

Dropbox blocks API access for Boxopus over piracy concerns - gilrain
http://torrentfreak.com/dropbox-bans-bittorrent-startup-boxopus-over-piracy-concerns-120626

======
AYBABTME
"[$30,000 USD] in developments costs have gone down the drain". It seems kinda
silly to put 30k$ 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".

~~~
aimatt
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?

~~~
AYBABTME
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.

------
suprgeek
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.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4152595>

------
rmc
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?

~~~
sp332
Most of that piracy stuff was not based on bittorrent. Also, Dropbox is
currently used for piracy without bittorrent.

~~~
res0nat0r
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.

~~~
chii
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.

~~~
rmc
Until AWS shuts it down. Or the assets of the whole company get seized.

------
rome
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.

------
redslazer
Put your hand up if you saw this coming.

O/

When I saw the post I asked myself how long it would take for dropbox to block
them, it took about a day.

------
aimatt
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.

~~~
wissler
Someone chanting that "it's Dropbox's API and they can do what they want" in
5, 4, 3, 2...

~~~
stewartbutler
Well... yeah?

~~~
wissler
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.

~~~
drivebyacct2
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".

~~~
wissler
The subject is "should Dropbox block the API" not "can Dropbox block the API."

And yes, the saw liability and wanted to mitigate it -- at the expense of
moral principle.

~~~
drivebyacct2
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.

~~~
wissler
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).

~~~
sliverstorm
... Dropbox is a megacorp? They have something like 100 employees.

------
ashray
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

------
feronull
I was just wondering the other day how this got approved by Dropbox :)

------
praptak
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.

~~~
J3L2404
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.

~~~
praptak
Given viable replacements for Dropbox, this is not a huge blow. I'd expect
more legal trouble on their torrent end.

------
phamilton
3 months with 5 people is a $30k investment?

Assuming full time, that's around 2500 man hours. I guess that's $30k if you
pay them $12/hour.

------
trustfundbaby
pretty smart move to protect their brand IMO

------
jeffool
I don't suppose Google Drive or Amazon's Clouddrive have an API?

~~~
gilrain
Drive does, yes. (<https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/>)

~~~
drivebyacct2
They both do, my sarcasm sensor is going off for jeffool's post.

~~~
jeffool
Not sarcasm. I genuinely didn't know. But the inference was very obvious and
heavy, yes.

------
MBlume
Y'know, I'll bet Dropbox is small enough that one engineer with a resignation
letter in hand could've reversed this before it was announced publicly.

~~~
sliverstorm
Dropbox engineers don't owe Boxopus anything. Why would you expect them to
jump ship?

------
sodiumphosphate
Duh.

------
wissler
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.

~~~
rprasad
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.

~~~
wissler
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).

~~~
rprasad
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.

~~~
wissler
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.

So, Dropbox is indeed behaving immorally.

~~~
J3L2404
Oh the noble pirate, Dropbox must throw themselves on their sword to be moral.
You are way out on a ledge but your tinfoil hat fits well.

~~~
wissler
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?

~~~
mc32
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).

~~~
wissler
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.

~~~
mc32
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

~~~
wissler
Animal-derived products are not morally repugnant, and the framework of law is
no substitute for having a good moral sense.

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." --Martin
Luther King, Jr.

~~~
mc32
>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.

~~~
wissler
How you or others "feel" is not a moral argument. And you do not understand
the point of Dr. King's quote.

~~~
jeremyarussell
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.

------
J3L2404
Castles made of sand and all that.

------
alsothings
I point to this and I point to the arrest of Kim DotCom. That is all.

