Storing Copyrighted Materials for Personal Backups

Question

I see posts on Reddit about people having their Dropbox accounts disabled. Has anyone had any issues storing copies of Movies, Music, TV Shows etc for personal use/backups but not sharing them with others. I don't want to lose access to my account, but it would be nice to use Dropbox as a secondary backup for some of my media. It's not sensitive so I don't want to have to encrypt it. I just don't want to violate the ToS or lose my account/data.

Hannah · Answer

Hey @mackid1993, sorry to jump in here.

Our ToS, and specifically our "Acceptable Use Policy" states that you must not:

"violate the law in any way, including storing, publishing or sharing material that’s fraudulent, defamatory, or misleading, or that violates the intellectual property rights of others"

I hope this clarifies things, but you can read more info here.

mackid1993 · Answer

@Walter Can you give a more direct clarification. If I am storing these materials for my personal backup and obviously not sharing anything I don't own the rights to is that allowed? Can you directly clarify this for me. As a paying customer I expect that this should be something that can be explicitly answered.

Walter · Answer

Hi there @mackid1993, thanks for joining our Community and happy Monday!

You shouldn't have a problem with storing your files to Dropbox as long as they're aligned with our Terms of Service as outlined here.

For more information on copyrighted material, you can have a look here.

I hope this helps a tad!