It seems that some of the links to PDFs that I have recently posted here, and that should take readers directly to the article in my pre-2012 public folder on Dropbox, require them to log in to an account. I have written to Dropbox about this problem, but the management there is invisible. (They may all be robots--or are we calling them cyborgs now?) In the meantime, if you do not have a Dropbox account and want to read one of my articles, you need only send me an e-mail, and I will reply with a PDF.
It seems to me that so many of the services and websites we depend upon start out free of charge, and remain free, but suddenly do not work as they did when we first signed up for them. Knowing that users cannot get hold of a real person, and do not want to waste time on a "community forum" (Dropbox has questions about the issue I have identified here that have gone unanswered for 5 months), they force them to upgrade and begin paying for the service. On a business profile website, which will go unnamed but that everyone reading this will know, I cannot do things that I used to be able to do quite easily in the past. I also suddenly have feeds that I have not subscribed to on my page.
Try writing directly to these websites (you need the skills of a seasoned journalist to ferret out the "contact" link) and you may get a reply that blames the dysfunction on you or your browser. Bollocks, as the British say . . . I am convinced that the problem I am describing, and all such problems, are thinly disguised scams to get users to upgrade and pay!
Please write to me or comment if you are reading this and having similar problems with Dropbox. In the meantime, I refuse to "share" a file on Dropbox. I will just send you the article you want to read, hoping that you will respect the copyright I hold.
