It’s not a big surprise that some people use Google Drive, one of the biggest cloud storage service in the world, to store pirated video content. But Google Drive has a way of detecting copyrighted material and blocking users from sharing them.
After getting a tip from a reader who received an error message when they tried to share a Google Drive link of a Hollywood movie, TorrenkFreak delved deeper into the issue. While Google was unable to comment on it, TorrentFreak went through a transcript from a Copyright Office Roundtable in the US last year and found more information on how Drive checks for pirated content.
According to Google’s legal director for copyright Fred Von Lohman, Drive uses matches the hash of copyrighted video content with files that are stored by users to identify pirated content. Google does this on a voluntary basis.
It’s likely that, much like its rival Dropbox, Google notes down the unique hashes of content from takedown requests they receive.
TorrentFreak noted that simply storing pirated content doesn’t seem to raise any alarm bells with Google Drive.
Comments
2 responses to “Google Drive Blocks Users From Sharing Pirated Content With Hash Matching”
So add some metadata to the file or run it through a reencode or something and it’s good to go again?
I’d say so, since the file hash would change. Even easier (although probably not as convenient for anyone downloading it) would be to zip/rar it up before uploading
Yeah it’s very easy to bypass, just throw the file in an encrypted wrapper using your favourite compression/encryption program like 7zip.
Can anybody please tell how the above stuff is done, step by step. How do these pirates upload stuff to youtube and then share it as a google drive link? I have noticed all these google drive links are directly streamable, ie the movie can be played by pasting the link in mx player or vlc instead of opening the link in the browser.