A funny thing happened on Google Drive overnight. Seemingly innocuous files started being flagged as violating the search behemoth’s terms of service over copyright infringement.
Dr Emily Dolson, assistant professor at Michigan State University, was one of those affected after she attempted to upload a file containing a single digit, “1”.
Uh, @googledrive, are you doing okay? This file literally contains a single line with the number “1”. pic.twitter.com/4tLhOzQY1T
— Dr. Emily Dolson (@emilyldolson) January 24, 2022
There wasn’t a lot of detail in the warning, only that Googles Drive’s Copyright Infringement policy had been violated and that no review could be requested for the restriction, both of which are a bit worrying for people concerned about the dead hand of AI being used as arbiter in such matters.
What had upset Google? The digit or the
output04.txtfilename? Certainly the number “1” does turn up in all manner of copyrighted works, although we don’t think anyone’s tried to trademark the character. Most recently, Snap made a spectacle of itself by trying to trademark the word “Spectacles”.Could Google be trying to up the ante, and is it aware that Microsoft has its own cloud storage named OneDrive? Redmond already had to ditch SkyDrive after a well-known broadcaster took exception to it. We can’t imagine Nadella and co liking the sound of “Number Two Drive” for a variety of reasons.
More likely, the issue was more of a screw-up than conspiracy with both Google staffers and the Google Drive social media mouthpiece responding to confirm that the team was aware of the issue and working on it.
Additional users reported problems with other numbers, including “0”, while wags over on Hacker News pointed to the relevant Onion article.
Because there’s always an Onion article where automation drives swathes of the IT world beyond satire.
Things seem OK now (at least as far as our testing is concerned), although we have asked Google to explain itself. We will update this piece if it does so.
Whatever the fix was, we suspect it wasn’t this. ®
hey i got a real simple fix for this problem:
don’t scan files for copyright violations unless someone actually complains 🙂
— Caurinus (aka Norwesterncrow) (@NorWesternCrow) January 25, 2022
Source: Google Drive flags single-digit files over copyright
Robin Edgar
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