[LINK] Dropbox ToS Under Fire
Roger Clarke
Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Wed Jul 6 08:35:03 AEST 2011
[Following on from some work I did on cloud computing for
corporations and government agencies, I've done some analysis of
consumers' rights in their dealings with service-providers like
Google, MS, Dropbox, etc., incl:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/CCC.html
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/IU-SPE-1012.html
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/IU-SPE-A1-Dropbox.html
[The article below shows that, at long last, there's some emergent
recognition of the massive threat that these corporations' Terms of
Service represent to businesses.]
Analyst warns businesses off Dropbox
By Jennifer Scott on Jul 6, 2011 7:07 AM (1 hour ago)
ITNews
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/262729,analyst-warns-businesses-off-dropbox.aspx
Changes to terms and conditions cause consternation.
An analyst has warned businesses not to use Dropbox after the online
synchronisation service made controversial changes to its terms and
conditions.
Dropbox angered users over the weekend after appearing to lay claim
to documents and other files uploaded to the service.
"You grant us (and those we work with to provide the services)
worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use,
copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or
format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to
the extent reasonably necessary for the service," the company's
revised terms and conditions stated.
Dropbox was immediately forced to defend the new terms, claiming they
were necessary for features such as creating public links to files
and sharing folders with colleagues.
"We want to be 100 percent clear that you own what you put in your
Dropbox," the company stated on its blog.
"We don't own your stuff. And the license you give us is really
limited. It only allows us to provide the service to you. Nothing
else."
Is that enough to put users' minds at rest? One analyst doesn't think so.
Speaking to our sister site Cloud Pro, Clive Longbottom, founder of
Quocrica, said companies that run free services believe they can
tweak policies as much as they like and this could affect both
consumers and business.
"Even as a consumer, I'd be worried that Dropbox is essentially
saying that it 'owns' any documents that I drop through its service,"
he said.
"As a business person, I'd be horrified - everything in those
documents could be intellectual property and it belongs to me at an
IP and a copyright level."
Longbottom claimed businesses should seek protection from service
level agreements (SLA), rather than fall victim to re-jigged T&Cs.
"Yes, it will mean paying for it, but managing an organisation's IP
has to be seen as a cost, not something to do along 'best efforts'
capabilities," he added.
"With any commercial system, you have to look at the T&Cs just as
much - make sure that they cannot be altered without agreement,
otherwise [the provider] will just wait until you've paid your
subscription (preferably 20 years in advance) and then change the
T&Cs to say 'Hah - it all belongs to us!'"
--
Roger Clarke http://www.rogerclarke.com/
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
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