[rrouse]

That's not how DMCA works. That's how some of the bigger copyright organizations (RIAA for example) want it to work.

Besides, what might be copyright infringement to one user might be legitimate usage to another. For example, you might have an illegal copy of an ebook in your folder, but I have the same copy, but mine was paid for. Should I lose access to mine? OReilly books don't have DRM, so it's possible it could happen.

[krautsourced]

The way I understand this, he did not lose access to the file, he just was not able to share it with someone else. Synchronisation within the account should not count as sharing, so I guess what happens is just when a new share link is being created, Dropbox is checking the checksum against a list of blocked ones and prevents you from sharing it. Which, tbh., is fair enough.

[zokier]

> Besides, what might be copyright infringement to one user might be legitimate usage to another

While technically true, I think it is very rare that a file is DMCAd for one user while another is sharing it legitimately. Rare enough that a trip to customer service is warranted.

> For example, you might have an illegal copy of an ebook in your folder, but I have the same copy, but mine was paid for. Should I lose access to mine?

Note that the discussion here revolves around sharing, not having personal access. So while you should (and would with Dropboxs current system) retain your own access to the files, you shouldn't be able to share it, which seems reasonable to me.

[ajross]

Again, that's not the structure of the law. The DMCA requires that a takedown notice specify the specific content. Both the data itself and the usage have to be identified, there's no notion in the law of forbidding access to specific "files" by their data alone.

[zokier]

Yes, Dropbox is working pre-emptively on their own initiative here.

The message is quite cleverly constructed, as it doesn't actually say that there is a DMCA takedown request against the file (because there isn't). It just says that there has been a takedown request sometime, possibly(probably) against some other file/url.

[rrouse]

I realize that, but the parent comment I was replying to was suggesting that the access would be removed from everyone that had the same file, sharing or not. At least that's how I read it. I could be wrong.

However, as stated, the DMCA isn't currently meant to take down the file and keep it down forever. It's meant to kill links one at at time.

Bigger organizations want it to take a file down and keep it down forever, which is what's being kicked around now as being a possible reinterpretation of the DMCA, which is crazy.