Google Drive Marks Some OS X Files as Violating Copyright

Mac users notice strange reaction from Google Drive to their attempts to upload folders from Mac to the cloud. The culprit was the file that could be the least expected to raise suspicions about piracy. More than that you might even not notice this file at all while uploading the files.

It came as a surprise for those uploading their files when they saw the warning by Google Drive. The warning says that a certain file named .DS_Store violates Google’s copyright infringement policy and thus cannot be uploaded. The file sometimes doesn’t even get noticed by Mac users, especially if they use Finder instead of third-party file managers like Midnight Commander.

The file is automatically generated by OS X and contains metadata like file attributes and icon images which Finder uses to customize the layout according to user preferences. This file fulfills the same function as, say, desktop.ini or thumbs.db in Windows. It may be the strangest part for Mac non-power users who may be even unaware that it exists.

Is Google aware of this issue? It has been reported quite a number of times. Though it’s hard to predict when this problem pops up, Google had a similar experience no earlier than this January. That time the service could mark almost empty files that contained only a several digits as potentially pirate. If the reason is the same in both situations, hardly can the reason be the media fragments like thumbnails that are present in .DS_store files. The root of the problem may be the checksum of the file that coincides with that of certain protected content.

Have you encountered this feature when using Google Drive on Mac? What other unusual bugs have you noticed with Google Drive or other clouds that are copyright-concerned? Welcome to our comments if you have something to tell us!