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Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project
Meskarune writes "Dropbox is trying to kill the Dropship project, a useful program that allows users to import files into their accounts using hashes and bypassing the need to make files public. Dropbox sent out fake DMCA requests to all parties involved, and is banning and censoring the program."
Okay, according to the update at the bottom of the link (I know, I RTFA, weird, eh?),
Update: I want clear up a few things. As far as I’m aware all of the Dropship repositories and archives that were taken down was done so voluntarily. Dropbox never made threats, legal or otherwise. It appears the DMCA notice was automatically sent to me when the file was banned from public sharing. There was no real DMCA takedown issued. It was an edge case bug in their file removal system.
Apparently, Dropbox is asking nicely, but when they flagged the file it triggered an accidental DMCA notice, for which they seem to be apologizing.
Well, intentionality would seem to be missing. As I quoted in a comment below, the update at the bottom of the article now reads as follows:
Update: I want clear up a few things. As far as I’m aware all of the Dropship repositories and archives that were taken down was done so voluntarily. Dropbox never made threats, legal or otherwise. It appears the DMCA notice was automatically sent to me when the file was banned from public sharing. There was no real DMCA takedown issued. It was an edge case bug in their file removal system.
Sending a fake DMCA takedown is illegal, yes, but an e-mail that says "we deleted your file due to DMCA takedown notice we received" isn't a DMCA takedown notice. And apparently that e-mail just went out automatically any time they banned a file from someone's account. Apparently it never occurred to whoever designed their system that a file might be removed for anything other than copyright violation... or maybe the admin just didn't select the correct reason when he banned it.
I don't want the admins at Dropbox going through my files.
Don't put them on Dropbox's servers.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
It was not a DMCA "request". It was a notification that they were removing the file in order to comply with DMCA Section 512 C-1-c, which indicates "No liability if ... upon obtaining knowledge or awareness, OSP expeditiously removes Work"
In other words, they believed the material to infringe on DMCA, and as the file host, they have the right and duty to remove such a file when they believe it to be infringing. See, Dropbox isnt just the potentially "injured party", they are also the service provider-- and that is the capacity they were issuing the notice in. (NB- IANAL)
Use SpiderOak instead - zero prior knowledge encryption so no one but the password holder can see the files. (My relation to SO is as a non-paying customer).
Hi, I'm the person why wrote dropship. This thread is completely bogus, as there were no DMCA requests issued at all. They mailed me and asked me nicely to take the code down from github, which I did.
The DMCA confusion is because they stopped a file from being shared on their own service, which generated a silly mail that a DMCA request had been received from themselves and hence a file was taken down. The blogger confused this with a DMCA request (and corrected it afterwards, but it seems slashdot missed this).
So can we cut it with the flamebait title?