Dropbox blocks API access for Boxopus over piracy concerns

http://torrentfreak.com/dropbox-bans-bittorrent-startup-boxopus-over-piracy-concerns-120626

by gilrain • 14 years ago

50 80 14 years ago

aimatt2• 14 years ago

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.

gyardley2• 14 years ago

Dropbox isn't blocking third-party apps, they blocked one particular third-party app which was aggressively attempting to pin a giant 'hey, come sue me' target on their back.

Both smart and user-friendly, for the subset of users who use Dropbox for things other than piracy.

wissler17• 14 years ago

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

stewartbutler• 14 years ago

Well... yeah?

sodiumphosphate• 14 years ago

Duh.

alsothings• 14 years ago

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

J3L24044• 14 years ago

Castles made of sand and all that.

phamilton• 14 years ago

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.

redslazer• 14 years ago

Put your hand up if you saw this coming.

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

AYBABTME3• 14 years ago

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

aimatt2• 14 years ago

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?

AYBABTME3• 14 years ago

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.

rmc2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

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.

feronull• 14 years ago

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

trustfundbaby• 14 years ago

pretty smart move to protect their brand IMO

wissler17• 14 years ago

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.

AYBABTME3• 14 years ago

Maybe Dropbox is not interested in being part of the "P2P against RIAA" fight.

dave_sullivan• 14 years ago

I don't know that the apple analogy holds up. Yes, an apple could be perceived as a hand grenade by a crazy person, but a sane person could see how boxopus will likely be used for piracy.

And maybe that's just fine, but it's kind of drop box's house, their rules. It's like if you own a building and your new tenant, a computer repair store, decides to pivot to being a medical marijuana dispensary. Hey, it's legal-ish, but you can't really fault the landlord for kicking them out.

Plus, once you take 400 million, you're part of the system and you don't need to make yourself a bigger target than you already are.

wissler17• 14 years ago

"but a sane person could see how boxopus will likely be used for piracy."

And a sane person could see how a butter knife could be used for murder.

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

> it is their duty to take the proper moral stand. Otherwise they are clearly just part of the problem.

They are taking a moral stand. Their stance is they don't want to get involved with software which they believe is primarily going to be use for piracy. Their company, their decision.

wissler17• 14 years ago

Their behavior is unprincipled with respect to their customers. It is immoral. "Their company, their decision" is not a moral argument.

rprasad3• 14 years ago

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.

wissler17• 14 years ago

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).

jeremyarussell3• 14 years ago

So in order to get unpirated stuff you go to the pirate bay to find it?

Humble Bundle, most Linux Distro's, Open Source Software, Public Domain Books, Articles, http://www.clearbits.net/ (legal open music), every site listed here http://gigaom.com/video/ten-sites-for-free-and-legal-torrent..., NASA Footage...

I could actually go on. Thanks for trying to show everyone how evil torrents are.

samstave• 14 years ago

BS - dropbox is NOT taking a moral stand. They are under the control of corporate council in a highly visible silicon valley company.

Give me access to Drew Houston's home machines and I will likely be able to prove he has torrent software installed and content downloaded. Let's not be morons here - this is about corporate governance to appear responsible regardless of morals.

If Dropbox wanted to take an actual moral stand it would implement a system which would fingerprint the .avi and .mp4 files (as examples) stored by its users, compare them to torrent files it could download in an automated fashion And delete/block syncing of said fingerprinted files.

This is in no way a moral stand it's a legal circle jerk making sure VC funding credibility is retained.

inopinatus• 14 years ago

Actually, no, I disagree, it is not the duty of a short-term technology industry leader to be an instrument of social change. They can do that if they want to, but there's no categorical imperative.

One might even cite Facebook as the counterexample, an organisation whose leader is explicitly and openly part of a systemic shift in expectations of privacy.

jeffool2• 14 years ago

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

gilrain• 14 years ago

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

drivebyacct24• 14 years ago

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

praptak2• 14 years ago

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.

J3L24044• 14 years ago

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.

praptak2• 14 years ago

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

suprgeek• 14 years ago

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

MBlume• 14 years ago

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.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

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

rome• 14 years ago

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.

ashray• 14 years ago

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

Dropbox blocks API access for Boxopus over piracy concerns

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