Your expectations from free service should be zero. It can go out of business at any time. Or they can stop offering it at anytime.
So it's ok if someone takes your car the next time you park on a free parking lot?
It doesn't work that way in the physical world. I don't see why it should work that way in the digital world. Offering to hold your property for free isn't a license to steal or destroy it.
They should, but they should also clearly communicate what content they consider acceptable and I think they should also notify the user and give them time to move their things out if G decides the content is deemed unacceptable. Especially if the content is not obviously and egregiously violating the terms of service and hasn't been considered a problem for the past seven years. Pulling the rug like that all of a sudden isn't cool.
If I offer to hold your grocery bag while you go to the restroom, do you think it's OK for me to throw it all away because after digging aronud a bit, I notice you have bought apples I don't like? What if I've been repeatedly extending the same courtesy for the past ten years and never had a problem with these apples until today? What if I advertise myself as a free bag holding service by the entrance to the restroom?
I think people should have the expectation that if a company (or individual) offers a service and holds on to your property (be it digital or physical), they should treat it responsibly and not just trash it all out of the blue.
> Clearly it wasn't following intent of the site.
That does not seem clear at all based on a reading of youtube's policies.
> And the user didn't really lose anything, as they still have the originals.
That's not something Google can decide or verify. Instead, they could help the user move their stuff out and that would ensure they still have everything.
But I like this line of arguing; I think copyright infringement is ok because the copyright holder still has their original copy which has in no way been affected.
Not the best analogy since the parking lot is just an empty physical space. Taking it away wouldn’t also “delete” your car. The car is actually a separate physical object. But in a cloud drive, the file and the space are the same. Taking away the space is obviously going to take away the file.
On top of all that, the file still exists elsewhere for most people.
Unless explicitly stated. And we all know that: 1) most of the internet users don’t read the Terms of Service, and 2) YouTube probably states in their Terms of Service doc that they can do whatever they want with your data (I don’t know this for sure because of point 1)
The closest analogy is; if you park without paying, your car might get impounded.
Not a bad analogy. Getting an impounded car back is often described as being abusively expensive beyond real costs.
That would be a improvement for the OP.
Though I don't think any of the giants have an incentive to offer this since might draw more attention than just telling them to fuck off.
It seems to be human nature, and also nature of the market. It's the digital equivalent of race to the bottom. The shortsighted, uninformed, apathetic, and irrational people outnumber those who care, by a huge margin. "Just educate people" isn't happening any more than we can just tell people to "git gud." And that is why, in the physical space, we have laws that offer people some protection against terrible products that are unfit for purpose, unsafe, broken, etcetra. We wouldn't need those laws if we could just fix people and make them informed & rational; in that case, the market would truly sort out itself. It's just not happening, and it's also not happening in the digital space, so it's very possible we're going to see the same laws in the digital space.