5 ms·

The trouble here is, I think, "unlimited" tends to just mean "a lot" and for Average Joe that's fine. If you go to an all-you-can eat buffet, you will eventuall

by hbosch 9y ago

The trouble here is, I think, "unlimited" tends to just mean "a lot" and for Average Joe that's fine. If you go to an all-you-can eat buffet, you will eventually be unwelcome after you have 20 plates stacked on your table. Is that a business problem or a customer abuse problem? The ugly fact is the Unlimited Amazon Drive has been abused by media pirates and data-hoarders to store up to 20TB (and sometimes more) at what any reasonable person would say is an unreasonable cost. Not to mention, much of this media is accessed and streamed often. Wander over to /r/PlexShares to get an idea: imagine if someone had 20TB of 4K and BluRay movies stored on your service @ a very generous $60/yr, streaming that data 24/7 to 10, 15, maybe 20 people via Plex (with each streamer paying the media manager $10 a month) all over the world. While torrenting all day. Suddenly that sounds more like abuse IMO. Of course, I agree that you shouldn't call something "Unlimited" if it isn't. But it's not a one-sided issue and I thought I'd bring that up. I don't personally know anyone, in real life, who uses Amazon Drive. Most people don't even know it exists. The only time I see it discussed, especially the "unlimited" tier, is on /r/datahoarders and /r/seedboxes as an exploitable deal. As far as I can tell, Prime Photos will remain unlimited. I wonder how long it'll be before media hoarders hide their content in Google/Prime Photos with a convenient CLI tool?

Taek 9y ago
I have seen ACD accounts storing more than 1000 TB of data (mostly collected by scraping porn sites) for a mere $60 a year. If you offer unlimited, expect people to take advantage.
mrighele 9y ago
> The ugly fact is the Unlimited Amazon Drive has been abused by media pirates and data-hoarders to store up to 20TB Somebody on reddit bragged about reaching more than 1PB [0] > Of course, I agree that you shouldn't call something "Unlimited" if it isn't. I am maybe nitpicking, but it really was unlimited. Nobody is being billed for exceeding a given threshold or stopped from using it. The service is being discontinued and people will not be able to renew it. They never said "forever" :-). It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". > As far as I can tell, Prime Photos will remain unlimited. I wonder how long it'll be before media hoarders hide their content in Google/Prime Photos with a convenient CLI tool? In another thread on reddit somebody was already talking about that, so I guess it won't be long. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a_bit_of_a_milestone_today/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a...
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". I don't think this analogy works. If you used a lot of space, or really any space over the amount that they change to as the upper limit, that data is now at risk. Some places will make it read only until you move it off (up to a certain amount). Most will simply delete it after a certain amount of time if you don't move it. Your gym can't really take back an amount of your previous, unlimited usage of the gym. If you have legit uses where you're way over the limit this can pose a real issue. I ran into this when storing photos and videos on Microsoft's OneDrive after they lowered the crazy high amount they were given...I eventually decided to pay the higher fees to cover my data so I wouldn't lose it until I had more time to move it all off. I no longer use OneDrive.
- csdreamer7 9y ago
  > It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". That is a very anti-consumer way of looking at it. Storage, especially for businesses, is not like a gym membership. These bait and switch tactics are harmful for the consumer as well as the industry itself. You place a certain trust with data storage companies. Alot of media companies can easily have 30 terabytes of data to backup or share. They kill the unlimited plan with essentially a price hike. Now I am wondering "when is the next price hike coming"? Amazon has already cut their CLI interface and their web interface is terrible. I would rather just keep it on a NAS with NextCloud.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    You place a certain trust with data storage companies. I think the point is that now we know not to.
    - csdreamer7 9y ago
      Noah has been ranting about this long before Amazon and Onedrive did this.
  - 9y ago
halomru 9y ago
all-you-can eat buffets work because each person has to pay seperately and the amount any person can eat in one setting has hard physical limits that are fairly low. Unlimited in the computing world usually has practical limits many orders of magnitude above normal usage, making outliers much, much more expensive. But you can't substantially increase the price because you can't afford to lose your normal customers and be left with only outliers.
WhitneyLand 9y ago
>it's not a one-sided issue It's totally a one sided issue. Abuse and fraud are not specific to Amazon, they are attempted at every business and industry under the sun. It's just not credible to believe they initially thought the offer was long term sustainable without any limitations, protective terminations for abuse, etc. This is no more complex than what it appears. A deliberate, and effective, marketing campaign that would eventually have to come to an end. Maybe they could at least use some kind of old school caveat like "while supplies last", or "until the rate of user acquisition is strategically outweighed by the subsidies required to absorb our losses".
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  I think without abuse, for most users it was sustainable. If I had to guess, the average HDD size being sold on a budget PC today is closer to 250GB (I've been seeing plenty with 32GB EMMC drives). That's 4 PCs worth of content without going over the limit, and post non-technical users are probably using even less than that. They could probably account for outliers using way more, but as long as most users were "average" users backing up word docs and family pictures they'd be fine. The problem is "data horders" latched on much harder than average users. I wouldn't be surprised if most of those "average" users aren't affected by this change at all. I can't imagine my non-technical parents (for example) generating 1TB of data to back up very easily at all.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    But they aren't "abusing" the system if the system offers "unlimited" bandwidth/storage/whatever. Companies are being very dishonest because none of them actually mean "unlimited" when they say "unlimited". They should have just said 1TB from the beginning. But they were trying to fool people into signing up because they used -- disingenuously -- the word "unlimited". So screw the companies. They shouldn't say things they don't mean.
    - BoorishBears 9y ago
      My point is more, to the average consumer it really was "unlimited". When you can backup 4 lifetimes worth of your PC with a service, for "practical" purposes it is unlimited
CobrastanJorji 9y ago
I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the argument that "we meant a lot but UNLIMITED was a much better marketing term, so we said that."
- kbar13 9y ago
  You are missing the point. Amazon's service was truly unlimited
  - msq 9y ago
    > Amazon's service was truly unlimited It is not and never was. Check TOS > 5.2 Suspension and Termination. Your rights under the Agreement will automatically terminate without notice if you fail to comply with its terms. We may terminate the Agreement or restrict, suspend, or terminate your use of the Services at our discretion without notice at any time, including if we determine that your use violates the Agreement, is improper, substantially exceeds or differs from normal use by other users, or otherwise involves fraud or misuse of the Services or harms our interests or those of another user of the Services. If your Service Plan is restricted, suspended, or terminated, you may be unable to access Your Files and you will not receive any refund of fees or any other compensation. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201376540 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      But did they ever kick anyone off? They didn't kick off people using hundreds of terabytes or more. And abuse language is there on every ToS. I'd say it truly was unlimited while they were selling it.
      - msq 9y ago
        > But did they ever kick anyone off? Sure they did. Saw plenty of people complaining about it on r/DataHoarders months before this big cut-off happened.
yazan94 9y ago
Are there any other alternatives to Amazon that still offer unlimited storage?
zurn 9y ago
Some data hoarders can be acommodated since the service only cares about average usage per user. Also data deduplication works even for data hoarders if they are hoarding media commonly shared on the internet. Given the above points, I think there is no basis to call it "abuse".
- vsl 9y ago
  They are encrypting it to avoid detection of this TOS violation.

by hbosch 9y ago

Taek 9y ago

I have seen ACD accounts storing more than 1000 TB of data (mostly collected by scraping porn sites) for a mere $60 a year. If you offer unlimited, expect people to take advantage.

mrighele 9y ago

> The ugly fact is the Unlimited Amazon Drive has been abused by media pirates and data-hoarders to store up to 20TB Somebody on reddit bragged about reaching more than 1PB [0] > Of course, I agree that you shouldn't call something "Unlimited" if it isn't. I am maybe nitpicking, but it really was unlimited. Nobody is being billed for exceeding a given threshold or stopped from using it. The service is being discontinued and people will not be able to renew it. They never said "forever" :-). It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". > As far as I can tell, Prime Photos will remain unlimited. I wonder how long it'll be before media hoarders hide their content in Google/Prime Photos with a convenient CLI tool? In another thread on reddit somebody was already talking about that, so I guess it won't be long. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a_bit_of_a_milestone_today/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a...

BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". I don't think this analogy works. If you used a lot of space, or really any space over the amount that they change to as the upper limit, that data is now at risk. Some places will make it read only until you move it off (up to a certain amount). Most will simply delete it after a certain amount of time if you don't move it. Your gym can't really take back an amount of your previous, unlimited usage of the gym. If you have legit uses where you're way over the limit this can pose a real issue. I ran into this when storing photos and videos on Microsoft's OneDrive after they lowered the crazy high amount they were given...I eventually decided to pay the higher fees to cover my data so I wouldn't lose it until I had more time to move it all off. I no longer use OneDrive.
csdreamer7 9y ago
> It's like I got a special deal from my gym for unlimited access. If next year they won't offer it anymore I cannot say "it was not unlimited". That is a very anti-consumer way of looking at it. Storage, especially for businesses, is not like a gym membership. These bait and switch tactics are harmful for the consumer as well as the industry itself. You place a certain trust with data storage companies. Alot of media companies can easily have 30 terabytes of data to backup or share. They kill the unlimited plan with essentially a price hike. Now I am wondering "when is the next price hike coming"? Amazon has already cut their CLI interface and their web interface is terrible. I would rather just keep it on a NAS with NextCloud.
- dhimes 9y ago
  You place a certain trust with data storage companies. I think the point is that now we know not to.
  - csdreamer7 9y ago
    Noah has been ranting about this long before Amazon and Onedrive did this.
- 9y ago

halomru 9y ago

all-you-can eat buffets work because each person has to pay seperately and the amount any person can eat in one setting has hard physical limits that are fairly low. Unlimited in the computing world usually has practical limits many orders of magnitude above normal usage, making outliers much, much more expensive. But you can't substantially increase the price because you can't afford to lose your normal customers and be left with only outliers.

WhitneyLand 9y ago

>it's not a one-sided issue It's totally a one sided issue. Abuse and fraud are not specific to Amazon, they are attempted at every business and industry under the sun. It's just not credible to believe they initially thought the offer was long term sustainable without any limitations, protective terminations for abuse, etc. This is no more complex than what it appears. A deliberate, and effective, marketing campaign that would eventually have to come to an end. Maybe they could at least use some kind of old school caveat like "while supplies last", or "until the rate of user acquisition is strategically outweighed by the subsidies required to absorb our losses".

BoorishBears 9y ago
I think without abuse, for most users it was sustainable. If I had to guess, the average HDD size being sold on a budget PC today is closer to 250GB (I've been seeing plenty with 32GB EMMC drives). That's 4 PCs worth of content without going over the limit, and post non-technical users are probably using even less than that. They could probably account for outliers using way more, but as long as most users were "average" users backing up word docs and family pictures they'd be fine. The problem is "data horders" latched on much harder than average users. I wouldn't be surprised if most of those "average" users aren't affected by this change at all. I can't imagine my non-technical parents (for example) generating 1TB of data to back up very easily at all.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  But they aren't "abusing" the system if the system offers "unlimited" bandwidth/storage/whatever. Companies are being very dishonest because none of them actually mean "unlimited" when they say "unlimited". They should have just said 1TB from the beginning. But they were trying to fool people into signing up because they used -- disingenuously -- the word "unlimited". So screw the companies. They shouldn't say things they don't mean.
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    My point is more, to the average consumer it really was "unlimited". When you can backup 4 lifetimes worth of your PC with a service, for "practical" purposes it is unlimited

CobrastanJorji 9y ago

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the argument that "we meant a lot but UNLIMITED was a much better marketing term, so we said that."

kbar13 9y ago
You are missing the point. Amazon's service was truly unlimited
- msq 9y ago
  > Amazon's service was truly unlimited It is not and never was. Check TOS > 5.2 Suspension and Termination. Your rights under the Agreement will automatically terminate without notice if you fail to comply with its terms. We may terminate the Agreement or restrict, suspend, or terminate your use of the Services at our discretion without notice at any time, including if we determine that your use violates the Agreement, is improper, substantially exceeds or differs from normal use by other users, or otherwise involves fraud or misuse of the Services or harms our interests or those of another user of the Services. If your Service Plan is restricted, suspended, or terminated, you may be unable to access Your Files and you will not receive any refund of fees or any other compensation. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201376540 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    But did they ever kick anyone off? They didn't kick off people using hundreds of terabytes or more. And abuse language is there on every ToS. I'd say it truly was unlimited while they were selling it.
    - msq 9y ago
      > But did they ever kick anyone off? Sure they did. Saw plenty of people complaining about it on r/DataHoarders months before this big cut-off happened.

yazan94 9y ago

Are there any other alternatives to Amazon that still offer unlimited storage?

zurn 9y ago

Some data hoarders can be acommodated since the service only cares about average usage per user. Also data deduplication works even for data hoarders if they are hoarding media commonly shared on the internet. Given the above points, I think there is no basis to call it "abuse".

vsl 9y ago
They are encrypting it to avoid detection of this TOS violation.