Google Drive is one of the best cloud storage services and that is out of the question. The platform offers an arsenal of tools, and has increasingly better security options; however, that does not mean that it does not suffer from the presence of some other bug. This is how some users are receiving claims for allegedly violating copyright by uploading a simple text document to their space on the platform.
The peculiar situation became known when Dr. Emily Dolson, a university professor, posted it on her Twitter account a few days ago. But only in the last few hours the problem was noticed by the Google Drive team, which responded to the teacher's claim. What is the fault, after all?
The answer is as curious as it is simple. If you upload to Google Drive a text document that only contains “1” or “0”, it will be classified as a Copyright violation and you will receive a warning that the file in question does not comply with the terms and conditions of the online storage platform.
“Google Drive, are you okay? This file literally contains a single line with the number 1 on it,” Dolson posted on Jan. 23. The response from the Californian company came just a few hours ago, in the form of a response to the aforementioned tweet. They did not give further explanations, but indicated that they were already working on solving the problem.
Even the simplest thing can become a problem on platforms like Google Drive
At first it was thought that, for some unknown reason, Google Drive could be blocking only number 1. However, HackerNews users who echoed the teacher's claim found that the problem was repeated when uploading documents only with “0” or 1/n”. It was even speculated that the problem might not actually be related to the content of the file but to its name, but this was quickly ruled out.
Moreover, another user confirmed that copyright violation alerts also appeared with numbers like 500, 174, 833 and 285. It is clear that the problem lies in the automated system that is responsible for reviewing the files for prohibited parameters. ; anyway, it would be interesting to know what causes certain numbers to cause an alleged Copyright infringement.
It is clear that this is not a serious problem, especially now that a solution is being worked on. Despite this, the alerts generated concern among Google Drive users, not only because the alleged violation could not be disputed, but especially because of the fear that their accounts would be blocked.