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Google Drive puts a copyright warning on files with .DS_Store metadata created by macOS

According to Bleeping Computer, users of Apple computers have begun receiving copyright warnings from Google Drive for files with .DS_Store metadata created by macOS.

As it turned out, Google Drive gives such warnings to many users for .DS_Store files of different sizes in different versions of macOS (1, 2). They all simply uploaded folders to Google Drive that contained a system file with .DS_Store metadata.

In a warning, Google wrote that the content of this file violates Google Drive's copyright policy, so some features associated with this file may be restricted. Moreover, it is impossible to appeal this warning and file restrictions - the system writes in a notification to users that an appeal is not available for this restriction.

.DS_Store files are automatically generated in folders by the Finder app on macOS. They contain custom attributes and metadata. For normal macOS users, they are hidden and are in fact analogous to the desktop.ini and thumbs.db that Windows users see from time. However, when uploading archives and folders from macOS to a third-party cloud service such as Google Drive or Dropbox, .DS_Store files are also uploaded and displayed there already open.

Bleeping Computer was never able to get an explanation from Google on this situation. Also, it is not always possible to play it, it all depends on the specific folder and the set of files the user has, on the basis of which the .DS_Store files were created.

Experts from Bleeping Computer believe that Google's security systems rely on checksums to track copyrighted content, and there may be a situation with collisions due to the same hashes between copyrighted files and simple files of users who happen to have the same hash.

At the end of January 2022, the Google Drive service issued a warning for copyright infringement in a text file, where there was one line and one number 1. The service also issued similar warnings for files containing the numbers 173, 174, 186, 266, 285, 302 , 336, 451, 500, and 833 and imposed usage restrictions on those files. Then a Google representative wrote in response to complaints that the Google Drive team is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. He did not specify exactly when the cloud service will stop blocking text files with numbers and why this happens.

In December 2021, Google Drive announced that it would restrict access to user files that violate company policy and copyright. If scanning after uploading to the cloud confirms the presence of prohibited, illegal or malicious content in the file, then the user will not be able to share the file with others, the file itself will no longer be publicly available, even for users who have a link to it. Google checks all users' text, image and video files uploaded to Google Drive with automatic analyzers.

In 2018, Google published a white paper explaining how the company is fighting piracy. But it does not explain exactly how and by what criteria Google algorithms process user files stored on Google Drive.

Google Drive puts a copyright warning on files with .DS_Store metadata created by macOS