First, let me say that I'm not convinced this new wave of peer-to-peer based systems is the way go forward. I believe poorly implemented yet popular peer-to-peer systems might make the internet worse (as in slower) for everyone and, more importantly, cause unpleasing surprises when peer-to-peer traffic that is unknown by the users starts hitting their data caps.

But, for the sake of argument, let me play devil's advocate and take the "yes, of course you should do it, dugh".

1. Yes, users care that their files are available. Given the recent megaupload events and the outbreak of copyright-related-madness that has contaminated the US government, I don't discard the possibility that some random raid might cause Dropbox files to be unavailable. The reason for the raid might be because "users are using Dropbox to illegally store copyrighted files", which I'm sure it's true. For availability, distributed is better than centralized, period. Of course, I have 4 or 5 fully synced computers, so my Dropbox setup already is kind of distributed and I would be relatively immune, but I sincerely don't know how many users use this kind of setup.

2. I don't go over the free quota because I'm constantly policing my files and removing everything that is not essential. What I would really like is to use Dropbox as a backup-everything-sync-everywhere tool, not as a sync-essential-stuff-everywhere tool, but I currently do my on backups, because I can't bring myself to paying 10 bucks a month for 50GB space if I'm only using 10GB.

3. I agree. Most people don't care about anonymity unless they are affected by the lack of it in a way that is both personal and perceived as negative, which most aren't.

Ease: there is nothing that makes the Space Monkey way fundamentally more difficult for the user. Of course, the user's internet connection might fail a little bit, and probably any contender that wants to compete in this area will have to plan for that scenario, but this is not a deal-breaking thing (for instance, they can store user A's data on user B's device when A's connection is not working properly).

Taking of my devil's advocate mask, while I believe there might be some space for companies in the "Dropbox competitor" space, I believe being just a "Dropbox competitor" won't cut it, even though I would like someone else to succeed even if just for the sake of diversity.

I also believe Dropbox is more like a feature than a product, and putting a special-purpose device inside someone's house offers you the possibility of turning said device into a kind of command-of-control thing, such that it can do many things more than being just a backup-and-sync device. For instance, I could be on the street, hear about a movie, and use my cell phone to make my device buy and download this movie so that when I'm home I'll be able to watch it. This kind of stuff would bring "just works" to a whole new level.

By the way, I buy a movie using the device, Space Monkey might take a cut. God, the hardware these days is so cheap that it might be possible to offer it for free and make money by taking a cut on every transaction.