Dropbox blocks API access for Boxopus over piracy concerns
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Also, I don't know the nature of Dropbox's app approval system, but my instinct is that it's somehow naive to assume that you're all good just because your app was not rejected. It's like speeding on the highway, not being stopped by the first cop you cross, then whining when another one arrests you further down the road: 'But the other officer cautioned my speeding!' lol sure.
When I read the initial post (yesterday?), my first thought was "How long before Dropbox blocks their access to their API".
I just don't see why products can be held accountable for their users' activity. Should we sue Dell because some guy had kiddy porn on his computer?
I also think the Facebook argument doesn't work in the current situation. When you know the risk of being blocked is so obviously high, you don't go and invest 30k$. Facebook have their own rules and somebody who'd be playing on their border should expect and assume the risk of being blocked.
No matter how much the tech (or HN) audience hopes to the contrary, Dropbox is doing what they perceive to be the best thing for their service in the long run.
Extract as much revenue from their software and infrastructure as possible, while not tarnish their name.
O/
When I saw the post I asked myself how long it would take for dropbox to block them, it took about a day.
Both smart and user-friendly, for the subset of users who use Dropbox for things other than piracy.
I don't see how that can be portrayed as "immoral".
And yes, the saw liability and wanted to mitigate it -- at the expense of moral principle.
I'm not saying it's not a complicated moral issue, but in my judgement it's far simpler when you're talking about big corporations with a lot of money and power. If a tiny business was too scared to take the proper stand, that would be one thing, but the big mega-corp ought to at least try to do the right thing, and then only back down when there are serious legal issues they can't get across (see Twitter vs. the US government regarding releasing user information).
I'm pretty sure that the feds have access to your dropbox, google drive, etc. Even if they don't, in the case that you do get in trouble for any level of SUSPECTED piracy, all this stuff will be pretty open to them to snoop in.
That just sounds like bad news to me. In the whole cloud storage vs. local argument, I do think it's an important point to raise.
TLDR; don't backup your porn/torrented-stuff to your cloud storage :P
Assuming full time, that's around 2500 man hours. I guess that's $30k if you pay them $12/hour.
“It’s come to our attention that latest Boxopus features could be perceived as encouraging users to violate copyright using Dropbox.”
"Could be perceived"? An apple "could be perceived" as a hand grenade by a sufficiently insane person. Only a blatantly corrupt legal environment would use "could be perceived" as a standard for punishing someone. Of course, that's the kind of legal environment we live in.
Should Dropbox take the risk? As an industry leader who is greatly benefiting from "The System", it is their duty to take the proper moral stand. Otherwise they are clearly just part of the problem.
And maybe that's just fine, but it's kind of drop box's house, their rules. It's like if you own a building and your new tenant, a computer repair store, decides to pivot to being a medical marijuana dispensary. Hey, it's legal-ish, but you can't really fault the landlord for kicking them out.
Plus, once you take 400 million, you're part of the system and you don't need to make yourself a bigger target than you already are.
And a sane person could see how a butter knife could be used for murder.
"...89.9 per cent of them were illegal and, of the remainder, 8.2 per cent was porn."[2]
"Overall, about one percent of the total files were categorized as "likely noninfringing."[1]
[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/01/bittorrent-census-ab... [2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/07/only-03-of-files-...
They are taking a moral stand. Their stance is they don't want to get involved with software which they believe is primarily going to be use for piracy. Their company, their decision.
Pizza Guy: No, I have legitimate customers here! You'll drive family customers away!
Gonzo Producer: You're behaving immorally! It's not illegal for me to film a porno, so you're morally bound to let me film in your restaurant, even if it will cause substantial economic damage to your business! You're oppressing my freedom of speech!
Forgive my language, but do you see how stupid your argument is?
"Forgive my language, but do you see how stupid your argument is?"
Actually you're embarrassing yourself, compounding your first foolish remark with this escalation.
The beauty of this is that it is well within Dropbox's rights to determine what they deem savory and unsavory for their business, not you...
The question at issue is whether they are morally upstanding to make this decision or not. And guess what? It's my prerogative to state what I think on that topic, not yours, not Dropbox's.
A business does not operate in a "moral" way, unlike a human would. No matter how much you personify a business. They would want the public to perceieve them as being moral, but they are doing that for only one reason - PR, which to some coroprations, are intimately tied to their bottom line.
I have no doubt moral behaviour is a consequence of it being a good way to increase the bottomline, and is not a goal in of itself. The free documentary film "The Corporation" outlines this quite well, and worth watching.
Sure, Boxopus could be used for legal purposes, just as bittorrent could be used for legal purposes. But everyone on HN knows that the vast majority of bittorrent use is not for legal purposes. Visit any major torrent site. Look at the first 1000 torrents. Count the number of legal torrents. Checking the PirateBay, KickAssTorrents, and Demonoid, I count about 16 legitimate uses of bittorrent. The remaining 984 torents are ebooks, movies, software or games.
And the problem here isn't piracy. It's freedom of speech and property rights. Might someone misuse their property? Sure. But that's no grounds for stifling them.
Dropbox is behaving in an immoral fashion. (For contrast, look at what Twitter's very morally upstanding behavior on a number of issues over the past few years).
Furthermore, freedom of speech is protection from government censorship of speech. Private persons do not have to let you say anything on their property. Private persons do not have to let you use their property. Dropbox is a private company. It does not have to let other people use its API, website, service, facilities, or employees.
If you want to use Boxopus some much, create your own Dropbox, from scratch. Then you can do whatever you want with it.
An even more extreme example would be the telecoms, which greatly benefit from government privilege and where individual competition is prohibited. Saying "build your own telecom from scratch, don't complain" is just very deranged given the context.
Further, even if you were correct that it was a truly private company, your defense on the grounds of property rights is misplaced. A torrent is merely a technical way of copying efficiently, it is not a copyright-violating tool. Whether you believe it is often used for that purpose is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that there are users with legitimate needs for this service, and Dropbox is arbitrarily declaring it off limits because some other users might use it in a way they don't approve of. There is no moral principle that says punish Peter for what Paul might be doing; on the contrary, behaving that is viciously immoral behavior.
So, Dropbox is indeed behaving immorally.
No one has disputed their legal rights, nor is it a "moral crusade" to at least try to do the right thing. On the contrary, given that you have plenty of resources, then not doing the right thing is dishonorable. Dropbox's actions are dishonorable.
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
Well, then, they're covered doubly. They are following moral sense and are also following the law. I.e. I do not see how taking this path breaks laws and I don't see their choice as being immoral.
W/re animal-derived products. You and I might feel that eating animal flesh is a-ok, morally speaking. Conversely I and others might feel otherwise -that's it's morally indefensible. (see animal rights activists, or "the sexual politics of meat", for example).
Dr. King used that phrase to make a point, he didn't say that to prove the legality of what Hitler did.
Much like beauty, morality is in the eye of the beholder, it's what society accepts. There were groups which at one point thought it was morally acceptable to assault women if they were peasants, but not if they were royalty. Everyone at the time thought that was morally okay, since Kings chose their knights, and god chose the king. Sure some things will get a more broadly accepted morally wrong or right vote by people. (not many people today would say rape is okay for instance) but abortion, animal eating, stem cells and LBGT's are still accepted by some and wrong by others. It's called Freedom.
Is it a shame that I can't use a legit tool to download me some open stuff? Yeah a bit. But, guess what. I found 5 open source dropbox clones within minutes of a google search. It really wasn't that hard.
If boxopus could have stayed, I promise I would have been getting a paid dropbox account. With dropbox not letting these guys continue, there's a good chance I'll invest my time in one of the open source projects. I really like debugging stuff anyways so it'll be fun.
TL;DR - Dropbox is a private company, I can take my money elsewhere if I want, or pick one of the many open source alternatives.
Humble Bundle, most Linux Distro's, Open Source Software, Public Domain Books, Articles, http://www.clearbits.net/ (legal open music), every site listed here http://gigaom.com/video/ten-sites-for-free-and-legal-torrent..., NASA Footage...
I could actually go on. Thanks for trying to show everyone how evil torrents are.
It is surprising to me, to say the least, that people on HN don't understand this protocol is extremely useful to hack with.
Give me access to Drew Houston's home machines and I will likely be able to prove he has torrent software installed and content downloaded. Let's not be morons here - this is about corporate governance to appear responsible regardless of morals.
If Dropbox wanted to take an actual moral stand it would implement a system which would fingerprint the .avi and .mp4 files (as examples) stored by its users, compare them to torrent files it could download in an automated fashion And delete/block syncing of said fingerprinted files.
This is in no way a moral stand it's a legal circle jerk making sure VC funding credibility is retained.
One might even cite Facebook as the counterexample, an organisation whose leader is explicitly and openly part of a systemic shift in expectations of privacy.