Note: The situation in the following post has been resolved for now. Dropbox has taken everyone's outrage seriously, and has fixed the problem. More information here . I am leaving this post and the follow-ups up because it contains a good deal of information on how to protect yourself and your intellectual property when working in the cloud. As of Sat, July 2 2011, Dropbox has joined Facebook and who-knows-how-many-other ass-backward companies in declaring eminent domain on their user's data. That's right, boys and girls, if you're using Dropbox for storing your manuscripts, photographs, creative works, etc., you should know that their revised TOS says that: you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service. In other words, they own your stuff. Not that this would stand up for a minute in court -- but do you want to be a test case? That right there is bad enough -- almost, but not quite as bad as Facebook claiming copyright to anything you post, link to, etc. (and using everything you post in their advertising), but Dropbox does one better. Lest you say "Haha! I've dodged a bullet! I only use dropbox to hold my ebook collection, or to sync my porn files and music between my home and office systems!" you