Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#111

Post by tdenkinger » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 12:26 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #109

Xuzz wrote: post #7

On the other hand, this post from The Verge explains what is actually going on: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms... The important quote: "Looking at some of Google's competitors, it's clear that they need the exact same permissions — they just use slightly more artful language to communicate them." All of these services need similar permissions, as do most web services: it's just an artifa…

The article posted here on HN cheats by including an important sentence from the DropBox TOS and sneakily omitting the corresponding sentence from the Google TOS. DropBox: You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. Google: The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

Those sentences do not say the same thing. Most worrying: "promoting" in the Google terms.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#112

Post by tomkarlo » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 12:29 AM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #73

If I understand Google's ToS right, you are giving them a license to do pretty much anything with the data you upload to Drive. For instance, if you backup your git repo to Drive, Google's engineers have a license to take your source code and incorporate it into their own products. Now of course Google's not actually going to do that. So why not make the license say that? Google is using a generic ToS for all their p…

Because it's impractical to create a TOS that defines all possible ways they might need to use that data in order to provide the service (from any court's viewpoint) but also explicitly carve out that usage. If re-using the code as you posit is indistinguishable (legally) from a valid use of the data they need in order to provide the service, they're not going to carve it out of the TOS. It's better to not attempt that, and let you (as the customer) pick if you're okay with that. If you find the risk unacceptable, don't use the service. To some degree that's a better outcome than exposing the host to a ton of legal risk.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#113

Post by smeg » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 12:57 AM UTC

cube13 wrote: post #103

ctdonath wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is: the rights as worded by Google allow a whole lot more than the reasonable-use wording by Dropbox. Remember that recent flap about iOS apps uploading users' entire Contacts list for non-relevant uses? hey, users gave permission for the apps to access that data without explicit limits; same idea, same concerns.

>Problem is: the rights as worded by Google allow a whole lot more than the reasonable-use wording by Dropbox. They actually don't. Google specifically enumerates the rights that you're granting them. Dropbox actually does not state specifically what rights Dropbox needs to provide the services, and as such, could claim that you're granting all of the rights that Google has granted and more. This does not include ful…

>Google specifically enumerates the rights that you're granting them

They sure do. It just turns out one of these rights is that they can use your content for promotional purposes (advertising?).

Dropbox may not have such a detailed TOS, but they are clear on one thing: whatever rights you do grant them are solely for the provision of the service to you.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#114

Post by smeg » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 1:04 AM UTC

yesbabyyes wrote: post #86

ctdonath wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As phrased, the agreement would let Google publish, for open searchable access by the world, all files from all users. Indeed, methinks Google's whole underlying goal in all their endeavors is to mine data they'd not get thru other means. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe Google isn't (or just hasn't gotten there but intends to someday) scouring every GMail, every Chrome OS click, every OCRed image…

Well, first off, Google has a privacy policy [1] where they commit to not publishing my entire works without my consent. Even without that, though -- what do you think would happen if they did what you're suggesting? I think the public punishment would be worse than any legal repercussions. And that's what it comes down to, IMO. I regret that we have to have these far reaching policies and agreements filled with lega…

> Well, first off, Google has a privacy policy [1] where they commit to not publishing my entire works without my consent.

It doesn't say that anywhere. The Privacy Policy covers "What information we collect and why we collect it.". In other words, the PP is about information they collect about you using the service, not stuff you upload to Drive. Think IP addresses, cookies, log-on times etc.

> Even without that, though -- what do you think would happen if they did what you're suggesting? I think the public punishment would be worse than any legal repercussions.

So your saying that TOS don't matter and we shouldn't read or analyse them because we trust Google wont do anything untoward? So we are we even having this discussion in the first place then?

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#115

Post by smeg » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 1:07 AM UTC

rfugger wrote: post #82

Xuzz wrote: post #7

On the other hand, this post from The Verge explains what is actually going on: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms... The important quote: "Looking at some of Google's competitors, it's clear that they need the exact same permissions — they just use slightly more artful language to communicate them." All of these services need similar permissions, as do most web services: it's just an artifa…

Google's is worse because it takes all rights to use your work however it likes, and then states in its privacy policy that it won't use it for anything other than to provide the service. But if it likes, it can amend the privacy policy in the future to remove or modify that limitation. So you have to trust Google, which may be fine now, but what about in 20 years? They have rights to your work forever. Other provide…

>Google's is worse because it takes all rights to use your work however it likes, and then states in its Privacy Ppolicy that it won't use it for anything other than to provide the service.

Please point to the part of the Privacy Policy that deal with "my works" or "works that I create and own". I think if you look closely, the PP only deal with information Google collects about your usage of the service, which is quite different to works you upload to Drive.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#116

Post by sturmeh » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 1:26 AM UTC

Amendment of a Privacy Policy doesn't retroactively apply the policy to all the data previously provided to the service without first consulting the user.

If that is the case then they need to make the user ACCEPT the new terms before this can be done. (This is what is happening whenever you are forced to accept an amended TOS before returning to a service.)

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#117

Post by cageface » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 2:22 AM UTC

I'm actually not so worried about the privacy of the files I might put in GDrive. The handful of files I really care about (financial data etc) I store in other ways.

But I am worried about having my Google account yanked out from under me. I'm simply not willing to depend on one capricious company with no customer support for email, phone, storage, online collaboration, chat, social etc. Ironically the harder Google tries to squeeze all their services together the less inclined I am to use any individual service.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#118

Post by jshen » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 2:57 AM UTC

Xuzz wrote: post #7

On the other hand, this post from The Verge explains what is actually going on: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms... The important quote: "Looking at some of Google's competitors, it's clear that they need the exact same permissions — they just use slightly more artful language to communicate them." All of these services need similar permissions, as do most web services: it's just an artifa…

How do you trust a company? Many trusted Sun with Java, and we see what that got us.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#119

Post by angusgr » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

Xuzz wrote: post #7

On the other hand, this post from The Verge explains what is actually going on: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms... The important quote: "Looking at some of Google's competitors, it's clear that they need the exact same permissions — they just use slightly more artful language to communicate them." All of these services need similar permissions, as do most web services: it's just an artifa…

The Verge article is very good at explaining the actual details. However, although IANAL, I think they missed on one part of their explanation:

They say: But what about that line about granting rights for "promoting and improving our Services," you ask? ... and then conclude that sort of behavior is forbidden by the Google privacy policy

but part of the Privacy Policy they quote also says: We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones,...

So it would seem to me that legally that's still a fairly wide scope for what they could potentially do under the umbrella of improving existing and developing new services.

The article highlights a different part of the Privacy Policy: We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy. ... but given the previous clause, there seems to be a pretty big umbrella of things that _are_ set out in the Privacy Policy.

I'd put them pretty far down on the list of companies not to trust.

I think this is the bottom line in both The Verge article and your comment - whether you trust the company is ultimately more important than the details of the ToS.

Re: Google Drive vs. Dropbox Terms of Service

#120

Post by Simpletoon » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 3:14 AM UTC

The question for those looking at the TOS is: What is it you do not want Google to do? Unless you know the answer to that, reading TOS is a mindless exercise. You need to supply some facts, a real scenario. Then we can assess whether the TOS are reasonable.

Google can say "what's yours stays yours". They could say also that to website content owners with respect to their web crawls. But the simple fact is they have a copy of someone else's data, they know what the contents are and they will use that knowledge of the contents (aggregated and de-personalised if necessary) to their own benefit, by using it to lure more web users and thereby advertisers. It works. That's how they make money. Of course given the chance they will require an explicit license from you to do so. Here, that's the TOS. With the web crawls, I guess it's robots.txt. There's an implicit license.

What I'd like to see discussed is what happens if you encrypt some multi-GB binary blob of random bytes, give it an attention-grabbing filename and then move it to cloud storage. Does a team of cryptographers start trying to crack it? Now that's a fun legal question.

I really do not understand the whole cloud storage thing. I imagine the real issue is people do not know how to move large amounts of data to each other, quickly and securely. They've never heard of netcat. And "storage" with a "link to download" is their solution. File sharing. Same old story.

Everything gets funnelled through a webserver.

Quite silly if you can directly connect to the recipient.