Yes, sadly, the concept of Intellectual Property and how it is getting (mis)used by some of the big players is relatively new and, for obvious reasons, not something Bezos and his brethren want to publicize.

Apparently some years back (2008), folks who previously purchased "1984" for their Kindles discovered that Amazon had "retrieved" said copies (due to some sort of kerfuffle with the author's estate or something). Amazon reimbursed them and said they were sorry. Of course, those who purchased the hard copies of the book were not affected.

An interesting read is "The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy" by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz - where they essentially point out that the concept of "ownership" no longer means what people think. It's one thing that people believe they "bought" that copy of software for $10 or $1000 when in fact it has always been the case that the money was to purchase the right to use said software (thus the whining about Adobe's and others' subscription schemes falls on deaf ears to those who understand the realities), but when something like a book that you ostensibly "bought" is suddenly retracted because, well for whatever reason, it shakes your confidence in what it means to have "bought" that book.

The bigger lesson, particularly with the "free" services like Google, Facebook et al, is that you are not the customer...you are the product that they sell to their actual customers, who are the advertisers.

Yes, sadly, the concept of Intellectual Property and how it is getting (mis)used by some of the big players is relatively new and, for obvious reasons, not something Bezos and his brethren want to publicize.

Apparently some years back (2008), folks who previously purchased "1984" for their Kindles discovered that Amazon had "retrieved" said copies (due to some sort of kerfuffle with the author's estate or something). Amazon reimbursed them and said they were sorry. Of course, those who purchased the hard copies of the book were not affected.

An interesting read is "The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy" by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz - where they essentially point out that the concept of "ownership" no longer means what people think. It's one thing that people believe they "bought" that copy of software for $10 or $1000 when in fact it has always been the case that the money was to purchase the right to use said software (thus the whining about Adobe's and others' subscription schemes falls on deaf ears to those who understand the realities), but when something like a book that you ostensibly "bought" is suddenly retracted because, well for whatever reason, it shakes your confidence in what it means to have "bought" that book.

The bigger lesson, particularly with the "free" services like Google, Facebook et al, is that you are not the customer...you are the product that they sell to their actual customers, who are the advertisers.

The big companies on the Internet have found a way to monetize their activity. In a way, I say, "More power to them." Yet, they hide their money-making schemes from users. For example, these companies in the past gathered and then sold to others personal user information without user consent.

As another example, Google has managed to embed itself in practically every nook and cranny involving the Web. For example, if you use the excellent Google Maps in your smart cell phone, this program (app) will automatically track your every move. Google uses this information to show you things to do and buy along the way, thereby monetizing this otherwise free app. The user can opt out of this automatic tracking, but I'm inclined to believe that the masterminds at Google accept this user opting-out and bank on the near universal user participation in it.

More info regarding using Amazon Photos Prime storage as a backup for your photos....

Once your images are uploaded, if you edit one of them it will detect that and upload the changed image, however, it does not replace the original image, instead it adds the day & time replaced to the file name and now you have the original and modified version on Amazon.

Basically if you backup a folder of images, then later edit an image by adding a keyword to it, Amazon will reupload it and change the name adding the change date and time.

Not an issue since photo storage is unlimited, BUT, you need to understand what has happened should you need to download files to restore for any reason. Unedited files will not be an issue, but edited files will have multiple copies that you will need to determine what is what at restore time.

If using software like Lightroom to manage your files, you will end up needing to import any edited files since they will have a new file name, or possibly rename the latest edited file to the original name so it links with the edits and pointers in the catalog.

The additional renamed files are visible examining the files/folders in the Amazon Drive web page.

Originally, the client would not re-upload files that existed, making it useless as a backup system. When I tried the current client and saw re-uploads occurred I thought great, problem resolved. When I went into the Amazon Drive web page and saw the dupes I understood they were not replacing or updating the files, they were versioning by changing the file name.

Perhaps in a future version the versioning will be more up front and user controllable.

I am still uploading images as an off site backup, according to my calculations I have about a week to go :)

Originally, the client would not re-upload files that existed, making it useless as a backup system. When I tried the current client and saw re-uploads occurred I thought great, problem resolved. When I went into the Amazon Drive web page and saw the dupes I understood they were not replacing or updating the files, they were versioning by changing the file name.

Perhaps in a future version the versioning will be more up front and user controllable.

I am still uploading images as an off site backup, according to my calculations I have about a week to go :)