Some macOS users are trying to upload their files to Google cloud storage services have been met with reports of copyright infringement.
Dissatisfied Reddit user recently reported that file “.DS_Store” on them Google Drive was named a search giant for violating his copyright infringement policy. Apparently, this is not the first time this problem has occurred, as macOS users also reported similar problems last month.
For those unfamiliar, .DS_Store is a metadata file that Apple users can see when transferring folders and archives from macOS to other operating systems such as Windows or Linux. MacOS Finder automatically creates these file types to store custom attributes and metadata such as icon information and background image placement. The Finder then uses this information to visualize the layout according to user preferences.
Most of the time .DS_Store files are hidden in the Finder in the same way that desktop.ini and thumbs.db files are hidden on Windows 10 and Windows 11. However, Microsoft Explorer has settings that allow users to see these “hidden” files.
No known reason
It is unclear at this time why Google Drive is flagging DS_Store files for copyright infringement when uploading to a user’s cloud storage.
Although BleepingComputer failed to reproduce the problem, the news agency believes that Google relying on checksums to track copyrighted content could have led to a potential hash collision. If a file is copyrighted and a regular file has the same hash, it can cause these false violations.
A similar incident occurred recently when Google Drive accidentally flagged nearly empty files containing only a few digits for infringing on a company’s copyright infringement files. According to a Google spokesman who spoke with the news agency, the company identified and fixed a problem that affected only a small number of Drive files back in January.
If your files have been incorrectly flagged by Google as copyright infringement, don’t worry, as the company is aware of the issue and will correct it quickly.
Through BleepingComputer