I have a yahoo account or two, and I think I have a flickr account somewhere ... but as a general rule I don't / wouldn't keep a sole copy of data that I care about on a free-hosting system that I know can't contact me.
So, you are not an active user of the platform we are discussing here, you are not affected by the update, and you don't know what it is that I'm talking about except for in general terms.
In light of that, stating your opinion on whether I can call myself a devoted user, and comment on what I should or should not expect from the service that you are not using seems.. mysterious?
And I didn't even get into a fraction of features and data that Flickr stores with photos (comments, photos being part of a set, etc -- Flickr is a social network, after all) that are hard or nearly impossible to back up. We are not discussing the merits of backups here, but let's not pretend that users who back up their files meticulously will not be adversely affected if they don't pay up within 3 months.
You make it sound like I've never seen people on the internet whinge about how something they weren't paying for is changing their T&C's and the person who isn't paying for the service is very upset by this because ... reasons.
I think I can question your devotion to a service by how much you're willing to pay to use it (and how much you complain about it).
You appear to be complaining about having to stump up ~ USD$2 / month to continue to enjoy the same carefree usage you've managed to obtain for free for the last decade.
