Like its direct competitors, Amazon offers a cloud storage service. The e-commerce titan even presented two unlimited plans in March 2015 (12 dollars a year for photos, and 60 for general data), but pulled the plug last June. However, the Reddit user known as beaston02 decided to test his code and check if Amazon's service was truly unlimited. He created scripts that record live streams from adult portals... and stopped at the 1.8 petabyte mark.
The Challenge of Unlimited Storage
The problem that every corporation suffers when declaring or promoting something on the Web is that there will always be a user willing to verify their claims, a variant of the classic "no one survives the archive". When things go wrong, these companies automatically enter damage control mode, saying they were "misinterpreted", or that they seek to limit "abusers of the terms of service". Let's look at the case of Amazon, a giant on the Web if there ever was one. In March 2015 it launched two unlimited cloud storage plans, and in June of this year it withdrew them.
This is not the first time it happens: many online storage providers tried to seduce the market with infinite capacity offers, and ended up with their tails between their legs. Amazon never gave an official reason, but all arrows point to users like the redditor beaston02, who basically tried to find the ceiling of that service by storing adult content in it. How did he do it? He developed a series of scripts that record live streams of webcam sessions through portals like CamSoda, Chaturbate, and MyFreeCams. From a technical standpoint, the transmissions are public and recording them is not illegal, however, a minority questions this action because those women's income is based on tips they receive during the live feed.
The Experiment and Its Results
Beaston02 placed the scripts on GitHub, but requested that the content obtained not be resold, and only be limited to personal use. The total of his experiment amounted to 1.8 petabytes, almost 300 years of video if interpreted in 480p quality. I think someone has hoarding problems...
Source: Motherboard
