File hosting & syncing services

[unboggling]

I've been looking into file hosting and syncing services such as Dropbox, SugarSync, and ZumoDrive. I thought a thread on this subject might be useful for people wanting to backup or sync eBooks. Not that I have many answers at this point, but maybe some of you do.

ZumoDrive seemed great at first because it can stream (working through iTunes) directly to iDevices, but I had problems setting ZD up, probably due to a conflict with Dropbox or SugarSync, or maybe my nonstandard file sharing and file permissions. So I haven't experimented with it yet.

These services give you typically 1 or 2 GB of free space hoping you'll need and buy more. To give an idea of varying rates: for $99/year you get 20 GB from MobileMe, 50 GB from Dropbox, and 60 GB from SugarSync.

If my files are going to be on somebody else's file-hosting servers, I basically give up the right to privacy. Did you know that the system admins of these cloud file-hosting services can decrypt and access your files? Did you know that some including Dropbox make agreements with agencies that enforce copyright protection, and may delete de-DRMed media content legally at any time, possibly informing the authorities? That's what some content on wikipedia said or implied. I de-DRM solely for the purpose of conversions so the media items I buy (erh, lease) can be available to my multiple devices for my sole personal use, and don't consider myself morally or legally criminal for doing that. (If the publishers and vendors think that's criminal then there's something seriously broken and flawed in the media publishing/distribution industries, imho. But let's not rant about that here.) If these file-hosting services can delete my content at will, why do I want to use them in the first place?

Well, it's useful to sync documents and media across devices and to have off-site backup. That's why.

Any further info, comments, discussion?

[gmw]

Interesting. This was something I was looking for just the other day ... sort of. I needed to transfer a file between two secure sites and that sort of thing can make traditional FTP really difficult. The file was encrypted but we didn't really want to sign up to some third party storage anyway. What I found was HFS.

Their explanation is: "You can use HFS (HTTP File Server) to send and receive files. It's different from classic file sharing because it uses web technology to be more compatible with today's Internet. It also differs from classic web servers because it's very easy to use and runs "right out-of-the box". Access your remote files, over the network. It has been successfully tested with Wine under Linux."

Essentially it's a HTTP (web) server that runs as an application rather than a background service and it's easy to set-up to share one folder (or whatever) on a temporary basis while needed. Using http for transfer is not ideal but it has the advantage of using just one ip port, making it easy to punch a temporary hole through your firewall if/where needed. Combined with my dyndns service this made it very easy to transfer some large files: no third parties have to hold the file, no size limits (except your upload/download limits).

Not for everyone, but it was just what I wanted.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by unboggling

If my files are going to be on somebody else's file-hosting servers, I basically give up the right to privacy. Did you know that the system admins of these cloud file-hosting services can decrypt and access your files? Did you know that some including Dropbox make agreements with agencies that enforce copyright protection, and may delete de-DRMed media content legally at any time, possibly informing the authorities?

A slight touch of paranoia there, I fancy. Can you give any examples of this having been done?

[abookreader]

1. Of course they could inspect my files. That goes without saying. Just like a bank could take their key and go look at my safety deposit box.

You do make a good point though. I personally don't put data that I have privacy concerns about on those servers (Financial Info etc).

2. Deleting un-DRM'd files and reporting their customers? I have absolutely no knowledge of this ever happening. How in the world could they possibly know that my files are "naughty" simply by a lack of DRM and what in the world could possibly be in it for them? I have plenty of legally obtained books that don't have DRM. I am agog that they have the staffing necessary to sort through massive Terabytes of data to look for copyright violations.

I do suspect that the day something like that hit the news

"Company XXXX breaks customer privacy and reports them to _______ "

They'd probably be out of business as a consumer file back-up service. Customers would leave them in droves over privacy concerns. So if you do know of something like that happening do tell.

Now I do know that some file hosting places like RapidShare or HotFile will delete a file if they receive a Take Down Notice. Those are completely different types of services than Dropbox however.

[unboggling]

Re HFS, interesting. That isn't available for me on a Mac at present though it looks good for W and L users.

Re paranoia, I am perhaps overly paranoid. I said, or meant, they *could* do it, not necessarily that they *do*. I too can't imagine them turning users over to the law unless there were some huge amount of traffic in such material under that user's account. I haven't heard of any specific instances of that happening to regular users, or even to huge-traffic users.

Here is one of the references at wikepedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)

"Copyright issues
Dropbox has agreed to abide by the DMCA copyright guidelines and therefore it has dissuaded its users from uploading copyrighted content to Dropbox's servers. Dropbox has reserved the right to delete or remove any file from users' accounts if it violates the DMCA.[32]"

Yes, I know the term "dissuaded its users" is vague.

Another from same article:
"Dropbox has been criticized for not supporting the ability for users to use their own AES-256 keys…."

Someone like me who is new to using such services needs to determine what kind of files to store there. Of course, it's wise to hold back any confidential/financial/security files. At this point I've pretty much decided not to use these services at all except for one "working" directory where I keep work in progress that I might need to refer to or sync to/from on one of my other devices.

[abookreader]

Ah, okay.
Yes but the only way Dropbox has to determine if a file violates DMCA is if they receive a Notice (Takedown Notice) from somebody claiming to be the copyright holder of that document and asking for its removal. That is not the same thing as Dropbox personnel searching through files and trying to make a judgment call on whether or not the file is legal and then contacting the copyright holders themselves.

In the case of Dropbox - nobody except those who have permission to look at your folders can search to see what you have stored on those servers. In my case that would be my laptop, my husband's Macbook, our iPADs etc etc. Well, nobody except those who have permission and I guess Dropbox personnel as we discussed. But they shouldn't be doing that and if it came to light that they were it would severely harm the company.

It is a bit different than say like Rapidshare, where there are search engines that will try to find files and then anybody with the link to the file can download it and view it.

[unboggling]

Okay. I'm new to this host-service stuff, so I appreciate the clarifications.

[CWatkinsNash]

I started using SugerSync yesterday, so this is a timely discussion for me. I'm using it exclusively for backing up my Calibre library. Observations so far:

• Sign-up and installation was painless.
• Multiple upload speed options are efficient. "Fast" really does utilize the maximum bandwidth, as evidenced by the fact that my VOIP ceased proper functioning (and also by network usage numbers). "Slow" keeps the files moving but keeps it from interfering with other network traffic.
• I like the interface, but that is subjective and some might find that some things are not intuitive.
• I like that they offer more free space than the other top companies.

So far, so good. Does what it's supposed to without any apparent issues. I decided to try it because my Calibre library changes more frequently than anything else on this computer, and backing up to an external drive was getting tedious. I still plan to do that, but on a much less frequent schedule.

[AndrewH]

If one were truly paranoid, one could create an encrypted volume inside Dropbox with TrueCrypt.

[Caltsar]

I'm personally a Dropbox fan. Well along my way through eating up a 50GB plan.

As far as copyrighted files are concerned, my understanding of the DMCA policy is that Dropbox will delete anything that they get a takedown notice for. In order to get that takedown notice, the copyright holder must first know you are sharing the file and have a link to the specific file being shared. This can only be done if you post the public link to the file on a site such as these forums.

Dropbox, by default, is a private file hosting/syncing tool. Only files you explicitly share out can be seen by other people and those files are the ones you should be concerned about being deleted should a DMCA takedown notice be sent to Dropbox. As far as I know, there's no way for a copyright holder to send a list of songs, books, movies, etc to Dropbox and say "delete these off all users' accounts."

[david_e]

I just use the Apple product MobileMe. It isn't for everyone, it certainly isn't free, and I think you get more value from it if you use multiple Macs (or a combo of Mac / iPhone / touch / iPad) but I've used it since it was known as Mac dot Com and have never had any negative issues.

It works with the sync utility so you can set it up and forget about it. You can also access it from anywhere and set up sharing preferences to suit your own needs.

Like all cloud services there have been hiccups, especially when they were making some major changes. They were proactive in extending the service agreement by several months for the inconvenience.

[curtw]

If you're willing to stick with ePub files, the O'Reilly "Bookworm" repository (http://bookworm.oreilly.com) promises privacy of your uploads.

[Andrew H.]

I use dropbox (free) for file transfers, but for backup I use mozy - unlimited backups for $4.95/month. I have 290 GBs backed up offsite on their servers. (And, yeah, it took weeks for the initial upload.)

[kalex]

You can always encrypt before you sync. I do that with my 1password folder. Its encrypted by 1password and then encrypted with dropbox so its double encryption and even if dropbox can look inside they won't see anything besides garbage

[bbusybookworm]

I tend to use Both Dropbox and Sugersync.

We use dropbox to share files within the family as well as sharing large files with co-workers who are in different geographic location. As we currently have to deal with a lot of Autocad files which are under revision constantly, Dropbox makes it easy to keep the versions we use for reference in sync as opposed to emailing multi megabyte files each time.

Sugersync is used slightly differently. I currently have 5 PC's and a Mac that I need to keep in sync, and the nice thing with sugarsync is that it allows me to select what files and folders I want to keep in sync between the different computers and best of all uses the current file and folder structure unlike dropbox. So I pay for the 100GB account which while expensive makes this non trivial task that much easier.

With both of these there is the additional advantage of being able to access files from a smarpthone or browser if neede, which has proved to be very useful a time or two.