If something sounds too good to be true...

I'm cheap but wouldn't touch this. I smell a trap.

yagameister

I've noticed you can't share mp3 files, the "share" item is removed from the menu when selecting mp3 files.

Legality aside, figured it should be noted since the post, and even their site says you can share all media types.

wolfkabal

@Gonz: OMG someone actually listens to Dream Theater??

nffcnnr

do you think they're going to deduplify that data? if everyone just wants copies of their movies, etc. it will probably not take nearly 1 TB per person to "store".

moore850

So what's the catch? Every time one of these "free" services comes around, it just seems too good to be true.

fredramsey

@ericmatz: I actually have a song by Dream Theater which is around 93MB.
With the 9meg cap per file, this is useless to me...

Gonz

200 megs per file makes sense. They don't want people ripping their DVD collection and storing it online. 9 megs per MP3? Not sure about that one. Perhaps they want to prevent people from storing podcasts and such. Not sure what other types of MP3s would be larger than 9 megs. Either way, they're trying to limit the type of media (not the file type) that people are uploading.

Pretty slick. Anyone analyzed the license agreement? Am I giving them the rights to sell pics of my kids that I upload to advertising agencies?

ericmatz

I just uploaded a 20 mb RAR file of mp3s. I changed the extension to MPG so that it thought I was uploading video. This got me around the 9 mb mp3 limit and the prohibition against uploading "documents and executables"

After retrieving the file I just changed the file extension back to RAR.

aj.hidell

@doryb:

LMAO!

And I'm broke...

BigDASH

So... what's stopping me from uploading an executable with a filename of setup.exe.mp3 (just add a new extension)?

tamoriel

@Norcross: If you must ask, the real answer is that I'm cheap

doryb

@doryb: if you're backing up all your info, why not get an external HD, and backup to that?

Norcross

Photos: These days of having DSLR's with double digit megapixels, this site is a welcomed addition to my online world. Jpgs and Raws take up so much space. It would be tragic to not have a backup.

curls

I'm looking for a free online storage site to switch all of my files (esp MP3s/M4As) to my new laptop ... What website/service could anyone recommend??

doryb

@cbh: I was thinking the same thing. Why go to the trouble of offering 1 TB of storage, but then impose those limits?

Also, if any developers are reading this, it would be great if someone could create a UI to incorporate all of these free file storage services into one interface.

eeefresh

@engstewart: Sorry for the ambiguity, updating the post...

Adam Pash

@ engstewart: Thanks for the clarification! That makes a lot more sense.

cbh

The link to their privacy policy from their Terms and Conditions page leads to a page that declares,

"Oops, the resource you are looking for was not found."

That raises a bit of a red flag for me.

dre12n

Ignoring the obvious attention-grabbing 1 terabyte, the limitations on the file types and quantities per file type seem odd. Are you supposed to fill it up with 815 gigabytes of pictures?? Aside from some professional photographers or camera addicts, that seems incredibly unlikely. It seems more like the limitations of file types (no documents) and the limitations on mp3's and videos is simply there to prevent anyone from actually using a full terabyte. It seems like more flash than substance when you look at the particulars.

cbh

Slight clarification: you're limited to 200MB video size per file and 9MB music file size per file uploaded, not 9MB TOTAL storage for music and 200MB TOTAL storage for video. ;)

engstewart

Only for photos, video, and music. That's not bad but I need to store/share gigs of pdf files with co-workers...some of whom use Macs.

dchall8

Ok, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly. They give you 1TB of space, for MEDIA ONLY. Then, they limit you to 200MB for videos and 9MB for MP3s? Please tell me this is for the individual files, otherwise, what's the point?

Bill Clark

still not better than humyo, 5gb, anything you want, 150mb size cap or something... humyo still sucks though.

theRIAA

1TB?

I must use all that space, to see if it's right :3

Phoshi

One thing that's kind of funny is that the registration process asks for your birthdate, and the year only goes back to 1930. Anyone born before that is computer illiterate, I guess.

MyPetFly

@Confuzius: I like your style.

Phoshi

could you upload a400 mb video file with the extension of jpg? and then get away with that?

takemetoyourtoaster

@nffcnnr: Yeah, actually, a whole bunch of people do xD

But that's only an example...
9megs is too little space for anyone whose tastes go beyond pop music.

Gonz

@goingthewongway: "not lawyer"? Also not very good at English apparently.

goingthewongway

200mb rars of all my backups renamed to .avi?

Confuzius

Terms & Conditions

9. Rules Governing Posting Content on Oosah

c. Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

If I read that right (and I'm not lawyer), it sounds like that means they get to use your stuff.

Thanks but no thanks.

goingthewongway

If you need to back up your files, what's wrong with an external HD? If you need to share your files, what's wrong with FTP over SSL, which adds TLS or SSL encryption to your FTP session? If you want it to be trustworthy, I say crack open the metophorical or literal toolbox and get it done yourself.

Sendaii

Someone should upload 5000+ 200mb TrueCrypt volumes (with .mpg extension of course) just to "test" this whole 1TB of storage.

--postscript: The TrueCrypt volumes are just to irritate them a little more. Nothing better than 5,000 encrypted files.

skotmxpx

so i can't upload .wav files?

tptcat

Please note I am running Server 2008 which uses the Vista kernel, so my machine being a server could have been the cause, but in any case, be very very careful.

jimredbaron

Do NOT use this. It loaded a Trojan onto my PC, under the alias as if it was an HP service and blacklisted our exchange server. I repeat, do not use this service. At least not at work. Your IT department will hate you!

Luckily I am IT.

jimredbaron

@goingthewongway: hilarious

daemian

1TB free would be absolutely great for backing up my photos/music online, but it seems too good to be true.

@nffcnnr: Dream Theater rocks!

@goingthewongway: That looks quite scary to me to, especially the part "distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content"

cryptomega

An update to the privacy issue raised by my previous post and goingthewongway's post. I found this on their blog; it seems others, too have had questions about section 9.c of their Terms & Conditions. For what it's worth, here's their response:

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Oosah T&C's & Privacy Policy

Thanks for the great discussion around Oosah, we are happy to hear that you guys are enjoying the service! As noted in our response to your inquiries around the T&Cs, they are similar to many of the popular sites that millions of people use every day. All major content hosting sites have a provision similar to our item 9.c.

In fact, many other services have provisions that appear to be even stronger than Oosah's. The purpose of the license provision is not so that we can take ownership of users' content, but rather use content that is marked "public" for promotional materials. You have the option to click private on your media, and Oosah will not use that content.

Oosah respects the rights of its members, and is not seeking to exploit their relationship with Oosah, and we hope that you continue to enjoy the service and the 1TB of free space! We have some additional cool features in the pipeline that I can't wait for you guys to check out. Feel free to chat via Twitter - Twitter name: Oosah.
Posted by Oosah at 10:04 PM

dre12n

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: There's always "that guy" who loves doing the math and pointing out the errors. Thanks for the correction. Let's start off with 10 then.

skotmxpx

A lot of their online documentation still indicates that all free accounts are limited to 2GB of storage. I see that their homepage lists a terabyte. I'm just surprised they didn't make those changes anywhere else.

tasselhoff76

@Sendaii: Disaster can strike as in Ike or fire. First rule of DR is to not have the backup in the same physical location.

curls

@Sendaii: Offsite back up is preferable sometimes. If something can get your main computer, it can get your back up as well.

@skotmxpx: That would require over a terabyte of free storage space.

Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->

I read through the FAQ and noticed that only mp3 audio files are support, though they hope to add support for ogg and other formats. Also, I does not store RAW images, but converts them to JPG. So, at least for me, this is not a good solution for backing up original photos.

cryptomega

@Confuzius: Yeah, how about 200mb rars of your ENCRYPTED backups, renamed to AVIs.

Harlan

@Bill Clark: PER video or music file.

MaxGhost

@dre12n: What's weird is it doesn't specifically say that in there... Looks like they're trying to pull the wool over our eyes...

charlesrwood

Just read the blog:

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By Popular Demand...

By popular demand, we've increased our per mp3 file size to 50MB!

...maybe this will make some more of us happy...

charlesrwood

I happened to sign up before reading the comments here. Section 9. c. of their Terms & Conditions sounds like bad news to me and I won't be using their service. Good thing I didn't really upload anything.

LisetteAchilles

From Oosah to me just now:

Just to let you know the sizes have been updated to 50MB per mp3, 50MB per image, and 250MB per video.

Thanks for using Oosah!

Dan

acepelon

From Oosah:

Hi [acepelon],

Just to let you know the sizes have been updated to 50MB per mp3, 50MB per image, and 250MB per video.

Thanks for using Oosah!

Dan

Just received a few minutes ago.

acepelon

@charlesrwood: I agree. It's kind of like the joke about the dog who is barking at you and wagging his tail: which end do you believe?

dre12n

You know, this would be a great way for a immoral entrepreneur with html xp and a bit of money to get all the music/video he/she wants, cuz he/she just waits until people upload their music/video and then takes them! (he/she wouldn't care about silly things like licenses!)

Nobody would know....*goes off to purchase a server and hostname*

tjmage1

@dre12n: "All major content hosting sites have a provision similar to our item 9.c."

Hmm...someone point me to where it says that in Flickr's terms.

ericmatz

Failed on the second file. No error messages, just stopped uploading. I knew it couldn't handle the load, but this seems rather silly. Why advertise so much if you can't handle less than .05% of it??

mjm01010101

@charlesrwood: Exactly. If you're not going to use the content marked as "private", then call that out in the agreement.

ericmatz

Those are ridiculous limits to pose on individual files.

mysticgeek.htg

Crashed Firefox soon after I posted trying to delete said file from the queue. Crazyness.

mjm01010101

@Norcross: No kidding. I just got a 1T external HD at Fry's for around $200. Makes a great jukebox. ;)

PopcornDave

This is a way for users to use their site, 1 TB per user? Seriously? Put it into perspective, if 1,000,000 users sign up. How do they gain revenue? Think about it.

Samuel Wat

Weighing in on the Terms and Conditions issue (9.c).

I am the Assistant Managing Editor Online for a newspaper that runs a few photo sharing and social networking sites. I can vouch that these types of clauses are pretty much ubiquitous.

The clause is simply there because if a site has ANY sharing or social networking capabilities, it must _technically_ re-publish the uploaded work anytime it makes a new gallery page, featured item module or, in fact, if another user chooses to incorporate your content in their profile.

Like just about all legal jargon, it sounds pretty hardcore. But this is not unusual, and it's not as scary as it seems on the face of it.

tsh

@ericmatz: Section 9(b) of Yahoo's TOS, located here; [info.yahoo.com]

ShinMai

Yup...you are granting them "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing"

Meaning you have NO say over how they use YOUR work.

Note that it says "assignable." AND.."sublincenses." So they can license it to someone ELSE, and you have agreed to that by signing up.

That's not 1TB free.

NO thanks.

mobycat

@ericmatz: I'm not clear on what you guys are talking about here. What are they not saying?

FancyRat

One difference I see between this and Yahoo - Yahoo specifically says that they no longer have the right to use it once you've removed it from their site.

Looking at this one, once you've put it on there, they could use it even after you remove it.

Yahoo also does not include that word "sublicenses."

adrive.com (50GB free) does NOT have this in their TOS. I'll stay there...I have no need to put 1TB online. I can use Orb to listen to my music or watch my videos.

mobycat

@MyPetFly: Damn right. My Settings are telling me for sure I was born in 1910 somewhere in Afghanistan... ¬¬ Do I look that old? Afghanistan??

yardissimo

Let's push the limits. We should upload the same file with n names at least n times until we reach the 1TB limit to see what's going to happen. Maybe some nasty errors or failed connections are going to magically come up.

yardissimo

@cryptomega: Yup, they rule ;)

Anyway, not a chance I'll use this. Those terms and that 'per file' cap spoiled it.

*dreams about a 1TB external HD*

Gonz

I can certainly understand why people are drawn to the 'nifty' factor of services like this (and for its intended use of video, audio, photo backup/sharing, Oosah really seems like it could be quite nifty), but I really don't understand why they're drawn to them on a practical level. Especially where important/sensitive data are concerned..

- there's the seriously questionable legal implications of storing all your precious data with complete strangers; you have to enter into licensing agreements with complete strangers before they will store your data

- you have to conform your data to their specifications before they will agree to store it (yes, you may be able to circumvent their software by renaming a file, but since you've allowed them to use your data however they see fit, is there anything stopping them from changing that or simply deleting it? After all.. you're not really playing by the rules if you upload non-compliant data, are you?)

- you have absolutely no guarantee that the service is going to remain available

- you can only access your data based on whatever network speeds you have available

- etc... there are certainly other problems, but it's Friday/Saturday now, and I'm just a bit in the bag ;)

That all seems like a LOT of potential problems/concerns when compared with a roomy, encrypted HDD stored in a buddy's sock drawer along with possibly a couple of DVDs of the same just for safe measure.

At best this sort of service seems like a tier-3/4/5/.../20 backup solution to me: something that can provide really really last resort access to your [heavily encrypted] data when all other options have failed (and assuming it's still available when that happens).

..or I suppose you could just use it to share/store a crapload of non-essential music/video/imagery ;)

BingleyJoe

"Please be patient while your files upload. Oosah is experiencing a high volume of traffic at this time."

Lifehacker can kill any web service/release mirror...

BnWRainbow

I would try out their service but I pretty much am good with all the other services I use.

Besides it would take me like 4 or 5 months to use up that much usage with Comcast's new crappy 250GB caps.

addiktion

I just uploaded an MP3 file and double clicked it after the upload was complete. An oosah player opened which played the file and also showed the lyrics. Pretty neat.

kerpalguy

The Privacy Policy:

"http://static.oosah.com/pdf/Privacy_Policy_09_20_2008.pdf"

leem01

Who are this people? [whois.domaintools.com]

5south

Sounds to good to be good. Who are this people?

[whois.domaintools.com]

5south

THEY O U !!!

4. Proprietary Rights & Limited License

You agree that all Content on or available through the Site, including but not limited to, photographs, video images, music/audio files, text and graphics elements, and software are the property of Oosah, or of its Users, as appropriate. Except for Content owned by you, no Site content may be modified, copied, distributed, downloaded, reproduced, republished, transmitted or used by you in any way not explicitly permitted in writing by Oosah or the legal owner of the content. You further agree that Oosah retains all rights to all software, methods, tools, procedures, icons, and other items used to provide the Site, except that Oosah grants you a limited license, which may be revoked by Oosah at any time in its sole discretion, to use the Site to upload, store, share, manage, distribute and create your Content, subject to the other Terms provided herein, or as later amended by Oosah.

5south

@ericmatz:

By uploading, you are passing all your media rights !!!

4. Proprietary Rights & Limited License

You agree that all Content on or available through the Site, including but not limited to, photographs, video images, music/audio files, text and graphics elements, and software are the property of Oosah, or of its Users, as appropriate. Except for Content owned by you, no Site content may be modified, copied, distributed, downloaded, reproduced, republished, transmitted or used by you in any way not explicitly permitted in writing by Oosah or the legal owner of the content. You further agree that Oosah retains all rights to all software, methods, tools, procedures, icons, and other items used to provide the Site, except that Oosah grants you a limited license, which may be revoked by Oosah at any time in its sole discretion, to use the Site to upload, store, share, manage, distribute and create your Content, subject to the other Terms provided herein, or as later amended by Oosah.

5south

This sounds pretty nice, but did anybody notice this in the FAQ:

"Right now Oosah has a file size upload limit of 100 megabytes per file."

doogie

Hi, I wanted to let you guys know that it is indeed 1TB of storage, and the limitations as of right now are: 250MB per video per file 50MB per mp3 per file 50MB per image per file Thanks, Dan Oosah

SantawanaDadillac

Item 7 under "Illegal and/or Prohibited Content" states... "Contains restricted or password-only access pages, or hidden pages or images (those not linked to or from another accessible page);" What the hell does that mean? Like putting a "Pi" symbol underneath something like Sandra Bullock in the Web?? Hahha

AbaJaffe

Sounds like a great deal, but how do you know they won't be gone tomorrow? I've used 11 GB of Google storage space, but I expect them to be around awhile. I'm trying to decide if I want to pony up for more Google space or find a cheaper/free alternative. This looks great and if I knew they were in it for the long haul I'd be there in a heartbeat, but I'd hate to move all my pictures there and then have them pull the plug. Any thoughts on evaluating the longevity of these cool "beta" sites?

HappyDad

Terabyte schmerabyte!

People, once and for all: when it comes to online file hosters size is not the issue, speed is. Lots of space is worthless if it takes you and your friends forever to access it. I wish all reviews/posts on these kinds of services mainly focused on the upload/download speed.

lina_zav

I cringed a little when I saw the word "iTouch" on the frontpage, but other than that it looks like a good service. However, I would never in a million years be able to have enough data even close to a terabyte. Sure, the storage is huge, but that doesn't mean it's the best storage service out there.

kyjast

@kerpalguy: Affirmative. Nice improvement in a couple of hours. Last night I was trying the service uploading some music. When I tried to move some files from one folder to another one just created, there where some weird characters on the file name. Then, checking it just right now, the bug is fixed, and just like -kerpalguy- says: when you play a music file, Oosah loads the album art and the lyrics on the same little player. This feature was not available last night. Hope we can see more media features like this one :)

yardissimo

I wonder if you tack a ".mp3" onto non-media files. (such as "contract.pdf.mp3")

gwoodroof

"Who Can Join Oosah?
Oosah is open to anyone who is at least 13 years old, and who agrees to abide by the Oosah Terms of Service. Basic Oosah membership, which includes up to 2 gigabytes of storage on Oosah, is free. Once you have registered, you can begin using Oosah immediately."

ok, so it's 2GB for free users... maybe that's the catch.

qugeist

To anyone who's complaining about the limitations:
You get what you pay for. You have two choices with regards to the license: Use the service, or don't.

If you want the most secure storage available, get an external HDD. If you want redundancy, get two external hdd's, store one offsite, and rotate them around, synching on a regular schedule. If you want to complain about the cost, then drop in size, or just get one.

If it's STILL too expensive, put it on a website like Oosah's, take the time to upload your stuff (your internet upload speed is only so good, and I hope you don't have bandwidth limitations), and accept the fact that someone else is holding your information. Even if you throw it on another site, should anyone get your password they have access to your data, the tech's always have access to your data. An account glitch and you stand to lose it all.

As they say: Buyer beware. Know what you want before you go hog wild.

Freezen

@doryb:
An Ethernet cord. If you don't have one you can get one from a dollar store. Most NICs these days are auto detecting so you needn't worry about crossover or not.

Set up a local network and transfer your files across. With such a network you can transfer files over at 100MBit ~=10MB/s. This is much faster than you'd find any online service. There's no file limit sizes or restrictions.

johnsmith1234

Hi I am a regular LH reader, though not a commentator. Anyway, you guys made my day when this morning the first news I saw on my google reader was that Oosah was giving 1TB free hosting. I immediately started uploading my mp3s on it since I had a space crunch on my disk. Currently I am uploading a >500 MB .avi file and it is 10% done. I'll report the results as soon as it is done fully, but I would like to know if I can retrieve my mp3s from their drives back. Sincerely Sarya

BenitaElpis

6 months is a long time in free land with no mention of funding

[uptime.netcraft.com]

@5south

--> "or of its Users" ... "Except for Content owned by you"

Are you one of those prepositionally challenged individuals where the Constitution in concerned? "of religion"

..

This will only be truly useful if it can be CIFS mounted ;)

AdvanceWisdom

mmm steganography

AdvanceWisdom

Seems cannot really be trusted as back up solution, Mozy is better i believe.
For sharing craps is useful tho' :S

Encrypted, 2GB for free service and 4.95$/Mo for unlimited space personal back up solution.
Also you can rise your free service online space with a referral program with mutual increments of 256Mb for both the referent and the new free user.
You have to install a client which performs customized automatic incremental back up.

The bad thing is that if you choose to use your own private key instead of the mozy one for encrypting your files it gets more complicated to restore the files back.

My refer if it can help you
-> [mozy.com]

mazinga

is it me or does Oosah not have an upload client of any kind? this is a showstopper for me.

Adrive does have a client but it's Windows only - also a showstopper considering Dropbox is an excellent multi-platform solution (IMHO) that I am seriously considering going premium with.

chinarut

@cbh: pictures, music, and videos are great. I plan to use this to complement Dropbox which store any documents not created on Google Docs.

@HappyDad: as this service is basically a way to backup my media collection to the cloud - I'm not concerned if it just dies one day - will have my local backups available as always!

@Gonz: valid point - continuous stream albums from iTunes can clock in at over 72MB and I have an audiobook (The Alchemist) that clocks in at 59MB.

chinarut

How exactly do adrive,dropbox etc. plan to make money to pay for the 50gb they're providing? Most won't use more than 1-5gb, so all of their business models are broken, they're just providing free bandwidth and disk space and will be broke in a year from what I can tell. I'd stick with S3 for important backups

CallaTaurus

So according to clauses 4 and 9, Oosah are going to use all of the photos and videos that get uploaded as some sort of iStockPhoto web site in order to fund the storage.

Oh, and you don't get a penny for it.

Sounds great... where don't I sign up.

SpencerLavery

Now you just need to write a little program that would manage a bunch of AES encrypted files with .mpg suffixes and you've got yourself an online partition. :P

nickpick

Still this beta has major issues. For example, I have not got any successful upload. There is always some files which can't be uploaded. Other issue I dislike is the fact that Oosah allows duplicated files. You can upload the same song or photo (¬¬) with the same name several times without a warning or something. Maybe this is the trick behind having 1TB of free online storage space: you can fill it up entirely with the same 80's hit. For now not the best free way to backup things. The interface remains slow without mentioning the upload speed. Finally, there is no option to change files view. It's a little hard to see the entire name of your files. You will see it's like work in slow motion. KUDOS for the music player with album artwork and lyrics.

yardissimo

@SpencerLavery: Clause 4 doesn't mean they can use their photos, but clause 9 definitely does:

Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Scary words: automatically grant, irrevocable, any current and future services, sublicenses

In more important words, nothing you put on Oosah is private.

Stay away.

Chef

it's true 1TB, but right now they're having problems syching with flickr and facebook and you can't connect to either. Uploading takes forever because of all the people trying to put up as much as their media as they can.

lazaroff

@mobycat:

Yahoo TOC:
"With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups"

It also seems like yahoo only makes the licensing claim on photos that are content labeled public. Oosah doesn't make this claim in their TOC.

grey_fox24

I've been using this for a couple of weeks now and couldn't get a single video to upload no matter what format/size.

Quizboy

A terabyte is not 1024 gigabytes. It's only 100 gigabytes. 1024 gigabytes is a tebibyte

bookmunkie