[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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