Hacker News Reader

>Problem is: the rights as worded by Google allow a whole lot more than the reasonable-use wording by Dropbox.

They actually don't. Google specifically enumerates the rights that you're granting them. Dropbox actually does not state specifically what rights Dropbox needs to provide the services, and as such, could claim that you're granting all of the rights that Google has granted and more. This does not include full ownership, which they explicitly deny.

View on HN

>Google specifically enumerates the rights that you're granting them

They sure do. It just turns out one of these rights is that they can use your content for promotional purposes (advertising?).

Dropbox may not have such a detailed TOS, but they are clear on one thing: whatever rights you do grant them are solely for the provision of the service to you.

The problem is that Dropbox may, at their sole discretion, decide that providing ads is part of "the Service". Under their TOS, they could do that without changing it.

Realistically, Dropbox won't ever do that. But the key thing here is that Dropbox's TOS does not explicitly state exactly what rights they believe they need to operate with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com