Ring is facing a backlash over its Search Party feature, with a new program challenging developers to remove Ring Doorbell footage from Amazon’s cloud and transfer it to users’ own devices. The Fulu Foundation, the consumer advocacy group founded by YouTuber Luis Rossman, is offering an initial reward of $10,000 to anyone who can integrate the Ring Doorbell with a local PC or server, while shutting down access to Amazon’s servers.
Ring users currently have to pay a subscription fee to store recordings in Amazon’s cloud. While the company does have a local storage option through Ring Edge, it’s only available with Ring Alarm Pro, and it still requires a subscription. There’s also an option to secure your videos with end-to-end encryption, meaning neither Ring nor any third parties can view your footage, but it’s stored on Amazon’s servers.
O’Reilly writes, “In an ideal world, device owners would be able to modify that software to send that footage to their own computer or server if they wanted.” However, he warns that reward solutions will be limited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, meaning “it is a copyright offense for other security-minded Ring owners to distribute a tool or mechanism to bypass those locks and claim ownership of their videos.”
The first person or team to submit a solution that meets Fulu’s eligibility requirements will win a prize. To qualify, developers must integrate Ring doorbells released in 2021 or later with a local computer or server, and ensure that they “no longer send data to Amazon servers or require a connection to Amazon hardware to function.” The initial reward starts at $10,000, and Fulu will match any additional donations made by supporters up to $10,000.
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