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Comment by rsingel | Hacker News Reader

Also realize that Dropbox's architecture leaves an evidentiary trail - nothing is ever actually deleted from your account. If you upload anything copyrighted, you have opened yourself up to the possibility of being sued or prosecuted for copyright infringement. For most, that's a minuscule chance, but it exists and you have no ability to delete your history - http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=48975

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Dropbox has builtin 30 day history for everyone, through the web interface. You're saying they keep track of things indefinitely (when you haven't purchased that addon)? Do you have a citation for that?

Yes.

In Germany it is allowed to make a small number of copies for friends and family (Privatkopie). So if I transfer a song to DB for a friend, the evidentary trail will also show that the file has only been downloaded very few time, which is legal.

Wow, that's actually a very nice law. And yet, despite reading a bunch of threads about copyright, this is the first time I've run into it. I wonder why something like this doesn't get brought up more often.

Of course the copyright industry is trying to kill this law and is undermining it by running ads that constantly repeat that copying is illegal. Lots of people in Germany have no idea that they are legally allowed to make a small number of copies (up to seven) for personal purposes.

It is even allowed to make a copy of a copy. So if I recieve a song from a friend, I am allowed to give it to a couple of my friends. But I am not allowed to simply seed it to strangers through anonymous filesharing.

Translation of the german wikipedia entry on "Privatkopie": http://translate.google.com/#de|en|https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedi...

Yes you can. If you delete an item from your Dropbox you can see it by choosing "Show deleted files" from here you can choose to permanently delete the file. In my testing this also removes any trace of the file ever being created from Events. While Dropbox certainly could be keeping an undeletable log of everything you ever upload, there is no evidence that they are doing so.

While Dropbox certainly could be keeping an undeletable log of everything you ever upload, there is no evidence that they are doing so.

It is safer to assume that they are than to assume they are not. Maybe they got an NSL with a gag order that requires them to silently store logs indefinitely. There's no way of knowing, so just assume that's the case and plan accordingly (e.g. don't upload embarrassing college photos that would cause you problems if the upload logs were hacked and released to the public).

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