How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff Without Actually Looking At Your Stuff | TechCrunch

A fun look at “Hashing”, private data and the DMCA.

Twitter lit up this weekend with a notice of a Dropbox DMCA takedown:

https://twitter.com/darrellwhitelaw/status/450096476060794880

Is DropBox looking at your files? Not really…

From TechCrunch:

The system is neither new, nor sketchy. It’s been in place for years, and it’s about as unsketchy as an anti-copyright infringement system can get. It allows Dropbox to block pre-selected files from being shared from person-to-person (thus keeping Dropbox from getting raided by the Feds), without their anti-infringement system having any idea what most of your files actually are.

How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff Without Actually Looking At Your Stuff | TechCrunch.