I do take your point, however when I signed up to CrashPlan back in 2011, it wasn't quite so clear cut. They were clearly trying to bridge backup and cloud storage with their blurb:

"CrashPlan Central is the cloud backup destination for CrashPlan+, providing online storage for your personal files in our secure data centers located around the world. It is instantly available as a backup destination after you install, and is available 24/7 for backing up and restoring files. Make cloud backup for your personal files an integral part of your multiple destination backup strategy with CrashPlan+."

http://web.archive.org/web/20110810143226/http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan-plus.html

"Unlike other backup products, CrashPlan keeps your deleted files forever (unless you tell us not to.) No matter how much time passes after you delete a file, you can get it back. (Files backed up to CrashPlan Central are retained as long as you have an active subscription or free trial)."

http://web.archive.org/web/20110809034750/http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/details.html

So when they changed their minds in 2013 and decided not to keep data from inactive machines they should have made it very clear to existing customers. I haven't come across any customer yet who was aware of this change.