Tiffany Bridge explains that the recent change in Dropbox’s terms of service, which on its face it looks very much like the kind of thing most of us are inclined to ignore, actually carries at least one very meaningful implication:

No matter what they do (delete your data, privacy breach, overcharging, whatever), you don’t get to sue. Instead, they get to choose the arbitrator according to whatever criteria they want, and thus any dispute is decided by someone they’re paying.

Dropbox has become so widely used and such an indispensable utility largely with the enthusiastic boosting of its many happy users. I hope that changes like this, which seem to be quite customer unfriendly, aren’t indicative of the company moving into a phase of malicious business practices, which happens so often to runaway successes in the tech industry.

Bridge points out that you can opt-out of the arbitration clause at this link, but that you only have thirty days to do so. Read her post here.