You still would be paying Ring for storage here. There is also the platform effects that once you own one, you'll buy more.
While the ethics of the Ring, neighborhood & police relationship are debatable, my thought was much less ethical & more related to reselling data for advertising purposes to cover the costs of the whole system. Such an idea seems more geared towards large city foot traffic areas with lots of eye catching items to provide data with. Shopping centers, sports stadiums, etc., would be ideal.
I suspect most saw it as a way to help their neighbor and since I was specific, it was easy for them to check quickly and share the video if they found what I described.
But I'm really not comfortable with corporate entities mining their consumer devices for data to voluntarily give to the police. Incentivizing customers to give blanket permission to share all this data is unconscionable. It's especially telling that the normal path would require the police to get a judge to sign off on a warrant to get at this data.
It's funny... in another post thread people are talking about a petition to have Microsoft withdraw their membership from the RIAA (in the wake of the youtube-dl takedown fiasco). Why aren't people banding together to demand that Amazon terminate their Ring camera relationship with police?
"In most cases, when police want to search your neighborhood, they need a warrant and a reason to believe something’s amiss. Now “reasonable suspicion” is going the way of dial-up. Fifty police departments across the United States are partnering with Amazon to collect footage from people who use Ring, the company’s internet-connected doorbell. Some are offering discounted or free Ring doorbells in exchange for a pledge to register the devices with law enforcement and submit all requested footage."