Oh man, Dropbox is really losing it's luster for me. First trying to get rid of the Public folder and now blocking third party apps. It's really too bad all of the hard work put into Boxopus has to go to waste. They won't even have profit to offset their beta testing bandwidth usage. I was really looking forward to having this product at my disposal.
Dropbox isn't blocking third-party apps, they blocked one particular third-party app which was aggressively attempting to pin a giant 'hey, come sue me' target on their back.
Both smart and user-friendly, for the subset of users who use Dropbox for things other than piracy.
The presumption behind the chant is that what is legal is also moral, but that's clearly not the case, particularly in our ever more corrupt legal environment.
No, the presumption is that it's their API and they can do what they want. It's obviously a business decision. I'm pretty sure Dropbox didn't say "We hate torrenters" or "We want to turn away potential customers". They said "We see a liability and want to mitigate it to protect our business".
I don't see how that can be portrayed as "immoral".
I still don't think you've done any work to show that it's immoral for Dropbox to do this. Even if it weren't in their business interests, I don't think you've done the work to convince me that there is a moral issue at stake.
That's because I was already doing that work in a different comment and don't want to repeat myself. Feel free to address my remarks there.
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).
"[$30,000 USD] in developments costs have gone down the drain". It seems kinda silly to put 30k$ in a project that's looking for trouble and where all your eggs are in somebody else's basket.
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 don't think it's silly at all. How many app are at Facebook's mercy that cost well over $30k? All of Zynga. I do see there is some risk, but there are certainly plenty of valid, legal reasons to use Bittorrent. I'm sorry, but I certainly think that this really is going the opposite direction of Dropbox's goal of becoming "the internet's file system". This just seems like the natural progression. Maybe they can port it to Google Drive.
I just don't see why products can be held accountable for their users' activity. Should we sue Dell because some guy had kiddy porn on his computer?
There are plenty of valid and legal reasons to use P2P file-sharing network, I'll be the first to claim so. But in an objective manner, one can't deny the bad reputation (on the legal side of things) those networks have. And it's pretty easy to understand that Dropbox might not be interested in being related this kind of shenanigans.
I also think the Facebook argument doesn't work in the current situation. When you know the risk of being blocked is so obviously high, you don't go and invest 30k$. Facebook have their own rules and somebody who'd be playing on their border should expect and assume the risk of being blocked.
There have been numerous arrests, extraditions, domain name seizes and seizes of servers for companies that do a lot of piracy stuff. How can TorrentFreak and Boxopus claim "It's totally irrational to be afraid of bitorrent" with a straight face?
Yes, but so is EC2, S3, RackSpace, Azure, MediaFire, FTP, etc etc. The difference is that Dropbox doesn't want to be seen as enabling a service that they think will primarily be used for piracy.
The smark thing for dropbox to do is to create a service with similar price structure (perhaps a tiny bit more expensive), and allow this sort of supposedly grey activity to take place there, and brand it differently.
Extract as much revenue from their software and infrastructure as possible, while not tarnish their name.
On the one hand, this was predictable. On the other, it is unethical by Dropbox. What they said was telling:
“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.
I don't know that the apple analogy holds up. Yes, an apple could be perceived as a hand grenade by a crazy person, but a sane person could see how boxopus will likely be used for piracy.
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.
This is what I was wondering about on a greater scale. Do you happen to have a link to recent statistics that show this is the case for torrent traffic in general?
I found two studies from 2010: one by a Princeton student[1] and one by the University of Ballarat (Australia) [2].
Both of then found that the vast majority of bittorrent traffic, not surprisingly, is illegal and both were heavily critiziced.
I quote:
"...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]
> it is their duty to take the proper moral stand. Otherwise they are clearly just part of the problem.
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.
Gonzo Producer: Hey pizza guy, I want to use your pizza store to film a porno. It's completly legal!
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?
Your argument is nonsense. You presume that the torrent feature implies something unsavory, akin to porn, when it's merely a means of copying from point A to point B efficiently.
"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.
What a bizarre thing to say. No one has disputed Dropbox's legal rights here.
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.
"The question at issue is whether they are morally upstanding to make this decision or not."
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.
I think if you did a poll you'd find people on either side of "is it moral to do good deeds motivated by recognition". Also, businesses may be largely sociopathic, but not completely.
Dropbox is taking a moral stand. They are taking a stand against piracy. They choose not to be part of the problem.
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.
These rich corporations are de facto stewards of our political system. (That may not be the ideal way the political system should work, but that's how it does work, and the well-connected, well-funded fully exploit it).
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).
Dropbox is behaving morally. They are choosing not to allow a product/service that they know will be overwhelmingly used for copyright violations. This is not theft, but it does cause meaningful and measurable economic harm to the owners and producers. Before you spout off about media company oppression, remember that the people most affected by piracy are the crews that work behind the scenes to make the movies and tv shows. The crews are the first people fired if movies and tv shows can't cover their budget.
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.
While I agree with your free market principles, I do not agree with your application in this mixed economy context. Dropbox is not exactly a private company. The larger the company, the more it tends to be a branch of our government (via insidious corporatist mechanisms), so your standing up for their "private property" rights is dangerously misplaced.
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.
I'm not a pirate. I don't even use torrents myself. But your admission that you have no argument, implied by your fabrication in order to make an ad hominem attack, is noted.
Well I don't think it is ad hominen if the reference was metaphorical, but I could be wrong. Sorry I labeled you as pirate (god I hate that word now), but I thought that was implied. Dropbox has certain rights. Whether they spend capital on a moral crusade should be up to them. It's a freedom thing.
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.
Is it your view that Twitter has "thrown themselves on their sword" when they went out of their way to defend the rights of their users against government subpoena? Or when they took a stand on software patents?
Twitter and Drop box can have independent "moral compasses". They don't have to have the same -just as you and I don't have to share the same.
Not to imply that questioning subpoenas equates to questioning piracy. Piracy is not a right, while having protections against unreasonable searches is aright (depending on country, of course).
Well sure, they can have independent moral compasses, but they shouldn't. They both depend on a civilized society. Dropbox needs to uphold and defend the values of civilization (which don't include a paternalistic authoritarian monitoring system), not thwart them.
I disagree. Just because I could open a grocery store which found it morally repugnant to sell animal-derived products does not mean everyone should share the same values. People and firms should be able to do the same within the framework of law
>and the framework of law is no substitute for having a good moral sense.
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.
Actually how people "feel" is about what makes up ALL of a moral argument. It's moral for you to waste an animals life when tofo rice and beans give you the same amino acids and proteins? It's moral for us to eat these things and spend a hundred times more for the chicken then for the rice? It's moral for us to do this when that money could be spent on a hundred meals for starving children?
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.
Dropbox is not the huge powerhouse of money that would be able to just act as if the law doesn't apply to them. They are scared that they will get in trouble, and the biggest reason for them to do this in my honest opinion is simple... Traffic, dropbox servers were acting up recently, right when boxopus got big, chances are they can't keep up the kind of traffic that torrents require.
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.
Great post. To add to the usefulness of the protocol, I use the BitTorrent protocol on the WAN to sync files with my own computers and those of family members via my own/our tracker, and also on the LAN when i have to move large files and repositories of information between computers (which i do often).
It is surprising to me, to say the least, that people on HN don't understand this protocol is extremely useful to hack with.
BS - dropbox is NOT taking a moral stand. They are under the control of corporate council in a highly visible silicon valley company.
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.
Actually, no, I disagree, it is not the duty of a short-term technology industry leader to be an instrument of social change. They can do that if they want to, but there's no categorical imperative.
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.
Well, make it torrent-to-mail then. It's not like Dropbox was the only good choice for the receiving end of the service. You don't need to be a genius to find other replacements.
And you don't have to be a genius to see this coming. In fact you have to be amazingly tone deaf. Fanatasies about the great pirate revolution are fine but legitimate businesses have to deal with reality.
This was a given [1] (TOS based API key was pulled). Too much liability for Dropbox to take on even if they were not the primary on this one.
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.
Blocking technology based upon the perception that it could be used illegally isn't sound reasoning especially from a company that advertises their file sharing feature as ideal.
I think it's important to note here that this is one of the main reasons that people shouldn't use cloud storage for sensitive stuff.
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
82 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadBoth 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).
Assuming full time, that's around 2500 man hours. I guess that's $30k if you pay them $12/hour.
O/
When I saw the post I asked myself how long it would take for dropbox to block them, it took about a day.
Also, I don't know the nature of Dropbox's app approval system, but my instinct is that it's somehow naive to assume that you're all good just because your app was not rejected. It's like speeding on the highway, not being stopped by the first cop you cross, then whining when another one arrests you further down the road: 'But the other officer cautioned my speeding!' lol sure.
When I read the initial post (yesterday?), my first thought was "How long before Dropbox blocks their access to their API".
I just don't see why products can be held accountable for their users' activity. Should we sue Dell because some guy had kiddy porn on his computer?
I also think the Facebook argument doesn't work in the current situation. When you know the risk of being blocked is so obviously high, you don't go and invest 30k$. Facebook have their own rules and somebody who'd be playing on their border should expect and assume the risk of being blocked.
Extract as much revenue from their software and infrastructure as possible, while not tarnish their name.
“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.
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.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4152595
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