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Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

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Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#241

Post by gbog »

ghshephard wrote: post #206
random42 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned before, IANAL, and I do not have deep/any knowledge of the laws Dropbox is incorporated in. However, "Presumption of Innocence" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence ) aka "Innocent until proven guilty" is one of the universally applied (if not, also accepted), legal concept. Can dropship be used for illegal file sharing? Yes. Is dropship being used for illegal file sharing? No, until p…

I downvoted you because you are discussing DropBox as though it is a public utility that you have a right to, and some form of due process needs to take place. In my mind, you are completely and absolutely missing the point. DropBox is a private company, whose behavior should be viewed based on what their ToS are, and how they stick to them. They don't have to prove anything - if one is engaging in behavior, or takin…

I understand your point, and it certainly ok for DropBox to defend its ToS. But behind this story, seeing how fast they reacted to a single json hack in their model, it shows that DropBox is currently fighting a lot against a strong trend, and moreover against their own users, which is not a good sign for them. Fear is a bad advisor.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#242

Post by apgwoz »

burgerbrain wrote: post #182
apgwoz wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume for a moment that this makes the nightly news. How many people in "average joe" America who don't know about Dropbox will checkout it out and say, "oh man, this is useful! and they even have a free account!" Do they care about this DMCA garbage, or what Dropbox actually did/did not do? Maybe, but the national news won't report it correctly anyway. Here's how it might be spun: "Hackers, today, are up in arms wi…

This won't make the nightly news. This will only be reported to the types of people who 1) already know about dropbox, and 2) understand the significance of DMCA takedowns made in bad faith. Bad publicity.

You're right, it won't make the nightly news. But, you obviously have no imagination either.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#243

Post by true_religion »

random42 wrote: post #220
rprasad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the presumption of innocence works. I say that as someone who has practiced both civil and criminal law. Presumption of innocence only applies to crimes. Copyright violations are not crimes, they are civil torts. (Though some actions incident to copyright violations, i.e., circumventing DRM, can be crimes.) Can dropshiip be used for illegal fire sharing? YES, in fact, that was the suggested and intende…

Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL. That being said, I realize Dropbox(or Corporate entities in general) is not government and/or legal system and it is not required of them to follow laws, which are applicable for governments. However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation. While the law is codified as P…

Not every law has a universal jurisdiction and applies to every possible party.

For example, the government has no right to privacy whilst we as individuals do.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#244

Post by gommm »

SwellJoe wrote: post #155
random42 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> illegal file sharing has never been permitted and we take great pains to keep it off of dropbox. Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred. Remember use of torrents are not illegal per se, sharing files which you do not copyright of, and piracy is. > there were no legal threats or any other shenanigans to the author or people hosting. (EDIT - No applicable. Read Drew's edit.) DMCA…

> Which is great, except you are punishing the crime, before it even occurred. No, they aren't. They're enforcing the terms of use that Dropbox users agreed to when signing up. I don't think asking folks to take stuff down was the correct solution...I think fixing the bug was the right solution, which they've also done. But, I don't see how Dropbox is "punishing" anyone, when they're just asking people to use the ser…

Yes, now that the bug is fixed I would have liked looking at the source code of Dropship just to see how it worked... So it's a pity that they asked people to take it down.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#245

Post by law »

random42 wrote: post #220
rprasad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the presumption of innocence works. I say that as someone who has practiced both civil and criminal law. Presumption of innocence only applies to crimes. Copyright violations are not crimes, they are civil torts. (Though some actions incident to copyright violations, i.e., circumventing DRM, can be crimes.) Can dropshiip be used for illegal fire sharing? YES, in fact, that was the suggested and intende…

Thanks, It was helpful information. As said before IANAL. That being said, I realize Dropbox(or Corporate entities in general) is not government and/or legal system and it is not required of them to follow laws, which are applicable for governments. However, Laws are legal representation of morals/ethics, which are applicable for every entity in the society, for its effective operation. While the law is codified as P…

I'll just chime in to post another point that was missed here. Arguably the most important (and controversial) principle in American jurisprudence is the freedom to enter into contracts. Dropbox has terms of service to which you manifest assent either directly (by clicking "I agree") or by your actions (that is, just by using the service). I'd venture to guess that in their terms of service is some provision that gives them the basis to remove accounts at any time, for any reason.

Courts have upheld these terms of service/use agreements in many cases; just googling ProCD v. Zeidenberg will give you more information, if you're interested.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#246

Post by plasma »

Dropbox can decide what its servers/resources are used for, and allowing 'Dropship' to be used to transfer copyrighted files sounds like a problem they don't want - and neither would I, as a company owner.

Legitimate users are not impacted at all from this recent change; people who were wanting to share copyrighted files to the masses are impacted but they aren't customers Dropbox would want in the first place.

I think its disingenuous to say Dropbox shouldn't have tried to stop the project from being used; if I ran Dropbox and something came up that threatened my company and its customers I would try and stop it being used in an instant.

The people Dropbox contacted voluntarily took down the project, so they must have agreed with Dropbox's logic in some form that yes perhaps the project would better off not be available.

I'm not sure I like the title, "... attempts to kill open source project" as if to say open source is some how an endangered species and Dropbox is some horrible elephant killer? :)

I suppose its disappointing to me when I read some comments that are immediately on the attack when it may not be warranted or fair, or put up arguments like 'torrents can be used to distribute linux ISOs' (not a real quote!) when everyone knows thats not what Dropship would be used for at all.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#247

Post by bigiain »

gordonbowman wrote: post #235
Pahalial wrote: post #116

You know, I really don't understand the rage around this case, or more specifically that it's supposedly all coming from people who otherwise love Dropbox. So let's examine what you're (potentially) doing by forcing this issue and so on: (1) Calling down a streisand effect on Dropbox. Perhaps you believe that code is meant to be free to such an extent that this is part of your goal, so, sure. (2) They clearly have no…

Well laid out. The worst crime here is taking up the invaluable time of Dropbox developers who could and should be focused elsewhere.

Or from a slightly different perspective, "strongly encouraging the developers at Dropbox to focus _now_ on security/privacy issues that ought to have been dealt with before pushing their existing code live". Doesn't seem to deserve the label "worst crime" when described like that.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#248

Post by burgerbrain »

apgwoz wrote: post #242
burgerbrain wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This won't make the nightly news. This will only be reported to the types of people who 1) already know about dropbox, and 2) understand the significance of DMCA takedowns made in bad faith. Bad publicity.

You're right, it won't make the nightly news. But, you obviously have no imagination either.

In order to disprove the statement "there is no such thing as negative publicity" one merely needs to produce a circumstance where there is indeed negative publicity. This is pretty trivial to do, and doesn't require imagination.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#249

Post by driverdan »

tptacek wrote: post #41

Consider that maybe what's happening here is boring. Recognize that we all have a cognitive bias towards narratives, and especially interesting narratives. The discussion on this story is trying to build a narrative about Dropbox vs. open source developers. The real story is probably not that interesting. The CTO of a service as technically interesting as Dropbox certainly knows that he can't prevent the disclosure o…

I'm not sure I get your point. Everything in my blog post was true. The writing style is irrelevant to the facts. So what if I wrote it in a manor interesting to HN readers? That's the point, to get people interested and spread the word.

You assume "everybody understands those things" which simply isn't true. Not everyone understands how Dropbox works. Not everyone understands security though obscurity (which I should have linked in my post for people to learn more, will fix).

As I said in the post I understand Dropbox is attempting to play damage control. The way they went about it was inappropriate. Removing the file from their service is one thing. It's their company, they can run it as they see fit. Requesting all files hosted elsewhere to be taken down and HN comments be deleted is going too far. That's an obvious attempt to kill the project, hence the title.

Re: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

#250

Post by centenary »

arashf wrote: post #21

This is Arash from Dropbox. We removed the ability to share the project source code because it enables communications with our servers in a manner that is a violation of our Terms of Service. By our TOS, we reserve the right to terminate the account of users in this case. However, we chose to remove access to the file instead of terminating the account of the user. We recently built a tool that allows us to ban links…

There's so much misinformation in these comments, it's kinda embarrassing.

No one received a DMCA takedown notice. Rather, people received an informational message saying that Dropbox received a DMCA takedown notice.

This informational message has absolutely no legal implications. Everyone screaming perjury should stop practicing law from their armchairs.

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