The conclusions here feel overblown to me. I'm all for being vigilant, but but there's nothing compelling Dropbox to madly scramble to (as the author puts it) "pass muster under the new regime".

But what new regime? I'm not totally sure what the basis is for claiming that the old-line industry _just now_ went after MegaUpload because of their legitimate features. Sure, shutting down MU is done on behalf of the interests of copyright owners, however vested they may be . . . but just because SOPA/PIPA (regrettably) come close to passing through Congress and this, truly, seems to betray the pull that RIAA/lobbyists exert over legislators does not also imply that - suddenly! - copyright owners control the government. Cf. "The U.S. government. Government in league with old-line corporate elites." U.S. Government? Which part? Which law? Since when? Which you know about . . . how?

And E-Mail?? That seems absurd. It's not as though your ISP garners revenues from you e-mailing a track to your girlfriend - ie, the basis on which your e-mail service would be disqualified for the DMCA safe harbor exemptions . . . not to mention that it seems an exceptionally remote likelihood that they'd even have knowledge of the e-mail you sent.

Just pause and notice how incredibly top-down for lack of a better term, the author's path to his conclusion really is. What only slightly less obvious is the implied conspiracy and obvious legal ignorance: "...the gigantic protest against legislative moves (SOPA and PIPA) that would smash the Internet turned out to be superfluous. The thing everyone wanted to prevent is already here." What?! I didn't see the laws change; all I really see is an egregious violator, a couple of trumped-up conspiracy charges with not much to them (sidenote: piling on grounds for action is standard practice), and an organization picked on for the immense and immediate unlikability of its CEO (Kim Dotcom). To say nothing about the differences between MU and Dropbox.

On that note, we're forgetting the evidence cited in Megaupload being shut down. This is referenced elsewhere, but there's a mens rea (state of mind / intentionality) requirement for infringement to rise to the level of criminal law. Ie, the reason why MU was shut down with a criminal action, etc. For another, it's not even clear that banning U.S. users would actually keep flagrant DMCA violators from breaking the law anyway.

The DMCA is working. Er, rather: it does a pretty good job of balancing what content hosts (Youtube, Scribd, Reddit, etc.) can do to keep functioning and continue doing what they're doing today, while leaving intact pretty good rules prescribing the means for that "old-line" elite to take content down.

Contrast this with

>SOPA/PIPA on the one hand, which is a comic and internet-autistic attempt for media co. to replace the current, working equilibrium we have with a way for them to call the shots on how the internet functions and

>MegaUpload on the other, from whom those enforcers already had found e-mails: not about the manner in which to address DMCA takedown notices, but rather explicitly writing e-mails outlining how/when not to do it.

Just remember, the charges being piled on megaupload right now don't have scant evidence or case law, or fall squarely under that class of things which smart/conscientious content providers would NEVER do. Sure, the instant reproducibility of digital content and flat ability for people to do so has CLEARLY outstripped that understanding of copyright law that was devised a couple of centuries ago . . . and, probably against their own interests, folks like the RIAA would like to see the clocks reset to those old days.

But MegaUpload being shut down seems more likely a show of how easy it should be to NOT get shut down, than it is any kind of trend for Box.net to be next. Let's not exaggerate the portability exposed by some kind of megaupload-styled "19th Century is back!" generic censorship strategy, ok? I think we should all be watching but there's nothing peculiarly concerning - or at least not here.