6 ms·

1password explain the new Dropbox terms

91 points by davidedicillo 15y ago

yellowredblack 15y ago
Except that the excerpt you posted is the new, modified version after all the furor. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/02/0515218/Dropbox-TOS-Includes-Broad-Copyright-License http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/02/0515218/Dropbox-... Compare the above version to this new form: "This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services" It would appear that you didn't look into the issue at all before jumping to the defense of your main service provider. Is this the level of diligence we can expect from your product? But, hey, welcome to the party.
swombat 15y ago
The DropBox hoopla shows the downside of writing your terms in a readable language: people actually read them out of curiosity. And since people have no clue how to interpret the legal bits that are necessarily included if you don't want to be sued into oblivion, they completely misunderstand them. So the lesson is: keep your T&Cs cryptic, unintelligible, long, boring, etc - so that people don't read them. This way you can put whatever you want in them, including potentially nasty clauses (unlike the clause we're discussing here), since no one will read it anyway.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  I am sad at this reaction. We need more people writing their T&Cs in clear ways. There are many advantages in a clear T&C, not just for the consumer but also for you. You are stating upfront what relationship you want to have with a customer and obscure T&Cs means you have an obscure relationship. If even you can't understand your T&Cs then they're worthless, you actually don't know if you're covered or not. Just because Dropbox made a muckup, looking like they let a lawyer convince them that they needed that to cover their ass when they didn't, doesn't mean we should all run round hysterically paying for arcane language from a lawyer. I just don't believe they needed to write that clause that way. Imagine if it had read something like: By submitting your stuff to the Services, you are instructing us to use your rights as a licence holder or the copyright holder to 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 on your instructions. This is to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission. In the end this isn't a new scenario, do you think a printer asks for a worldwide license on the stuff he prints? And yet they're somehow pretending it is. They just want to say that you're instructing them to use the file in a particular way and that you have to ensure you have the rights to do that, a licence or the copyright. IANAL but it seems pretty clear to me that they let themselves get talked into putting a clause in there that actually wasn't clear.
- neetij 15y ago
  I can't tell if your opinion is lathered with sarcasm or brutal honesty. BagCheck has a nicely done Terms page which annotates legalese with Plain English - http://bagcheck.com/terms http://bagcheck.com/terms It is odd (and somewhat heartening) to learn that so many people still read those paragraphs of text nobody is supposedly reading.
- yellowredblack 15y ago
  to the extent we think it necessary for the Service vs to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. I am astounded that people here would criticize anyone for erring on the side of caution. If anyone can argue that the former is equivalent "plain english" for the latter, or that the latter is complicated legalese for the former then go ahead and signing contracts to that effect.
yellowredblack 15y ago
Dont fucking mod me down. The author claims that this is the paragraph that caused the furor: We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, 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. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission. [Emphasis added] When in fact this is the modified version that was posted after the furor. The original version is this: By submitting your stuff to the Services, 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 we think it necessary for the Service. Significantly different. And it was changed for a reason.
- swombat 15y ago
  It's not significantly different. They just added a line to clarify it some more after hordes of non-lawyers misinterpreted this standard legalese.
  - yellowredblack 15y ago
    It is not significantly different to a lawyer. Is dropbox's target market lawyers?
- beseku 15y ago
  It was changed because all the idiots who couldn't read the words "to the extent we think it necessary for the Service" were throwing a hissy fit. I'm guessing you were in that group and needed the clarification.
  - yellowredblack 15y ago
iuguy 15y ago
WebDAV is too slow? Really? Wow, I guess all those sharepoint users around the world must be cursing Webdav, along with the MobileMe users (and soon to be iCloud users, no doubt). Also claims that APIs aren't available for other platforms, I find a little disingenuous. Wuala supports iPhone, Android as well as Win, Mac and Linux. I would struggle to understand how Wuala wouldn't want to provide 1Password with access to an already existing API on the aforementioned mobile platforms.
- halostatue 15y ago
  I curse Sharepoint with every time I have to use it (and its WebDAV implementation only works well with Windows). If you haven't noticed, iDisk is one of those things that doesn't work well with MobileMe. 1Password also uses a lot of tiny files in its workflow (one of my items, a license stored in 1Password, ffdfa… has a 5k PNG, a 261 byte plist, and a 791 byte JSON file in two different directories; those separate files and directories are what make the sync efficient). Share point deals with larger files over WebDAV, where it can be more efficient for those files. If you spent five minutes on the Wuala website you would notice that they only have a GET series of APIs, not anything that the 1Password guys can use because the mobile apps can write as well as read. So, no, they aren't wrong.
aaaron 15y ago
Does Dropbox keep a revision history of your 1password data? It does that by default with other files. If there is a Dropbox breach, I would want to prevent hackers from getting their hands on older versions of my passwords locked with an outdated (eg, no longer top secret) master password.
yellowredblack 15y ago
Here's my complaint. The author is complaining about a big furor over the TOCs, and then proceeds to show us the TOCs that "seems" to be behind it. Here are the facts: * Dropbox released new TOCs. * There was a big furor. * Dropbox *modified* the TOCs. * Furor ended. Regardless of whether or not, in your opinion, the TOCs were significantly modified, the fact is that: * The author presents the modified version of the TOCs. * The author claims that the modified version caused the furor. This is patently false.

91 points by davidedicillo 15y ago

Except that the excerpt you posted is the new, modified version after all the furor. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/02/0515218/Dropbox-TOS-Includes-Broad-Copyright-License http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/02/0515218/Dropbox-... Compare the above version to this new form: "This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services" It would appear that you didn't look into the issue at all before jumping to the defense of your main service provider. Is this the level of diligence we can expect from your product? But, hey, welcome to the party.

swombat 15y ago

The DropBox hoopla shows the downside of writing your terms in a readable language: people actually read them out of curiosity. And since people have no clue how to interpret the legal bits that are necessarily included if you don't want to be sued into oblivion, they completely misunderstand them. So the lesson is: keep your T&Cs cryptic, unintelligible, long, boring, etc - so that people don't read them. This way you can put whatever you want in them, including potentially nasty clauses (unlike the clause we're discussing here), since no one will read it anyway.

mattmanser 15y ago
I am sad at this reaction. We need more people writing their T&Cs in clear ways. There are many advantages in a clear T&C, not just for the consumer but also for you. You are stating upfront what relationship you want to have with a customer and obscure T&Cs means you have an obscure relationship. If even you can't understand your T&Cs then they're worthless, you actually don't know if you're covered or not. Just because Dropbox made a muckup, looking like they let a lawyer convince them that they needed that to cover their ass when they didn't, doesn't mean we should all run round hysterically paying for arcane language from a lawyer. I just don't believe they needed to write that clause that way. Imagine if it had read something like: By submitting your stuff to the Services, you are instructing us to use your rights as a licence holder or the copyright holder to 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 on your instructions. This is to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission. In the end this isn't a new scenario, do you think a printer asks for a worldwide license on the stuff he prints? And yet they're somehow pretending it is. They just want to say that you're instructing them to use the file in a particular way and that you have to ensure you have the rights to do that, a licence or the copyright. IANAL but it seems pretty clear to me that they let themselves get talked into putting a clause in there that actually wasn't clear.
neetij 15y ago
I can't tell if your opinion is lathered with sarcasm or brutal honesty. BagCheck has a nicely done Terms page which annotates legalese with Plain English - http://bagcheck.com/terms http://bagcheck.com/terms It is odd (and somewhat heartening) to learn that so many people still read those paragraphs of text nobody is supposedly reading.
yellowredblack 15y ago
to the extent we think it necessary for the Service vs to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. I am astounded that people here would criticize anyone for erring on the side of caution. If anyone can argue that the former is equivalent "plain english" for the latter, or that the latter is complicated legalese for the former then go ahead and signing contracts to that effect.

yellowredblack 15y ago

Dont fucking mod me down. The author claims that this is the paragraph that caused the furor: We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, 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. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission. [Emphasis added] When in fact this is the modified version that was posted after the furor. The original version is this: By submitting your stuff to the Services, 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 we think it necessary for the Service. Significantly different. And it was changed for a reason.

swombat 15y ago
It's not significantly different. They just added a line to clarify it some more after hordes of non-lawyers misinterpreted this standard legalese.
- yellowredblack 15y ago
  It is not significantly different to a lawyer. Is dropbox's target market lawyers?
beseku 15y ago
It was changed because all the idiots who couldn't read the words "to the extent we think it necessary for the Service" were throwing a hissy fit. I'm guessing you were in that group and needed the clarification.
- yellowredblack 15y ago

iuguy 15y ago

WebDAV is too slow? Really? Wow, I guess all those sharepoint users around the world must be cursing Webdav, along with the MobileMe users (and soon to be iCloud users, no doubt). Also claims that APIs aren't available for other platforms, I find a little disingenuous. Wuala supports iPhone, Android as well as Win, Mac and Linux. I would struggle to understand how Wuala wouldn't want to provide 1Password with access to an already existing API on the aforementioned mobile platforms.

halostatue 15y ago
I curse Sharepoint with every time I have to use it (and its WebDAV implementation only works well with Windows). If you haven't noticed, iDisk is one of those things that doesn't work well with MobileMe. 1Password also uses a lot of tiny files in its workflow (one of my items, a license stored in 1Password, ffdfa… has a 5k PNG, a 261 byte plist, and a 791 byte JSON file in two different directories; those separate files and directories are what make the sync efficient). Share point deals with larger files over WebDAV, where it can be more efficient for those files. If you spent five minutes on the Wuala website you would notice that they only have a GET series of APIs, not anything that the 1Password guys can use because the mobile apps can write as well as read. So, no, they aren't wrong.

aaaron 15y ago

Does Dropbox keep a revision history of your 1password data? It does that by default with other files. If there is a Dropbox breach, I would want to prevent hackers from getting their hands on older versions of my passwords locked with an outdated (eg, no longer top secret) master password.

yellowredblack 15y ago

Here's my complaint. The author is complaining about a big furor over the TOCs, and then proceeds to show us the TOCs that "seems" to be behind it. Here are the facts: * Dropbox released new TOCs. * There was a big furor. * Dropbox *modified* the TOCs. * Furor ended. Regardless of whether or not, in your opinion, the TOCs were significantly modified, the fact is that: * The author presents the modified version of the TOCs. * The author claims that the modified version caused the furor. This is patently false.