I know HN only has one viewpoint on these matters. However, I was hoping someone could explain to this poor soul how a scenario like the following is ruled out by this language:

I'm the dropbox CEO. I provide a free service for most of my users. As time goes on, I'm having trouble making ends meet. I find that unless I get more cash in the next 7 days, I will be unable to pay my hosting bill and my service will be shuttered. Thus, obtaining more cash is necessary for the Service.

Now along comes a firm, we'll just call them SLP. SLP is willing to give me a bridge loan on very good terms immediately. The only catch is that they require me to sublicense worldwide royalty-free rights to use, copy and publicly display all works stored in the dropbox service. Their purposes for wanting the data is unclear, however it is quite clear that I won't have oversight on the use of the data. I can imagine, however, that they might be interested in using it for data mining, advertising or industrial espionage. We don't speak of any details, though. If I revoke the license, the bridge loan plus penalties immediately comes due.

I can find no other source of funding at this time - I've played all my other cards. I, as the CEO, believe taking this loan at these terms is absolutely necessary if I am going to continue providing the service. So, I sign, sublicense, and don't actually inform even many people in my company let alone the user base. SLP quietly gets read only access to all the data. To whatever extent SLP uses this data, they believe their use of it is necessary for the Service in that they don't believe the bridge loan will ever be repaid and they believe it is necessary to extract value from the data to recoup any losses they expect on the loan.

Now, mind you, I don't actually believe that dropbox has any sort of intent of doing something like this, or that they'd be likely to do so even if their back was against the wall. I also agree it's a pretty far fetched scenario.

I'm simply wondering how a license like this (and the multitide of others like it, I'm not intending to single dropbox out at all) prevents this behavior. You know, because I'm one of the total morons that can't understand simple english.

As a programmer, you might say, like you just have, "AHA! But if you don't pay your subcontractors, they won't do their work. So, for the performance of their work, you can sell your data to anyone, if the company's survival is threatened!"

Unfortunately (or fortunately), lawyers, judges, prosecutors and juries are not programmers, and I think you'll find they don't interpret it that way. "For the performance of their work" is clearly intended to mean "directly linked to their work" as well.

The same is true of the DropBox terms. "Necessary for the Service" does not mean "whatever you might imagine could be necessary if you were arguing with a magical genie as to the possible definitions of terms" - it means "what is directly necessary so that the service can operate as normal". So I don't think any judge or jury would accept that selling out all their customers was "necessary for the Service", in the hypothetical case you mention.

Remember, law isn't about theoretical logic - it's about practically resolving disputes between people.

Is dropbox's target market lawyers?

And as far as the matter of dropbox, a few others in this thread have concisely addressed the real "issue" at hand.

* dropbox's customers are not lawyers * serving up people's files without passwords one week reduces people's confidence when the read new TOCs next week.

No, nix that, the real issue is standards of blogging. The author made a claim about what caused the furor, including a quote, and that quote, regardless of whether or not you believe it to be legally equivalent, was not the TOCs that caused the furor.

Had the author made all the same points about, after quoting the original TOCs, then a) I would not have posted and b) you would be right.

I don't believe that dropbox has any intention of screwing people over. Nor do I believe that they had any intention of allowing users to log in to any account without a password. I do believe that the latter incident, and the TOCs, are huge gaffes, and that the 1password guy misrepresented the TOC issue with incorrect facts.

As for your language and comment, drop it. HN is for intelligent discussion, not this tripe.

Edit: Just looked at your comment history. It's pretty bad. You'd best learn to be civil, or leave now.

And your 2.8 avg isnt anything to shout about either.