A little over a month ago I heard about Amazon’s new Cloud Drive offering. Reading the explanation of what it is from Amazon was tantalising. Talking with some folks who were checking it out made me even more excited. Unlimited photo storage for a mere $12/year (US) seemed too good to be true. The good news is that if you are looking for somewhere to store your photos this is an incredibly cheap deal. I’ve read around the web (do a search) that Amazon’s tools to work with the storage leave something to be desired at the moment but I imagine that will improve with time.

In the “things that make you go ‘hmmm'” news — if you are a photographer running a business you need to read the fine print carefully. In Amazon’s own terms of use they state very clearly and unclearly at the same time,

“You may not use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any part of the Service.”  

The key words in this sentence are “.. to operate a photography business..” if you are a professional photographer. On my first read I assumed that meant that I can’t use the storage as a backend to my commercial photography site or something along those lines — but here’s where the unclear part comes in. What constitutes operating a photography business in the eyes of Amazon? And further, how will Amazon make that determination? They don’t go on to explain that anywhere in the terms of use. A couple of friends pointed this out to me and were pretty adamant that if you’re using the service to store photos as part of your photography business  (i.e., you’re selling photos, no matter how small an operation you are) then you’re technically violating their terms of use. Good point. I should add that I I’ve known both of them for quite a long time, and I trust their opinions quite a bit.  So I started a conversation within a group I belonged to at the time about this and I received a very adamant counter argument and my attempt at discussion about it was effectively completely shut down — I was even threatened with being booted out at one point. I was even accused of intentionally spreading misinformation! Sheesh! Clearly there are some strong opinions about what Amazon’s intent are with the service — evidently there’s more at stake here than mere photo storage but I’ve yet to figure out what that is. Maybe it’s physical space to store all those home NAS devices? ;-) You know you have several if you’re a photographer.

I decided that the only way to figure out for certain was to actually ask Amazon rather than relying upon interpretations of the terms of use by people, while well intentioned, aren’t lawyers and don’t work for Amazon. First I tried searching the interwebs for someone who may already have a credible response from Amazon and I came very close (read the comments). Unfortunately the person claiming that Amazon said all is good failed to produce the entire e-mail thread with headers. It took me nearly a month of back-and-forth with Amazon’s customer service over e-mail to get a clear response (well, as clear as I was going to get anyway) but here it is (below).. headers and all. My apologies for all the HTML but I wanted to show the complete source of the e-mail; the only thing altered is my personal e-mail address.

Even this answer isn’t entirely clear; however, it’s clear enough for me given that a) they do say “personal use only” b) specifically state “photography business” c) (the clincher for me) refer to “commercial offerings” that if you are a professional photographer the service is NOT for you. What do you risk by using it anyway? Who knows. Clearly you should not rely upon Amazon’s cloud drive as your single source of storage for your photography business’ needs. Will Amazon ever know or do you run a great risk if you’re just backing up a single copy of your digital assets to their service? Who knows. It’s tempting to use the service but then I think about how much I’d like it if someone used one of my photographs for their business despite my copyright and the answer becomes pretty clear.

For reference here are the questions I asked:

I’m specifically interested in what “to operate a photography business” means to Amazon as set forth in the document.  I could see this potentially being interpreted more than one way. For example, if I use cloud drive to store photos as a backend storage for my commercial photography web site, that would certainly be operating a photography business. Would making a backup (second) copy (to Amazon Cloud Drive) of photos that I have sold, intend to sell, or already have available for sale be considered part of operating a photography business? Another example would be if I archive photos that I may try to sell at a later date instead of using my primary business storage; could that be considered part of operating a photography business? 

Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: by 10.36.93.137 with SMTP id w131csp521146ita;
Sat, 2 May 2015 17:18:59 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.140.231.16 with SMTP id b16mr20063916qhc.22.1430612338961;
Sat, 02 May 2015 17:18:58 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@bounces.amazon.com>
Received: from a13-42.smtp-out.amazonses.com (a13-42.smtp-out.amazonses.com. [54.240.13.42])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g109si8978675qge.26.2015.05.02.17.18.58
for <[email protected]>
(version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
Sat, 02 May 2015 17:18:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of 201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@bounces.amazon.com designates 54.240.13.42 as permitted sender) client-ip=54.240.13.42;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
 spf=pass (google.com: domain of 201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@bounces.amazon.com designates 54.240.13.42 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@bounces.amazon.com;
 dkim=pass [email protected];
 dmarc=pass (p=QUARANTINE dis=NONE) header.from=amazon.com
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/simple;
	s=ug7nbtf4gccmlpwj322ax3p6ow6yfsug; d=amazonses.com; t=1430612337;
	h=Date:From:Reply-To:To:Message-ID:Subject:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Feedback-ID;
	bh=o3+OMWds6H/8DVOg2E9TXtet/b9bInqcrFDKpR78qjU=;
	b=BVXIKnz8edGlXeAfCcY5g/SehmpGny0YOyD1SwCf/Vt++gYFCxanjXK10XoP4afA
	0LsofXsnpPtClkHEwk0SqOosE80NG5sG0ptZzN9TV8p612ew5vvkKXRjvLyIahe2oUy
	y0J3ABIXemOc0+i0f/LroFTZ1aPFEbJ5EKzisk1k=
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/simple;
	s=yg4mwqurec7fkhzutopddd3ytuaqrvuz; d=amazon.com; t=1430612337;
	h=Date:From:Reply-To:To:Message-ID:Subject:MIME-Version:Content-Type;
	bh=o3+OMWds6H/8DVOg2E9TXtet/b9bInqcrFDKpR78qjU=;
	b=KEA7k3C3zCTgWotb8CLiJ3wzaPiGtrUgJnN5W8FUNzeOpkCkQQbIQndPVOCTOdtL
	UP9VJp4uZDRynsthC7Qum+23JDvhFRo+1d2aHYKXv6ORlRT6SXkWu471tKc9AgkLiqe
	b8aqLfDIxAckqlmfduzEiTCq376cmI5MKZzTKVMQ=
Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 00:18:57 +0000
From: "Amazon.com" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: 
	"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <0000014d1723e4f4-1ab024e7-99cf-4fd2-9dab-a1fa31d640e3-000000@email.amazonses.com>
Subject: A Message from Amazon Customer Service
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; 
	boundary="----=_Part_3234092_904075884.1430612337834"
Bounces-to: 201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@bounces.amazon.com
X-AMAZON-MAIL-RELAY-TYPE: notification
X-AMAZON-RTE-VERSION: 2.0
X-Original-MessageID: <urn.correios.msg.201505030018579b82719b2b1f4f37a13f1f936d210c68@1430612337838.rte-svc-1d-i-415e72bb.us-east-1.amazon.com>
X-SES-Outgoing: 2015.05.03-54.240.13.42
Feedback-ID: 1.us-east-1.ZHcGJK6s+x+i9lRHKog4RW3tECwWIf1xzTYCZyUaiec=:AmazonSES

------=_Part_3234092_904075884.1430612337834

 
------=_Part_3234092_904075884.1430612337834--