protection scheme.
- mrottenkolber 13y agoImagine to rely on a storage service that decides wether you may have a certain file. Not even once.
- betadreamer 13y agoWorkaround: Just edit the file's time edited by "saving as" and it will change the hash.