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.

Comments

Re:A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight.

[gnubug]

Are you stupid? Do you even know what you are posting about. They will not allow any sharing of the files on the same network, or thru the internet by any other user. Which is the point. To access any file, you have to login to access the file, lets say you are watching a movie on one computer, but another user on SAME network tries to access the files that are locked off or banned, they have no access but the person who created the file. If they try and login using the person who put the files on the server, they get cut off (shutting the movie they are watching down) and you get access. This is on the banned files, other files can be accessed at other time, concurrently.THIS IS THE POINT. This is a file server, it is not up to WD to decide what you can and can not do with your files on YOUR server. Go shove it up yours buddy, because you have no idea what the hell your talking about.

Re:A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight.

[Erris]

For one thing, it seems as if though the system only works with Windoze. The easiest way to make it do what you want is to take the drives out and put them into a free computer. It is better and possible to unlock it (this reference) but it's a pain in the neck and clearly against the intentions of the maker.

More importantly, ESR's prediction of M$ behavior is something you should generalize to the entire non free software ecosystem. He predicted collusion with the MAFIAA to force hardware based restrictions and he predicted attacks on freedom based on freedom being a "terrorist" asset. That they are doing it with free software is a double ding. Having free software won't do any good if WD, M$ and friends push bad laws that require all files to have "verifiable media license authentication" or other digital restrictions controlled by others. That's the direction ESR predicted we would be heading and the World Book is both physical and ideological proof that he was right.