[HN Gopher] Google Drive scans files for copyright infringement
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Google Drive scans files for copyright infringement
Author : amrrs
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-07-23 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| talldayo wrote:
| This makes sense, though. I know I'm not the only one who looked
| up "Shrek.mp4" on Google and got a literal sea of pirated movies
| hosted on Google Drive.
| gryn wrote:
| it make sense on public content not on private stuff you're not
| opening to the public. I think most people have a sense of I
| can put what I want on my "Cloud" storage especially if it's
| something you're paying for.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Google is presumably unable to determine that you paid for
| the right to copy this music file. Hence its "may".
| darby_nine wrote:
| That's not all they scan for:
| https://support.google.com/docs/thread/200185949/google-is-n...
| sunaookami wrote:
| lol @ that guy LARPing as a Google employee. Reminds me of the
| Microsoft Answers forum.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Wow, imagine doing that for free.
| math0ne wrote:
| At least it used to be the case they only scan shared files.
| perihelions wrote:
| For convenience: the linked object is a text comment, plus a
| screenshot of text,
|
| - _" so, google has scanned my recently filed scanned files and
| said it's a copyright infringement"_
|
| - _" Bro, tell me your Gemini datasplit?"_
|
| > _" Google"_
|
| > _" Your file may violate Google Drive's Terms of Service"_
|
| > _" "05 - You are always choosing.mp3" contains content that may
| violate Google Drive's Copyright Infringement policy. Some
| features related to this file may have been restricted. "_
|
| > _" Restricted file 05 - You are always choosing.mp3"_ - _" "_
| josefritzishere wrote:
| AI is going to start deleting everything and locking us out of
| Google drive. It's coming.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| The year of the local cloud is just around the corner. My
| concern are books I buy from places like pragprog in pdf
| format. I feel like Google simply doesn't care and would ban on
| first offense.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| This is some Orwelian nonsense.
| mass_and_energy wrote:
| Honestly. Does this mean that if someone takes a picture of
| their willy with Google Photos enabled, it'll censor myself
| from myself? Where does it end?
| harshreality wrote:
| This (the copyright scanning policy) isn't new, is it?
|
| What it's scanning for in this case is material it believes to be
| copyrighted, and restricts features (notably sharing) for content
| that matches.
|
| Given that copyright law exists, and that Google doesn't like
| wasting engineering time on legal stuff unless refusing to do it
| would result in lawsuits, this scanning policy is a fairly low-
| impact solution that has probably been deemed legally necessary
| to avoid media company lawsuits. I don't like it, but the
| alternative is for Google (and Microsoft, and any other cloud
| storage that allows sharing) to mount an expensive legal effort
| to try to overturn decades of digital copyright precedent, which
| is likely to fail.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > What it's scanning for is material it believes to be
| copyrighted,
|
| All "material" created by any human is copyrighted, and has
| been for decades. The question is who owns what rights, which
| Google can't know.
|
| > decades of digital copyright precedent
|
| What precedent?
| djbusby wrote:
| Precedent: If you're hosting it you're guilty.
| edude03 wrote:
| Or more tactfully, if you're hosting it, we'll assume
| you're guilty because we don't want to deal with it, and
| you agreed to a very restrictive ToS that lets us take it
| down.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| The existence of copyright law is to blame. Not Google, who's
| just trying to adhere to law.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > been deemed legally necessary
|
| Ah, the old "deeming things" trick [0].
|
| Almost everything is copyrighted. Like most of us here I've
| given original writing, code or music to people who've shared
| it on Google drive. That material is copyrighted no more or
| less than anything by Disney or Sony.
|
| Google doesn't _just_ "scan for copyright violations", it
| specifically acts out of fear or leverage to be an unpaid
| policeman for special interests, rich and powerful media
| companies.
|
| I haven't said anything new here, but I do think it's important
| that we see arguments built on false standards. Google isn't
| championing the law or anything noble and we would do well to
| be very precise about choosing words to describe what is
| happening.
|
| [0] deem: acting by fiat and art without necessary recourse to
| logic, law, evidence or consistency
| akaike wrote:
| They calculate hashes for files and probably compare them to
| already reported ones
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| time to start changing the hash by adding a few bytes to your
| movies before uploading to Google Drive head -c
| 20 /dev/urandom >> movie.mp4
|
| won't affect playback, will affect Google finding your pirated
| films.
| nick238 wrote:
| Seems like this would corrupt the file. There are plenty of
| metadata fields you could just put some crap in (or just
| transpose letters in an existing string so you don't need to
| change any length markers.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| i've never had any problems with playback using the major vid
| players on Linux with files i may or may not have used this
| trick on.
| nomel wrote:
| I would really hope they would ignore the metadata, when
| computing the hash, for this very reason. Properly tagging
| films you download isn't exactly rare.
| toast0 wrote:
| Most media files are likely to tolerate random garbage tacked
| on to the end of the file. ID3v1 tags are essential proof of
| that; 128 bytes of garbage at the end that didn't cause any
| trouble with playback.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That depends on the container format, and with some container
| formats on the parser. Any container format designed to be
| streamable would by definition survive corruption at the end.
| Provided the player doesn't get too upset if any metadata at
| the end is corrupted, but e.g. VLC handles such things quite
| well
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| They may be doing locality sensitive hashing in which case this
| wouldn't matter.
| rakoo wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Google engineers are smart enough to detect
| quick workarounds that fit in a comment on Hacker News.
|
| They already have to implement such a thing for finding
| copyrighted material in Youtube videos, so they _know_ how to
| deal with mixed signals.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Or if they didn't think about this, they know do after
| reading this thread :)
| Hizonner wrote:
| Encrypt the file and don't upload the key.
| glitchc wrote:
| They block it outright, even when the purpose is innocent
| (sensitive documents). Tried with rar and 7-zip.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Wow, really? You can't store an encrypted file on Google
| Drive? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am,
| mildly.
|
| ... so it has no utility at all, since you definitely
| shouldn't be storing any _unencrypted_ files on it.
| Willish42 wrote:
| anecdotal / N=1 here, but I've uploaded standard 7z
| encrypted backups to personal Drive without issue
| vander_elst wrote:
| On the other hand if that file is shared publicly, Google might
| be liable under some jurisdictions IIUC.
|
| I d assume that they check some hashes of the file against a
| database to check for copyright infringement. If only specific
| actions are not permitted on the file e.g. sharing it widely,
| this could seem reasonable?
|
| Curious to learn more, what could be other actions the service
| provider could take to avoid getting a lawsuit?
| Hizonner wrote:
| People not stupid enough to use Google's cloud services not
| affected.
| mass_and_energy wrote:
| This is unrelated to GCP. If you're going to be an abrasive
| tool then you should at the very least have some shred of an
| idea of what you're talking about, laddie
| Hizonner wrote:
| Google Drive is a cloud service. Words have meanings outside
| of Google's brand names, Laddie.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Put movies in a password protected zip.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| At that point, just use Backblaze. It's reasonable in cost for
| "unlimited" and creates an encrypted prior to transit.
| delduca wrote:
| For this reason and others (I was a Google One family
| subscriber), I completely de-Googled myself.
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