> I do think Filecoin is closer to cloud storage than 'free hard drive space'.

But I never said it was "free hard drive space", I explicitly mentioned "deals with people who offer space".

No matter where the data is ultimately stored (in a data center or not), the method for you getting your files to X is not the same in Filecoin as in S3. With S3 you simply upload your file to S3 and you're done. With Filecoin you need to first make a deal with a miner, then you use that deal to store files within the deal you've made, which is vastly different.