Slashdot Mirror
Western Digital Service Restricts Use of Network Drives
sehlat writes "Via BoingBoing comes the news that Western Digital's My Book(TM) World Edition(TM) II, sold with promises of internet-accessible drive space, is now restricting the types of files the drive will serve up. 'Western Digital is disabling sharing of any avi, divx, mp3, mpeg, and many other files on its network connected devices; due to unverifiable media license authentication. Just wondering -- who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need to share?'" Update: 12/07 03:28 GMT by Z : To clarify, it actually seems as though this is a bad summary. The MioNET service that WD packages with the networked drives is responsible for the rights of users via the network. There are a few (obvious) ways to get around that.
I hereby dub these crippled drives The (Western Digital) Ironside
Make it part of the vernacular, no amount of advertising $ can beat that.
Trolling is a art,
If you can't have media files on it, it might as well be 512 MiB.
<sig> </sig>
Seems simple enough. I'm downloading "The_Golden_Compass.pdf" or some such rubbish should take care of it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The question we need to be asking is - "How can I replace the firmware on that thing and make it my bitch?"
Two hundred million files labelled like this:
Latest-Movie[axxo].txt (filesize 700MB)
Seriously, I don't know why they even try to bother any more. Regardless of your political position on piracy, it's a hole that they can't plug, no matter how many DRM methods they devise or U.S. senators they bribe.
My_movie_name.divx.removethis works great too - then you can write a simple script to parse off .removethis from all the files once they are on your computer.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Or, just set associations so .REM files open with Media Player Classic.
It's easier to point out that you can't use these drives to share your movies and songs. People want network storage for the same thing they use YouTube for, movies of their kids and other fun for out of town friends and family. No avi == no sale.
More devices will be like this until they are legally mandated. This is the kind of network the MAFIAA wants to build. It looks a lot like the old network that served them well. You are only invited to purchase. Government will be happy that way too. YouTube is bad enough for them. If people could simply share through their own equipment, censorship would be impossible and the terroris^H^H public good would win. Watch out for the Next DMCA type act to outlaw general purpose computing access to networks. ESR predicted stuff like this three years ago:
Expect Microsoft to ally even more closely with the RIAA and MPAA in making yet another try at hardware-based DRM restrictions and legislation making them mandatory. The rationale will be to stop piracy and spam, but the real goal will be customer control and a lockout of all unauthorized software. Two previous attempts at this have failed, but the logic of Microsoft's situation is such that they must keep trying.
I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists.
ESR had some good ways to fight this loss of freedom, but the easiest is to let people know that restricted devices don't do what they want to them to do.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Seriously. There's no way in hell I would buy this thing. The last thing in the world I need is my hard drive deciding what files are and aren't okay to store. Are they on drugs, or what?
Here is a complete list of file types it cripples the functionality for.
The funniest part is the "What it holds" section at the bottom:
How about not buying a crippled product in the first place?
Developers: We can use your help.
How on earth are they going to block these formats when they can't even spell them?
I hope the device genuinely blocks the extensions 'dvix' and 'oog' instead of 'divx' and 'ogg', that would be too funny.
Here's a much better idea: buy Seagate, Hitachi, or Samsung instead. Why on earth would you want to reward a vendor for doing the wrong thing?
And that is indeed what it holds. What it lets go of is a different list. Caveat emptor.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Look at the list of file types it refuses to share! I mean any mp*, AVI, AIFF, MOV?
Think of how far out there, mentally, you have to go to equate simple file formats with "unverifiable licensing"?
Seriously, these small but deliberate attempts to "narrow down" the ability to share information, except where and when the puppet masters dictate, are quite disturbing. This product/company needs to fail.
>>> A reader noted that the media files are only restricted between users of the same drive. Not quite as bad as originally pitched.
I still wouldn't buy one. Furthermore I'd demand a refund including shipping costs on any product I accidentally bought that didn't make this functionality VERY clear on the packaging, and also on the web-page if I bought it online.
I don't understand why all these corporations feel like they are suddenly in the business of policing for the RIAA/MPAA
Cause they don't want to get sued.
For those of you who can't read the updates. WD restricts access to media (in a half-assed way) when shared, essentially, "to the public". In fact they probably have to do this. Joe user dumps his MP3's on the disk, connects it to the net, then later wants Jane to have access to some other files. Oops, Mp3's shared - Joe has illegally shared copyrighted material. Both record companies and Joe can sue WD.
So nothing evil here, outside of the fact that WD probably has to do this to CTA (cover their asses).
Someone at wd asked the question, "Could we be liable for hosting illegal content on our devices?"
Which should read - "Could we be liable for 3rd parties storing illegal content on their devices?"
Bigwigs answer - "Yes"
Management, in their infinite wisdom, "Take it down"
Was it Shakespeare that said, "First, we kill all the lawyers"?
Are you friggin serious? They're really saying "if you call your data something dot mp3 we won't take it but if you call is data something dot someting else it works fine"?
Really?
Oh well. Their drives are banned here for near universal premature and catastrophic failures anyway.
Figgers.
Need Mercedes parts ?
So, apparently, because Western Digital can't determine whether or not I have the correct license to share my files, from a device I own, I'm not allowed to do it?
Crazy.
Whatever happened to "substantially non-infringing use"?
One could imagine an archive of freely redistributable video. I would have a use for such a device.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Actually that's about the just of it.
The LAST thing I need when buying hardware is to have a fucking piece of HARDWARE deciding what files it will / will not hold. Hardware is hardware - do what I tell you to do, do it reliably and without questioning my motives, intent, or desires.
This is tantamount to a car that won't turn left because the onboard GPS doesn't think there's a road there - well guess what, I'm not driving to work by committee. When it comes to hardware, when I say 'jump' your ONLY question better be 'how high?'
The important thing to remember is : I'm going to forget ~why~ I don't buy Western Digital hardware long before I forget that I ~don't~ buy Western Digital hardware. A year or now it will simply be 'I don't remember why, but there's no fucking way I would buy a WD drive.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Why would I buy such a large drive if I don't intend on using it for media.
It really isn't WD's place to restrict filesharing.
This is truly a troubling precedent. The problem is that by building a device which automatically attempts to enforce copyright law, they build a precedent which can be used against them in the future:
Electronic devices don't decide what's legal and illegal - the courts do. When people think that they are capable of doing so, two key things are going to happen:
It is really unfortunate when our fear of what someone might do with technology overrules the good that they are doing with it.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
That's because they misspelled it OOG. Or is that some other filetype I've just never heard of?
I know more than you drink.
But without the other features, the thing seems pretty much like an array of hard drives to me, ho-hum. One of the things that would set it apart is the built-in extra functionality. If I just wanted hard drives, I'd go out and just buy hard drives and probably save myself some cash in the process. If I want the built-in extra functionality... Well, I'd still go out and just buy hard drives, because I don't want it deliberately crippling and denying me the legitimate use of those capabilities because of some imagined illegal behavior that I haven't and wouldn't engage in.
It would be a little like buying a GPS unit with built-in maps. The catch is, though, that because someone might rob a bank on Main Street, no streets beginning with the letter M will be shown on the maps.
No thank you.