Yeah, not only do we preserve the MD5 of the uploaded file for photos, we preserve the uploaded file itself fully intact. So getting the Original back will res

Yeah, not only do we preserve the MD5 of the uploaded file for photos, we preserve the uploaded file itself fully intact. So getting the Original back will result in exactly the same bytes and thus the same MD5 hash. (You're correct that we used to apply some transformations to the photos that didn't materially change the pixel content, but changed bytes and thus the hash. We don't anymore). For videos, we don't preserve the uploaded video for a variety of reasons, but the primary being that our intent is to support Internet-deliverable formats & filesizes. Customers regularly upload videos that vastly exceed Blu-ray bitrates (literally hundreds of megabits-per-second) that just aren't Internet-useful. That's different from a JPEG, GIF, or PNG where the original file is Internet-useful, deliverable, and makes a meaningful difference. That file is very useful for sharing, which is what we do - we share. We don't consider ourselves to be a backup service, and there are lots of great backup services out there to choose from that would love to take a 3GB 5 minute video. We take extraordinary care with our customers photos & videos, but we're a photo & video sharing service, not a backup service.