"You grant us (and our partners in this service) a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, transferable license to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or conversions) , distribute or publicly display your files within the limits of reasonable conditions to the proper functioning of the service. " These few lines of legalese contained in the terms of use Dropbox, a popular service for storing files online, has angered users in early July.
Deliberately broad, this passage conditions of use suggests that Dropbox could, if necessary, make public the contents of files stored by its users - and while Dropbox has built a significant part of its success on encryption and data security. "Of course, some of you will say 'oh, so say the terms of use, but they will never do it'," writes Ben Schorr, a specialist in information technology law, on his blog . "Many of you are lawyers (I know my readers): Do you encourage a customer to sign an agreement giving the other party rights abuses under the pretext that you know that they have the right but they will not do? "
CURRENT PROVISION:
However, the clause is not new: if Dropbox has proceeded to amend its terms of use, this passage was already there. Above all, Dropbox is far from the only service to use this clause. The same sentence, almost word for word, appears in the terms of use of the Nintendo 3DS, in those of Google Docs, and in those of Facebook, or in those of Twitpic, Twitter and many other services.
"This is an essential clause," explains Bruno Anatrella, a lawyer specializing in technology law. "Publishers need to service this clause to be able to transfer files: an act of reproduction does not necessarily mean that the contents of a file will be made public, but when a service copy of a document from one server to a otherwise, it performs a reproduction ". The clause in the terms of use for most Web services is certainly made more broadly, but it does not confer special rights to the publisher.
"This clause does not give the publisher of intellectual property rights on the creation of user: Dropbox could not, for example, choose a book from documents stored by users on its servers." Twitpic, a photo sharing service which adopted a similar clause - but larger - in its terms of use, acknowledged in May in front of the Bronc its users: "You, the user, keep all of your intellectual property in your photos and videos, it's your content. Our terms and conditions specified by publishing your content on Twitpic, you authorize us to distribute our services and twitpic.com partners ".
The controversy over Twitpic then Dropbox, however, illustrates the growing complexity of conditions of use of Web services. Dematerialized and international services have developed over the years of legislation more complex and time consuming to secure from prosecution in any country. Result: endless agreements (more than 50 pages for mobile terms of use of iTunes, for example) and abstruse, parodied in the last season of American cartoon South Park. Having accepted the terms without reading them, one of the characters ends up kidnapped by Apple to participate in an unsavory experience, despite opposition from his father a lawyer.
