The cloud is good. The cloud is holy. The cloud is our savior. If you listen to the marketing departments of online service providers and Internet of Things manufacturers, you’d be lead to believe that the cloud will soon cure cancer. While there can be advantages to moving services online there are also major disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage, in my opinion, is the fact that you don’t own anything that is dependent on an online service. People who bought the Canary security camera are learning this lesson the hard way:
Canary, a connected home security camera company, announced changes to its free service last week that went into effect on Tuesday. Under the new terms, non-paying users will no longer be able to freely access night mode on their cameras nor will they be able to record video for later viewing. Night mode is a feature that lets you set a schedule for your Canary camera to monitor your home while you sleep without sending notifications.
On top of that, all the videos the company previously recorded for free will be converted into 10-second clips called “video previews.” Essentially, important features are being taken away from users unless they’re willing to pay $9.99 a month.
People will likely blame this on greed but the real culprit is the lack of ownership. The Canary camera isn’t free but paying money to acquire one doesn’t mean you’re paying money to own it. In reality, you’re paying money for the privilege of paying a monthly fee to tie a camera to an online service. The terms of accessing that online service can change on a whim and, in this case, the change left people who decided not to pay the $9.99 per month fee with a paperweight that used to be a security camera (albeit a limited one).
The Internet of Things means never owning the devices you pay money for and if you don’t own it, you don’t control it.
The cloud is just someone else’s computer.
Nah, man. The cloud is Heaven and everything is good in Heaven!