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This is a perfect example of why companies should never offer unlimited services, if they don't expect users to actually take them up on the offer... While I c

This is a perfect example of why companies should never offer unlimited services, if they don't expect users to actually take them up on the offer... While I can understand and agree that fair-play should be a part of the service, if the offer on hand is Unlimited, then it is not abuse to upload tera-bytes, peta-bytes, exa-bytes or even zetta-bytes. Amazon is hardly a neophyte as far as understanding big data, they are very well placed to know that offering unlimited storage could actually attract really big chunks of data.

detaro 9y ago
They also aren't a new to reserve to right to cut users off and knowing that the wider world doesn't care much if they do that to "extreme cases". And on the other side, many of the more extreme users of drive probably aren't new to storing a lot of data and knew that Amazons offer had to be unsustainable when used to much and thus would disappear in some way. I'm not particular sympathetic to either sides messaging here. It's sad that rclone got caught in the middle of it.
- harshreality 9y ago
  100% Amazon's fault. They could have simply said something like, "We reserve the right to cap amazon cloud drive usage at <x> TB (currently, but increased occasionally)." But they don't want to do that, apparently. Why? I don't know, but it looks like they're worried some of their customers (the same ones they don't like because of excessive usage) will go over to B2 or whatever other cheap services are available, for the peace of mind of not running into any caps even if the service costs more at 2TB or 5TB worth of storage. "Unlimited" storage companies, that nevertheless discriminate against very high usage, want to have their cake and eat it too. Either state a limit and accept the risk that some of your customers decide to go somewhere else, or don't limit and don't discriminate against them. Those are the reasonable choices. Other choices are not reasonable.
huebnerob 9y ago
I guarantee that every company that has ever marketed an unlimited service has internally raised this question. And the answer always is, "we'll just boot the most demanding 0.01% of customers when necessary." This is a tried and true tactic, no one bats an eye.
- harshreality 9y ago
  Arbitrary and capricious. while (1) { for user in userlist { # Top .01% of users are abusive and we boot them if usage_distribution_top(user, .0001) { disable_account(user); send_acctdisabled_notice_to_user(user, "Excessive usage of unlimited storage"); } } sleep 1; } Hours later: "How have we lost half our customers? We only ever removed the top .01% for their 'abusive' usage of our unlimited service!" If the concept isn't clear to some people, the problem is this: You can't repeatedly cull the outliers — the top x% of the distribution — because by culling you shift the distribution to create more outliers. I'm sure businesses recognize that, intuitively if not explicitly in their planning meetings, and therefore cull rarely enough that it doesn't impact the bulk of users (in part due to influx of new users). So you cull the top x%... who decides what x is, and why, if you state in your promotional material that the service is unlimited? "If we set x to .001% and cull monthly, it'll help our bottom line. Those users are scum data hoarders anyway and we won't serve their kind with our 'unlimited' storage service." That should be lawsuit-worthy. Companies in this situation should be forced to specify a fixed usage limit (exactly what these companies don't want to do), or live with the outliers.
  - bigdatababy 9y ago
    They create a kind-of-fixed limit. They don't create a running list of the top X% of usage and ban those users. They study their customers usage for some period and find the top X%, then translate that to a fixed upper limit. Then they punish anyone who goes over that fixed limit. If their customers or technology changes, they can re-calculate that number. As far as "unlimited": marketing is full of bullshit words that don't mean what you think they mean. Courts (no wait, its all company-paid arbitrators now) unsurprisingly favor the companies. When the Supreme Court sided with AT&T on the binding arbitation clause, no joke I got an email from Charter Communications the very same day the ruling was released that said they updated their terms of service to include binding arbitration.
idbehold 9y ago
What they can do is say that you can upload and download Unlimited bytes... At a maximum transfer rate of 1Mb/s.

detaro 9y ago

They also aren't a new to reserve to right to cut users off and knowing that the wider world doesn't care much if they do that to "extreme cases". And on the other side, many of the more extreme users of drive probably aren't new to storing a lot of data and knew that Amazons offer had to be unsustainable when used to much and thus would disappear in some way. I'm not particular sympathetic to either sides messaging here. It's sad that rclone got caught in the middle of it.

harshreality 9y ago
100% Amazon's fault. They could have simply said something like, "We reserve the right to cap amazon cloud drive usage at <x> TB (currently, but increased occasionally)." But they don't want to do that, apparently. Why? I don't know, but it looks like they're worried some of their customers (the same ones they don't like because of excessive usage) will go over to B2 or whatever other cheap services are available, for the peace of mind of not running into any caps even if the service costs more at 2TB or 5TB worth of storage. "Unlimited" storage companies, that nevertheless discriminate against very high usage, want to have their cake and eat it too. Either state a limit and accept the risk that some of your customers decide to go somewhere else, or don't limit and don't discriminate against them. Those are the reasonable choices. Other choices are not reasonable.

huebnerob 9y ago

I guarantee that every company that has ever marketed an unlimited service has internally raised this question. And the answer always is, "we'll just boot the most demanding 0.01% of customers when necessary." This is a tried and true tactic, no one bats an eye.

harshreality 9y ago
Arbitrary and capricious. while (1) { for user in userlist { # Top .01% of users are abusive and we boot them if usage_distribution_top(user, .0001) { disable_account(user); send_acctdisabled_notice_to_user(user, "Excessive usage of unlimited storage"); } } sleep 1; } Hours later: "How have we lost half our customers? We only ever removed the top .01% for their 'abusive' usage of our unlimited service!" If the concept isn't clear to some people, the problem is this: You can't repeatedly cull the outliers — the top x% of the distribution — because by culling you shift the distribution to create more outliers. I'm sure businesses recognize that, intuitively if not explicitly in their planning meetings, and therefore cull rarely enough that it doesn't impact the bulk of users (in part due to influx of new users). So you cull the top x%... who decides what x is, and why, if you state in your promotional material that the service is unlimited? "If we set x to .001% and cull monthly, it'll help our bottom line. Those users are scum data hoarders anyway and we won't serve their kind with our 'unlimited' storage service." That should be lawsuit-worthy. Companies in this situation should be forced to specify a fixed usage limit (exactly what these companies don't want to do), or live with the outliers.
- bigdatababy 9y ago
  They create a kind-of-fixed limit. They don't create a running list of the top X% of usage and ban those users. They study their customers usage for some period and find the top X%, then translate that to a fixed upper limit. Then they punish anyone who goes over that fixed limit. If their customers or technology changes, they can re-calculate that number. As far as "unlimited": marketing is full of bullshit words that don't mean what you think they mean. Courts (no wait, its all company-paid arbitrators now) unsurprisingly favor the companies. When the Supreme Court sided with AT&T on the binding arbitation clause, no joke I got an email from Charter Communications the very same day the ruling was released that said they updated their terms of service to include binding arbitration.

idbehold 9y ago

What they can do is say that you can upload and download Unlimited bytes... At a maximum transfer rate of 1Mb/s.