While it's easy to jump to conclusions, it might be a good idea to have a think and maybe ask some questions first.<p>Dropbox provides a file sharing service, Boxopus uses this to provide torrent downloading services. Should Boxopus become popular, how will this impact Dropboxes cost base? Will people buy more dropbox space?<p>Are Dropbox possibly obliged to deactivate Boxopus due to onerous copyright rules? Is there anything in their underlying contractual arrangements with their suppliers for example that could result in the termination of dropbox's service, or are they just trying to cover their backsides?<p>I think this shows a good example of the increasingly common problem where startups tie themselves to a platform and suffer for it as well as benefit. They're looking for another storage provider, but who's to say this won't happen with a new provider too?
It bothers me that companies are allowed to make discriminatory decisions like this, when providing public-facing services.<p>If your TOS states that Dropbox can't be used for files above a particular size, or can only be used by individuals and not corporations, or something like that, then fine.<p>But companies that discriminate based on the <i>purpose</i> of usage -- this seems fundamentally wrong. MasterCard blocking WikiLeaks payments, Dropbox blocking torrents, PayPal banning a VPN provider... Private companies have no business deciding what is "acceptable" in this manner. If it's illegal for them to provide services, then obviously they can't, but if it isn't, then they should continue to provide services.<p>Honestly, is this any different from a company ninety years ago denying service to non-whites because it "could be perceived as encouraging the races to intermarry?"<p>There's a reason we have anti-discrimination laws for races, gender, orientation and religion. Why don't we have them for "purpose of use of services"?
We're making mountains out of molehills. Don't build your shit on a platform you could reasonably expect to be taken away from you. Company management often sees piracy (and sex) as a plague that can erode customer and investor support in their business.<p>* * *<p>Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One pig built a house of straw while the second pig built his house with sticks. They built their houses very quickly and then sang and danced all day because they were lazy. The third little pig worked hard all day and built his house with bricks.<p>A big bad wolf saw the two little pigs while they danced and played and thought, “What juicy tender meals they will make!” He chased the two pigs and they ran and hid in their houses. The big bad wolf went to the first house and huffed and puffed and blew the house down in minutes. The frightened little pig ran to the second pig’s house that was made of sticks. The big bad wolf now came to this house and huffed and puffed and blew the house down in hardly any time. Now, the two little pigs were terrified and ran to the third pig’s house that was made of bricks.<p>The big bad wolf tried to huff and puff and blow the house down, but he could not. He kept trying for hours but the house was very strong and the little pigs were safe inside. He tried to enter through the chimney but the third little pig boiled a big pot of water and kept it below the chimney. The wolf fell into it and died.<p>The two little pigs now felt sorry for having been so lazy. They too built their houses with bricks and lived happily ever after.
The solution is simple. Build a 2 tier app? One innocuous app (SendToDropbox) that moves files into dropbox. Second app (TorrentIntoSendToDropbox) that saves torrents into the first app.
As so many people have pointed out over the last few years, building your product on top of someone else's product is a bad idea unless you have a legally-binding agreement in-place. And having an api key isn't a substitute for such an agreement.<p>If this principle had a name (ie "<someone's> law") then maybe people would pay more attention.<p>(And OT: I read "boxopus" as "box o' pus", which makes me think perhaps its a poor name)
It was an absurd pairing of two separate and dissimilar block-structured sync protocols and I am not at all surprised. This should've been disallowed on pure bandwidth efficiency grounds.<p>I'm sure the actual reason was "torrent user == pirate" and they just didn't want any juvenile connections, bad news in any language.<p>Everyone who read the original story saw this coming.
I feel like this is the wrong choice for Dropbox. Wouldn't they still be under DMCA safe harbour just as if I uploaded copyrighted material myself? Or is any type of downloader to your Dropbox against the terms of service as an 'Unwanted feature'? Sure they reserve the right to who uses their service, but if they are DMCA compliant are they just losing potential revenue?
This shows the difference between an API and a protocol.<p>You are at the sole discretion of the company whose API you are using.<p>Different cloud storage provider, different API. I wish they all started using the remoteStorage protocol. <a href="http://www.w3.org/community/unhosted/wiki/RemoteStorage" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3.org/community/unhosted/wiki/RemoteStorage</a>
I'm genuinely curious, as I've never actually used it[1], but if someone waved a magic wand, and ALL illegal music, movies and books vanished from bittorrent networks, what would be left?<p>[1]blizzard uses it for WoW updates, but I don't think that really counts.
This kind of reinforces my belief that Dropbox is merely a segway toward a more private, decentralized (self-hosted), cloud-based filesystem.<p>How is Dropbox ever going to stay relevant in the future if they go around telling people what they can and can't store in their directories?
The original thread on this topic (that was evidently heavily flagged) is here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4161940" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4161940</a>
It's pretty appalling that people believe Dropbox has an obligation to bear all the burden so some "startup" can make a quick buck off of copyrighted material. Where are the thought leaders on this? Sitting around with eyepatches over their mouths?
I don't understand the need for this company in the first place, (Anonymity when pirating?)<p>If you wanted to store BitTorrent downloads in Dropbox, all you gotta do is tell your torrent client to use your local dropbox folder as a save location...
I think this is a sign of weakness from Dropbox; for example, big strong players like Google don't just erase all the links to ThePirateBay.se just because some big record label says so; they wait until they are actually forced to do so with a legal petition (e.g. DMCA)