
Streem (YC S12) Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage and Streaming for $20/Month - tluthra
http://lifehacker.com/streem-offers-unlimited-cloud-storage-and-streaming-for-1563536464
======
ghshephard
The instant I see the word "Unlimited" \- I don't even bother to investigate
further, as the project is either (A) Lying, (B) Unsustainable, (C) Rate
limiting or otherwise bottlenecking you so you can't really use the service
effectively.

I've seen dozens (maybe more) references to the "Unlimited" service, and with
only a few exceptions, they always fall into one of those categories.

I'm wondering when other people come around to my perspective, such that
companies just put what those limits are, or clarify what the bottlenecks are.

I.E. Flickr doesn't say, "Unlimited Photos" for free, they say one Terabyte.
One Terabyte of photos is much, much more interesting to me than "unlimited".
And, when it does say "Unlimited Uploads" \- it notes that you are limited to
200 MByte/photo.

~~~
kijin
In this case, "unlimited" probably means "~1TB on average".

Lots of companies already offer several hundred GB of storage and sharing at
the $20/mo price point, and there are backup services like Backblaze that
offer "unlimited" backup space for $5/mo without going out of business. So the
monthly fee is enough to cover the storage and bandwidth that most users are
realistically ever going to use. And when you have a lot of users, the average
is the only thing that matters. If you use 1PB, you're being subsidized, not
by the company but by a thousand low-utilization users.

In addition, they're probably betting on the price of storage to go down
roughly in proportion to the gradual increase of average utilization over
time. Actually, this is a relatively safe bet. 6TB drives now occupy the price
point that 4TB drives used to occupy, which in turn can now be had for what
2TB drives cost a few years ago. With SMR & HAMR on the horizon and with neat
tricks like stuffing 7 platters in a single drive filled with helium, this
trend is likely to continue for quite a while (unless the Thai factories get
flooded again).

~~~
ghshephard
The reason why Backblaze's unlimited backups aren't as much of a problem for
me, is I have no desire for more than about 12 Terabytes of backups. So, as
long as Backblaze's definition of "Unlimited" is 12 terabytes or less (and,
based on their performance with me the last couple years, they are) - we are
good to go.

But, I'm pretty certain if I tried to backup a 200 TByte iSCSI array (which
appears as a "local drive", and, is theoretically something that could be
backed up by BackBlaze) - I'd find myself either throttled, or receiving a
polite email from Backblaze suggesting I was using their service in a manner
that was not intended.

That's the thing with unlimited services - if you ask enough times, they will
always tell you what the actual number is - I just wish they would come out up
front and share it.

~~~
kijin
Since there is no such thing as unlimited _anything_ in this universe, it
would be unreasonable to assume that "unlimited" is anything but an
exaggeration.

Then we enter the same territory as any other case where technically incorrect
claims are used in the media. Like GB vs. GiB, or "hacker" vs. "cracker", or
"hashing" vs. "encryption", you name it. When we nerds complain about people
who fail to make such distinctions, it makes no difference whatsoever and
they'll just look at us funny. Because vagueness and exaggeration are integral
features of natural language and it is _we_ who are being anal retentive about
it.

In common parlance, "unlimited" is just a shorthand for "we're going to give
you a large amount that we believe will be more than enough for the vast
majority of our users, and we're not going to set up a specific limit, but we
reserve the right to put up a limit if you do something that anyone with
common sense should realize is an abuse of our policies". This works just fine
in a world where people actually use common sense. You instinctively know that
backing up your 200TB iSCSI array would be an abuse of Backblaze's policy,
just as you know that grabbing a hundred napkins at the local McDonald's every
morning and using it for all your personal hygiene needs throughout the day
would be an abuse of McD's napkins-are-free policy. As long as everyone only
uses as many napkins they need to wipe the ketchup off their fingers, McD's
can continue to offer free "unlimited" napkins.

Typically, the actual quality of service and quantity of available resources
does not depend on whether or not the service advertises "unlimited"
something. Rather, it depends on the quality and integrity of the people who
provide the service. A typical EIG-owned web host with an "unlimited" plan
will kick you out if you use 100GB of bandwidth. YouTube, on the other hand,
will happily let your homemade full HD music video consume 10PB of bandwidth.

~~~
ghshephard
You've come to the crux of the matter - but I think this is a battle we can
win.

I was recently in BC, Canada, and I was purchasing a SIM for data use, and was
told that it was, "Unlimited for 3 days". When I asked them "How much is
unlimited" \- I expected to have to dance back and forth a bit before getting
an answer, but the sales rep instantly said, "4 gigabytes."

I then noticed on the brochure that I got from them, that the plan clearly was
listed as, "Unlimited data over three days up to 4 gigabytes"

I guess that could be considered winning half the battle.

Even better, though, is Singapore - where there is no concept of "Unlimited"
with Singtel - word never appears anywhere. You purchase data packages with
very clearly listed time and data amounts. And, if say, you want to use 100 GB
- then you go purchase 14 GB for S$25, 4 times. Couldn't be more
straightforward.

------
slg
Does anyone actually have experience with this? It sounds like one of those
"there has to be a catch" type services.

Any limits on filetypes? Is there a max size per file? How is the network
speed? Do they fire any customers who use too much storage space and/or
bandwidth?

What is stopping my company from encrypting our database backups and uploading
them to Streem nightly for permanent storage at a fraction of the price of
normal offsite backups?

~~~
8_hours_ago
It sounds like the catch is that you grant them "a royalty-free, transferable,
perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use, reproduce,
modify, publish, list information regarding, edit, translate, distribute,
syndicate, publicly perform, publicly display, and make derivative works of
all such User Content"[0].

Perhaps this is the start of a massive stock photo/video company?

[0] [https://www.streem.com/terms](https://www.streem.com/terms)

Edit: Or even if it's not the start of such a company, it would look awfully
tempting for a company in that space to acquire. Having thousands of terabytes
of media data, and the rights to modify and distribute it, can be very
valuable.

~~~
ritikm
Definitely not our goal; happy to explain further:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601652).
Or take a look at the CEO of Reddit's post on this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1sndxe/weve_rewritten_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1sndxe/weve_rewritten_our_user_agreement_come_check_it/cdzaf2a)

------
dazig
You should really avoid using this service. The terms are really scary. You
should read them before using them for anything. They basically take over the
rights of anything you put up there and may use them in any way they want.
Upload your home movie? They can use it for ads, selling it to 3rd parties,
use your audio for a new product or anything else they can imagine. The "best"
part is, they provide you no way to delete your data. Once you upload it, they
"own" it and they may (and will) keep it forever:

"By posting any User Content on the Service, you expressly grant, and you
represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to grant, to Company
a royalty-free, transferable, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide
license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, list information regarding, edit,
translate, distribute, syndicate, publicly perform, publicly display, and make
derivative works of all such User Content and your name, voice, and/or
likeness as contained in your User Content, in whole or in part, and in any
form, media or technology, whether now known or hereafter developed, for use
in connection with the Service and Company’s (and its successors’ and
affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and
redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in
any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each
User of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your User Content
through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform
such User Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and
under this Agreement."

"If the features of the Service allow you to remove or delete User Content
from the Service, the above licenses granted by you in your User Content
terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete
such User Content from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that
Company may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of
User Content that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by
you in User Content for which the Service does not provide you a means to
delete or remove are perpetual and irrevocable."

~~~
ritikm
Here's a breakdown of what each of these things mean:

 _royalty-free_ : Streem doesn't have to pay the user to display the content
they upload back to them from our authorized clients (web, desktop, mobile).

 _perpetual_ : The right to display the content doesn't expire after some
time, unless the account is closed and data is deleted as described in the
second paragraph.

 _irrevocable_ : Once the user uploads content, they can't tell Streem that
they take back the right to display the content, except by deleting the
content, which is covered in the second paragraph.

 _non-exclusive_ : This is there for the user's benefit. It means that the
user retains the right to the content they uploaded, and we don't take
exclusive rights on displaying it back to them. So they have full rights to
upload/store/do whatever with it elsewhere.

 _worldwide_ : These rights are not restricted to a specific country/zone,
like the US, because our service operates and displays content around the
world.

 _publicly perform, publicly display_ : Users can generate public links to
their files, so we have to cover the case where they post it publicly and let
their content be publicly displayed via the link they created. Publicly
display covers still work like images; publicly perform covers "moving" work
like music and videos.

 _derivative works, copies_ : Gives Streem access to make thumbnails/cover
arts (derivative work) and copies of the data (redundant storage).

 _authorizing others to do so_ : Lets Streem pass the content through
different layers and service providers during the upload, processing, and when
data is requested. For example, Streem has to pass the content through a CDN
when the user accesses it, which this gives us the right to do.

The main thing that prevents Streem from abusing these policies is the "for
use in connection with the Service and Company’s (and its successors’ and
affiliates’) business" line. This ensures that we can only operate on the data
to provide our service to the user when they authorize us to do so (i.e. if
they click the "Share" button, they authorize us to operate on the file to
enable it for sharing), and not for something like advertising the user's
content to generate money since they haven't authorized us to do that (we'd
have to add an opt-in "Advertise this for me" button or add it in to the TOS
and appropriately notify everyone if we wanted to be malicious like that,
which would be ridiculous for us).

Other cloud storage companies also have very similar TOS's, although they're
more colloquial in their wording, so they may be easier to understand, but no
different in the rights they're asking for.

If you want a more credible source, take a look at Yishan Wong's (CEO of
Reddit) post:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1sndxe/weve_rewritten_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1sndxe/weve_rewritten_our_user_agreement_come_check_it/cdzaf2a)

~~~
wmf
It sounds like you acknowledge that your TOS is scary and you know how other
companies have fixed this problem but you refuse to do it. Why?

~~~
npizzolato
It sounds to me like he acknowledged that other companies are able to phrase
their TOS in a more friendly way while still essentially getting you to agree
to the same terms. Whether that's "fixing" the problem depends on what you
view as the problem, I suppose.

------
ecesena
I have some concerns on the 2 sentences (from their website):

\- "We've developed proprietary de-duplication and compression technology to
be able to give you unlimited storage"

\- "Your files are encrypted with AES-256 bit encryption"

I'd prefer to know that my data is not encrypted, rather than reading
marketing sentences that have none or obscure meaning when read together.

~~~
ritikm
Happy to clarify. We use convergent encryption
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_encryption](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_encryption)),
which works with our de-duplication.

Example: You and I both have a file A. Our software encrypts that file A with
a unique key generated from the file (say, the MD5 hash of the file), which
makes E(A). Every user that uploads file A will generate the same encrypted
version E(A) because the encryption key will be the same across each user (the
MD5 hash of A).

~~~
fletchowns
Does the de-duplication aspect of it have any impact on DMCA/copyright issues?

For example, lets say somebody from HBO downloads Game of Thrones from The
Pirate Bay and then uploads it to Streem. We could assume that many other
people on Streem also have that same copy of the episode uploaded. HBO then
issues a DMCA takedown (could they?), would Streem delete the file for
everybody? And does Streem then have to prevent anybody from re-uploading it?

~~~
Meekro
Since there's no way to globally "publish" a file, I don't see how DMCA
takedowns could work.

~~~
fletchowns
Hence why in my hypothetical it would take the copyright holder themselves to
both upload the file as well as issue the DMCA takedown.

~~~
Meekro
By uploading the file, wouldn't the copyright holder be authorizing the cloud
service to store it for them?

------
msoad
Cloud storage is not about size for me. It's about the experience. I'm pretty
happy paying $2 a month to Google and getting tons of different services for
my cloud

------
ksec
It was only recently i had the pain of looking for a Cloud Storage solution
and none of them seems to fit my needs / taste / price.

Yes. Whenever i see unlimited i dont even look further into it. Well unless
they are from big companies like Microsoft or Google which could actually
afford to do it. Otherwise they dont have a viable business model. And i am
weary of that.

I dont (quite) trust Google. And Client of Google Drive just somehow doesn't
really suit my taste either. Skydrive is expensive. Dropbox client is the
best, but i cant bring to myself to pay 5 times the price. Hubic has crap
interface. I am looking at MediaFire and Bitcasa, but both previously had some
bad reputation with it. Copy from Barracuda looks like best candidate at the
moment.

I have my own NAS at home. 2x2TB Synology. But I know my home's power delivery
quality isn't that great. Power Surge and Lighting are things that could
easily destroy your NAS or Data even i have Raid 1 with another external
backup. Having something in the cloud just removes the hassle of doing it
yourself.

I have been dreaming lately of a NAS that does it with Backup in the Cloud in
one go. And i just pay an initial fees with a monthly fees. Hoping Apple would
do one. But since margin is so low i guess they are not interested.

------
goeric
Will this work with Rsync and allow me to automatically copy the contents of
my seedbox (Linux) so I can stream it? My seedbox only downloads free indie
movies...

~~~
cstrat
love those free indie movies :)

------
funkyy
Can you explain how this is better than - for example - Google Drive with
their 1TB for $10?

~~~
timothya
I want to know this as well. Google Drive also will stream your media, and
allows files of any filetype for general storage. Also, easy sharing with
anyone anyone on the web (even people who don't have a Google account).

------
dublinben
This looks like a much worse deal than OVH's new service Hubic. At 10 Euro a
month ($13.80), they offer 10 TB (an essentially unlimited amount of space)
with no restrictions on file size or file type. You can actually encrypt your
files before uploading (which you should be doing) and host whatever you want.

~~~
fatrachet
Interesting, I didn't know OVH had that service, looks very nice. Although it
looks like it's limited to 5GB max file size and 10 Mbit/s bandwidth, which
seems very low for anybody with a decent internet connection.

------
gramsey
If they offer a video/audio streaming service, what happens if I upload an mp4
of a copyrighted movie, even if I own it? Do they check files to see if they
are copyrighted? If they do, will files be deleted automatically or will
notice be given?

------
mrmondo
How can it de-dupe properly if it is truly encrypted? Also, it's not unlimited
storage for $20/month, it's only 200GB for $20/month.

Not nearly cheap enough for use with movies / music IMO

~~~
ritikm
Encryption is done through convergent encryption (example here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601277)).

We do offer unlimited storage for $20/month, the 200GB for $20 is what Dropbox
offers -- sorry if that was unclear.

~~~
mrmondo
Oh right!

Thank you for the clarification, it might be worth re-wording it slightly on
your site? (or maybe I'm just blind!)

------
rafeed
This almost seems too good to be true. Can you stream .MKV files too? Looks
like there's no iOS or native apps yet. I guess we just use our browser and
stream directly?

~~~
ritikm
Yes, we transcode all video files so that they're streamable on whatever
platform you're on (including directly streaming from the browser). We'll be
giving users access to our iOS app slowly, which will let you stream MKV (and
other formats) directly. You can also use our desktop app to stream directly
into your native video player.

------
samstave
Sounds like Plex? And plex has apps for my smart TV as well...

~~~
osipovas
With respect to Plex, I think Streem could act as a 'Cloud Sync' option.

------
nsp
Do you offer an api or any sort of non GUI access? I've come so close to
building this out for myself(at much greater expense), looks fantastic

~~~
ritikm
On our roadmap! We'll make an announcement once we release it.

------
WalterSear
Having been sorely disappointed by crashplan's rate-limited servers and dodgy
software, I'm wary of anything 'unlimited'.

~~~
Paul12345534
I've had the opposite experience with Crashplan. Their software does take a
lot of RAM though. I'm happily storing 3TB on their servers for $5 a month
(yearly). I don't think that's such a bad deal.

~~~
rafeed
IMO, Crashplan's service is terrible. On a university network I was never able
to max out my upload. With BackBlaze I was able to max it out. Crashplan's
built on Java, which is the reason for the RAM usage, while BackBlaze is
native to OS X and Windows.

------
steven2012
Is there anything from preventing people from encrypting their hard drive and
uploading it as 10 10GB avi files?

~~~
ritikm
We have a few advanced techniques that inspect the file data and ensure that
the file is valid. So even if you rename your encrypted backup to to
My_Home_Video.avi, it wouldn't pass our check and would fail to upload.

~~~
fatrachet
And what about lossless image formats like .tiff or .bmp? These allow you to
basically store any data in an image, and although the photo looks just like
noise it's a completely valid image file with minimal overhead.

I do know some people that use that for backups on picasa and flickr, which
have unlimited storage and 1TB respectively.

------
foobarqux
How is this different/better than streamnation.com?

~~~
ritikm
\- Native desktop filesystem integration. We don't make you go to a website to
access your content; everything is accessible as a regular file in
Explorer/Finder and opens/plays in your native player (i.e. VLC).

\- Instant adaptive bitrate transcoding. Videos you upload to Streem play
instantly on any device, regardless of bandwidth (slow connections
automatically get a lower quality; if your connection gets better, we auto-
upgrade to a higher quality). Streamnation has a large wait time before the
video is transcoded and ready for playback.

\- Streamnation has illegal features built in to their app (i.e. auto-scraping
and uploading YouTube videos), which makes them much more liable for shutdown.

~~~
Dylan16807
Illegal? If VCR and cloud DVR are legal I would expect a personal youtube
recorder's legality to be murky but _probably_ acceptable.

~~~
ritikm
Sorry, bad choice of words. It's against YouTube's TOS, and there have been
quite a few YouTube-scraping sites that have been taken down by YouTube/their
legal team in the past, so there's precedent for Streamnation to go under the
same way.

------
forgotprevpass
Can I store RAW photo files on this storage?

~~~
ritikm
Absolutely! We're also testing out our Javascript RAW image viewer so you can
browse your RAW images without any special software, directly on the web, and
on any computer.

