5 ms·

Well... yeah?

• wissler 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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 14y ago
        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 14y ago
          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 14y ago
            ... Dropbox is a megacorp? They have something like 100 employees.