1) Isn't free
2) Is accessible to $stateAuthority if they come knocking
3) Makes your data access reliant on a third party who may or may not be up in an emergency or:
4) Could disappear at any time and take your data with them
So basically, the same problems that affect every cloud solution provider ever.
Because for me, the prime reason I refuse to use Dropbox[1] is that it's unfree software as per the speech definition. I am not running software on my computer that needs internet access and transmits files when I can not verify what this program does, in addition to my personal policy of reducing my usage of unfree software to an absolute, unavoidable minimum.
[1] I'm studying CS and it's really annoying how ubiquitous Dropbox has become among the student crowds. I stopped counting after about the first three dozen attempts of people trying to get me to use Dropbox.
Personally, I think you're being rather paranoid on the whole free software (as in speech) thing, but hey, whatever works for you :)
I guess not when companies like box.net are giving out 50GB for free. =/
I don't agree with #4. All your data is stored locally, it DropBox goes away the data just stops syncing. (You would lose version history, but it's only 30 days so not useful)
2) This is a problem with just about any service unless you use something based in another country, but then you play by that governments rules
3) That third party is Amazon S3/EBS/EC2 which, if used correctly, provides a solution thousands of times better than you can with the same budget (redundant datacenters, high availability, etc)
4) If they do disappear, you still have all your data on your computers with Dropbox installed.
Now, help me understand point 1) please.
I assume for now that you're talking about the 'get someone to sign up' bonus? Which would be very shady in my world and is probably part of the reason why the GP gets annoyed by people at his university, trying to sift through the masses and find those that didn't sign up yet and could offer them a slight bonus.
It's spamming your own network.