Back in highschool, my friends and I got kicked out of a buffet restaurant. Every movie I've ever seen a poster for suggests that it's "Only in Theatres", yet I've held many a DVD release in my hands.
There's something about reasonability and fair-use and use over time going on here, but I just can't put my finger on it.
You didn't get kicked out, you got played. They bank on the fact that most people will eat less than the price of admission, kinda almost like the ones who under eat the admission cost subsidize the ones who overeat the admission cost. Kinda like the paying customers for a service usually subsidize the running costs of the free tier. The buffet advertised all you can eat, you paid them, that's a contract. Unless there's fine print that you agreed to, you had no obligation to leave before you had your fill if they were open still. America 101, contracts and liability for breaches of contracts.
For example here's the Backblaze team verifying that their unlimited personal backup is indeed unlimited, with one single user storing 430TB for $6/month. The users spending $6/month who use a couple GB more than offset the cost of the 430TB guy. If your business model doesn't support the ability to get in the black, you have a failing business. This isn't the user's responsibility to fix, it's the failing service with a bad business model.
> As you can see, we lose money on a few customers at the high end (we cannot store 430TB of data for only $6/month), but since more customers just want to be reasonable and backup their laptops we are profitable and fully sustainable on the "average"
> Somebody who is costing Backblaze $2,150/month and is only paying $6/month :-)
There's something about reasonability and fair-use and use over time going on here, but I just can't put my finger on it.