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A comment on Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as terrorist activity.

Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by croes on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:04PM (#28621796)
How many times does that have to happen before people realize there is no cloud, only other people's computers. The data that is stored there is no longer yours, just as thanks to Apple and Co. your hardware no longer really belongs to you, but you only enjoy a temporary right of use. It will be interesting to see when hardly anything remains of an entire generation because everything comes from the cloud: Photos, videos, games, film, music. No more treasure troves in the attic, no more of grandma's record collection or dad's DVD collection or uncle's old console games. Everything just rented and when removed from the catalog, they are gone forever. Only our plastic waste remains.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by gorwell on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:22PM (#28622007)
This is why I've stopped buying books on kindle. It gives Amazon the power to censor your book library, and it would not surprise me at all if we see them exercise that power soon.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by nitrogen on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:36PM (#28622183)
They already have, when they remotely deleted copies of 1984, IIRC whose copyright had expired in one country, but not in another.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by userbinator on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:42PM (#28623471)
I remember reading about that when it happened. Of all the books to do it to, it had to be that one.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jacquesm on Thursday September 23, 2021 @02:39AM (#28625861)
They really couldn't have picked a better book to do that with.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by torstenvl on Thursday September 23, 2021 @11:17AM (#28630408)
Fahrenheit 451?

Especially given the name of the device...

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jacquesm on Thursday September 23, 2021 @01:22PM (#28632226)
Ah yes, good one. That would have been an even better choice.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by slenk on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:42PM (#28623470)
I assume OP was implying censorship because of political views
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jackson1442 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:48PM (#28622344)
I personally find a rip of the book online to drop onto my reMarkable then purchase it through some ebook marketplace. Now I have a DRM-free copy and the author gets their cut.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Underphil on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:44PM (#28622995)
That's certainly noble, but it doesn't send the message that you're unhappy with DRM. You're ultimately engaging in piracy and at the same time not voting with your wallet.

I don't see any alternative, but just wanted to make that point.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by edoceo on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:47PM (#28623025)
Steal the content and Venmo the creator?
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by cube00 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @08:47PM (#28623971)
The publishers won't be too happy with creators who are seen to be accepting money bypassing their cut.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by edoceo on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @09:07PM (#28624100)
But the content creator will be happy with me. And the publishers can get fuct. As nature intended.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by rhizome on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @08:06PM (#28623683)
The people imposing DRM don't care whether anybody is unhappy about it. To them, the only unhappy people are frustrated thieves.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jackson1442 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @08:28PM (#28623839)
Eh, not really trying to make a point personally. Just want to read books on my reMarkable or whatever I want, really.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Underphil on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @09:37PM (#28624297)
Yeah, it wasn't a dig. Just highlighting how these companies have you over a barrel.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Aeolun on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:08PM (#28623209)
Too many authors are exclusively on Amazon. Where am I supposed to buy their book :(
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by stilley2 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:21PM (#28623310)
https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools works pretty well once setup. Allegedly...
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by barbazoo on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:12PM (#28622668)
Whenever I buy an ebook I go through the painful process of downloading it to my laptop either directly from the store (e.g. Kobo) or via Calibre [0] if I bought it from Amazon which I try to avoid, removing DRM via some tool I found somewhere and uploading it to the ebook again via Calibre. It's annoying an probably illegal but no one can take my ebooks away that way.

[0] https://calibre-ebook.com/

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by kubanczyk on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:33PM (#28622878)
Me too. Just to be sure I've also put my Kindle on Airplane mode as soon as I got it. It has been working like this for years.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Aeolun on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:10PM (#28623225)
Wait, you can convert Amazon’s format to something DRM free?
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by barbazoo on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:31PM (#28623383)
You can remove the DRM, no need to do any OCR shenanigans. But yes, it's of course illegal but I've paid for the book so I don't really care.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by boomboomsubban on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:26PM (#28623346)
It's text, even the best DRM would be foiled by OCR. It's definitely illegal in the US though.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Aeolun on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @09:56PM (#28624426)
True, but flipping through the book to copy all pages is too much effort to copy the file to my remarkable instead.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by boomboomsubban on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @10:28PM (#28624613)
I'm pretty sure the kindle DRM is broken easier than that, DeDRM came up on my quick search, but flipping through the book to copy all the pages is an easily scriptable task.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by j1dopeman on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:39PM (#28622218)
They have pulled books before I believe. However there are many good drm free ebooks. I still use a Kindle because I like the device but I keep it in airplane mode nearly all the time and copies of drm free books on my pc. Edit: I manage my library with calibre and the device plugged in. You never have to take it off airplane and it gets better battery life.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by CydeWeys on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:43PM (#28622278)
Amazon banned me (for something completely unrelated to Kindle books), and I lost access to everything on Kindle as a result. It's a good thing I hadn't spent much money there, and obviously I'm not buying any ebooks going forward.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jwalton on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:57PM (#28622475)
Buy ebooks from Baen directly, or from Tor on your service of choice. These publishers release books DRM free, so you actually own the file. Any other ebooks you “buy”, you’re renting.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by uncoder0 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:12PM (#28622672)
Alternatively if it's not available DRM free I'll just buy it and support the author from wherever and then pirate a DRM free copy and archive it.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by hughrr on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:58PM (#28622486)
I actually really don’t care about kindle because it’s only useful for certain formats I tend not to keep anyway and is a lot more convenient and cheaper than hunting down physical copies of stuff.

I originally had over 200 books, all read, gathering dust so I gave them away. They took up space and attention and were a pain in the ass when I had to move house.

As for the convenience, I do a lot of hiking and it’s not much fun dragging two books from the expanse series with you versus a kindle in a ziplock bag.

I have physical copies and PDFs for technical books and reference material though. And a lot of text files.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by JohnHaugeland on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @09:49PM (#28624377)
I discovered the other day that 80% of the music I've ever bought from them is just gone now
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by hi5eyes on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:05PM (#28622586)
you will own nothing and be happy

tell yourselves a decade ago: everything is streamed, if something doesn't meet the most up-to-date social guidelines created by a mob of microbloggers it's removed from a storefront or completely kicked off most of the internet, oh and privacy? too radical!

clown world

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by 13415 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:22PM (#28622006)
We have to be able to rely on some cloud services, though, if we want georedundant backup of local files. I agree that relying on Google drive without additional backups is a bad idea, and it's generally a bad idea to store unencrypted files on cloud servers (or rely on their encryption), but the problem is more general.

It should be prohibited by law for cloud service providers to snoop around in other people's data without a warrant, no matter whether that snooping is automated or done by humans.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by dgudkov on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:31PM (#28623380)
This is what baffles me in the cloud story: you think you get a servant, but you get a master.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by MeinBlutIstBlau on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:52PM (#28623552)
I told someone I had catalogued over 20k songs and they thought that was insane. When I explain them my backup system they think I spend a fortune on it. I don't even have an NAS. Just a simple mirroring system with like 6 separate hard drives.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by scohesc on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:13PM (#28621899)
That's honestly really scary and I never thought of that.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by N00bN00b on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:19PM (#28621971)
There is a counter movement, for example, these guys place a significant role (and as far as I know primarily with a practical focus): https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by bserge on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:24PM (#28622032)
They are the worst pirates I've ever heard of.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by theodric on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:28PM (#28622078)
If everything I've paid for and supposedly own some right to access can be taken away from me by a wayward algorithm at a moment's notice with zero recourse, you bet your ass I'm going to "pirate" content, even if I still buy it first!
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by bserge on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:35PM (#28622176)
Ah, but you have heard of them!

(gotta do everything myself, but I can go to sleep now :D)

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by TeMPOraL on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:58PM (#28623117)
This is HN; best jokes are like apples - hard, but not too hard, and in moderation.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by LivelyTortoise on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:45PM (#28622296)
If it makes you feel better, I immediately spoke this line in my head after reading your post :-)
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jjulius on Thursday September 23, 2021 @11:18AM (#28630414)
Well, shit, I apologize for calling your comment a "terribly inaccurate, sweeping generalization" (I can't edit my response, the option isn't there).

Well done here, I'm the asshole. :)

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by kbenson on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @06:47PM (#28623020)
Post in the top 5 of the subreddit currently: "Is there a good self hosted, cross platform OneNote / SimpleNote like app out there ?"

Yep, scum of the earth. /s

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jjulius on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:34PM (#28622159)
What a terribly inaccurate, sweeping generalization.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by BHSPitMonkey on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @11:53PM (#28625038)
(Pretty sure it was just a joke reference to 'Pirates of the Caribbean'.)
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by jjulius on Thursday September 23, 2021 @11:16AM (#28630396)
This isn't going to be the best response of mine by HN standards, but:

Well, fuck me.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by N00bN00b on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:01PM (#28623152)
>They are the worst pirates I've ever heard of.

They are. They don't even know how to pirate.

The best pirates would never use free open source solutions. They'd just take whatever corporate solution that's the flavor of the day and then use that with anxiety inducing cracks that will give your antivirus a heart attack.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Spooky23 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:29PM (#28622091)
I worked as an intern for an archive digitizing old letters among other things. Many aspects of key historical figures are available — letters, etc. You know what they were thinking because you can read some of their personal thoughts.

In this day and age, if you’re lucky emails exist, but due to discovery, etc many entities just purge everything. Bad news, this era will be a black hole for future generations to understand. Good news is that the idiocy of this era will be toned down.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by Y_Y on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:45PM (#28622301)
Maybe Google's history department will make some money from their monopoly on the primary sources.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by x0 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:46PM (#28622327)
OTOH, if that sort of data is not purged, it could be far richer than any letter. Many people pretty much use their phones/devices as extensions of their minds, and phones are a very personal, private place.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by bserge on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:26PM (#28622052)
Never heard of Amazon and Apple removing files from users' accounts? It was kinda big news. For a day.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by spicybright on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:33PM (#28622148)
It's not that, it's the risk of permanently losing culturally significant media because of it.

Not everyone is a techie that can switch from google's friendly UI, and transfer everything to another safer service that operates differently.

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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by amelius on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:45PM (#28622313)
Apple is still ok, just don't use iCloud.
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Re:Google Drive of historical footage locked and flagged as ... by sneak on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:35PM (#28623423)
They still have censorship power over the App Store. You can't even have reader apps that show titties, as Tumblr learned, or show UGC expressing wrongthink, as Gab and Parler learned, or offer VPNs in China, or protest apps in Hong Kong.

The topic of this discussion is cloud-based censorship.

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