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Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#11

Post by xnull2guest »

stirlo wrote: post #6

The clear point of this is not to protect from NSA/US Courts but to minimise tax. I'm not sure why they never setup out of Ireland in the first place, every other US company with international revenues has already. In addition unless Microsoft wins its appeal US courts have ruled that a US company eg: Dropbox can be forced to provide any data they have even if it is outside the US

Right. I mean, Condolezza Rice is on the board of Dropbox. If there's a company that is going to have pressure from shareholders to make data available to the government it's going to be Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#12

Post by arfliw »

stirlo wrote: post #6

The clear point of this is not to protect from NSA/US Courts but to minimise tax. I'm not sure why they never setup out of Ireland in the first place, every other US company with international revenues has already. In addition unless Microsoft wins its appeal US courts have ruled that a US company eg: Dropbox can be forced to provide any data they have even if it is outside the US

>every other US company with international revenues has already

That's a bit of an overstatement. I think what you mean is every huge tech company or something along those lines. And I doubt it is even true for every member of that cohort. Though you are of course correct that it is common.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#18

Post by scintill76 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #4
Hobotron1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the NSA be able to capture the data on the way out anyways?

It would be completely irresponsible to not encrypt the data in transit between data centers.

Maybe, but Gmail just started doing that a year ago: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/20/5530072/google-encrypts-gm...

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#19

Post by dingaling »

stirlo wrote: post #6

The clear point of this is not to protect from NSA/US Courts but to minimise tax. I'm not sure why they never setup out of Ireland in the first place, every other US company with international revenues has already. In addition unless Microsoft wins its appeal US courts have ruled that a US company eg: Dropbox can be forced to provide any data they have even if it is outside the US

I'm sure they're intending to gain favorable financial benefits but moving the actual data to Ireland isn't necessary for that.

There are plenty of companies registered in Ireland which do not have a physical presence here. There is no test of what proportion of business activity occurs in Ireland.

For example Norwegian Airlines has something like a dozen " brass plaque" companies registered to a solicitor's address in Dublin but the only time their 787s touch Irish soil is on their delivery flight, to receive their EI- registration

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