Dropbox of DOOOOOOOOOM! (not)

I’m going to begin by saying that when I woke up this morning there was an email from Dropbox telling me they’d updated their terms of service (TOS) again. I have not checked to see if the wording that inspired the Saturday-afternoon ohmigodtheskyisfalling Internet shitstorm has been modified.  It won’t matter, honestly.  At this point they (Dropbox) have already incensed the Web-mounted legions of the batshit insane, and stupid childish concepts like reality and intent won’t dissuade the insane from ranting and screaming and the odd crucifixion.

The short version: Dropbox updated their TOS to say, essentially, ” we own and can do whatever the fuck we want with anything you put in our servers, whether you owned it or not to start with.”

And the Intarwebs, to say the least, went fucking batshit insane.  In my abnormal corner of it, I saw the writers-and-publisher side of it.

And it made me laugh.

Writers were evil-Tweeting and blog-posting about how Dropbox had betrayed them, how they were pulling their content and writing sternly-worded letters of condemnation, and how the world was out to steal their shit.  Many of the small-press publishers and periodicals I follow or get updates on were saying the same thing, because they couldn’t have their content–their stories, their billing invoices, their cached secret gay donkey porn–being owned by a file cabinet.

Because that’s what Dropbox is–a file cabinet you can check from anywhere. That’s why it’s awesome.  And that’s why I don’t care.  Let me spell it out:

1. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that a company can unilaterally assume ownership rights of intellectual content merely by saying so in their terms of service–which is stupid, because that’d be like me saying “Okay, you can ride in my car to lunch–but that means I get to go through your wallet and purse and all the ringtones on your phone are mine now”–the only company large enough that I might worry about them actually doing anything with my stored content is Amazon.
2. If I’m a writer, and suddenly Dropbox claims they own all the drafts of my short story saved on their server, what am I afraid of.  Is there an executive at the Dropbox World Headquarters (which is obviously like, Trump Towers or that new huge building in Abu Dhabi, right?) sitting there with a memo thinking “You know, I’ve always wanted to write a paranormal historical slash story, about Sherlock Holmes having light-night trysts with the the ghost of Marilyn Manson–let’s just grab all those fiddly bits in our file cabinet. I’ll sort through the literally billions of files that must be there, which I’m sure are clearly named and organized so anyone can decipher my folder hierarchy, so I can just take the one I want and make it a book and a movie and have all those millions of dollars for me!”
3. Seriously–what the hell is a file cabinet company going to do with your manuscript?

“But Jason,” you might be saying, “I’m not taking the chance–even if it probably won’t happen, it could happen.”  Yes.  It could.  You could also win the lottery. Or get abducted by aliens.  Or abducted by Albanians. Or hit by a car. Or fall in love. Or be struck on the head by a meteor.  Develop cancer.  Have sex. The odds are all pretty much in the general area of not fucking likely.

I’ve also heard this one: “But Jason,” you might be saying, “if Dropbox has claimed first-exclusive rights to my story, no editor will buy it.” Of course not–because I’m 100% certain Gordon van Gelder is going to accept your story for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but then retract that acceptance. “Oh, I’m sorry–you stored this on Dropbox. They own it. I’ll have to send the contract and the check to them.”  You’re right. That’s totally going to happen.

Relax, Internet.  Take two moments, rub some neurons together, and realize what they almost certainly meant: that you’re granting them the right to distribute your uploaded materials as you dictate–publicly to public files, privately to password files, etc.–and they’re making sure you understand that allowing a professional company the right to distribute your material is probably, in some states at least, a method of publishing and they have to protect themselves against lawsuits.  There aren’t two guys at the Dropbox building who have “Department of Stealing and Exploiting People’s Shit,” written on their door.  They’re not secretly sending your novels out to Hollywood to get the movie rights.  You won’t see the new Dropbox SF imprint publishing your novel.

Oh, and if you read this far? Go ahead and zip up the contents of your hard drive and email it to me at ha-ha-you-fell-for-it@suckitbitches.com. Because I’ve recently upgraded this blog’s TOS to say that I now own the complete life’s work of anyone who reads this post.  You totally believe me, don’t you?  Of course you do–this is the Internet. It must be real.

ps–if there really is a ha-ha-you-fell-for-it@suckitbitches.com, I apologize for all the large spam you’re about to get.

July 3, 2011 | Categories: Funny, Rants, Writing | Tags: asshattery, Dropbox, dumbassedness, Random Nonsense, Rants, weird shit | 1 Comment »