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> 'looking' here means having a person look at the file or possibly having a system run analysis* of the file. Neither happens. I know that, and you know that,
by mbrutsch 13y ago
> 'looking' here means having a person look at the file or possibly having a system run analysis* of the file. Neither happens.
I know that, and you know that, but I showed this article to my wife (who is a casual computer user), and while she understood the difference when explained, she said that as a non-techie, she interpreted the title differently. If you hash my data, and take action based on that hash, then you have looked at the data, however cursory or algorithmic it may have been.
FWIW, I had this same discussion on reddit, where it devolved instantly into name-calling. HN is much more civil. Thanks for that.
- Dylan16807 13y agoDid she realize that this was a file already uploaded to Dropbox? That's a very important distinction in my mind. Dropbox has already calculated hashes and fed the data to the servers at that point. They don't don't do any 'looking' beyond the data-shoveling process. It's the DMCA sharing check that avoids 'looking' even in the most pedantic sense, not the overall use of Dropbox.