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Western Digital Service Restricts Use of Network Drives

Posted by Zonk on Thu Dec 06, 2007 05:23 PM
from the drm-means-don't-read-disk dept.
Networking Data Storage Media
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.
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Submission: Western Digital Cripples Network Drives by sehlat (180760)
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  • In Soviet America.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Endloser (1170279) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:24PM (#21604575)
    file types restrict you.

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChrisMP1 (1130781) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:25PM (#21604591)
    If you can't have media files on it, it might as well be 512 MiB.

    • I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KingSkippus (799657) * on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:35PM (#21604775) Homepage Journal

      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 [custhelp.com] of file types it cripples the functionality for.

      The funniest part is the "What it holds" section at the bottom:

      • Up to 571,000 digital photos
      • Up to 500,000 songs (MP3)
      • Up to 50,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
      • Up to 100 hours of Digital Video (DV)
      • Up to 800 hours of DVD quality video
      • Up to 200 hours of HD video

      • Re:I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by HTH NE1 (675604) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:07PM (#21605217)

        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.
        You don't have to use their networking service with the device. Indeed, that service isn't even available for Mac users. It has a web interface for setting it up independent of their service. There are also hacks out there to turn it into a Linux server. It has its own ARM processor. A co-worker is planning to move his Subversion server to one. It also has a USB port for hooking up additional storage.

        • That defeats the point (Score:4, Insightful)

          by KingSkippus (799657) * on Thursday December 06 2007, @09:03PM (#21607243) Homepage Journal

          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.

      • Re:I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Torvaun (1040898) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:11PM (#21605279)
        Hey, I didn't see Ogg Vorbis on the list. I demand Linux equality!

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cicatrix1 (123440)
          That's because they misspelled it OOG. Or is that some other filetype I've just never heard of?

  • So rename your files and go on about your business (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JudgeFurious (455868) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:25PM (#21604593)
    Seems simple enough. I'm downloading "The_Golden_Compass.pdf" or some such rubbish should take care of it.

  • WD My Book driver suck. Stick with Seagate (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan (730745) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:25PM (#21604599)
    All of the WD My Books that i own are flakey in one way or another. I personally like Seagate far better as a company.
    • This is true. I have a client who uses a number of external MyBooks - and their clients send them MyBooks too (they convert film and video to digital and store them on the customers drives). These things are flaky in terms of not initially being seen by Windows when you plug them in. You have to do it a certain way to get them to work initially, then they're OK - until they break. The key to using an external is - never move them. Plop them down and leave them there. They aren't ruggedized enough to be cons

      • Re:WD My Book driver suck. Stick with Seagate (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Glonoinha (587375) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:33PM (#21605577) Journal
        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.'

  • This makes a lot of sense. (Score:5, Funny)

    by moogied (1175879) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:26PM (#21604615)
    Western Digital understands the primary use of the drive to be media sharing. As such, they cripple that option in order to maximize drive life time and make sure its REAL primary use is back ups. I for one thank our Access-Restring Overlords..

    ^Satire.

  • Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suman28 (558822) <suman28.hotmail@com> on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:27PM (#21604619)
    from the drm-means-don't-read-disk dept.
    should read
    from the drm-means-don't-read-media dept.

    I don't understand why all these corporations feel like they are suddenly in the business of policing for the RIAA/MPAA

  • Not the right question... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hawkeye_82 (845771) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:27PM (#21604627) Journal

    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?
    That's not the question we need to be asking.

    The question we need to be asking is - "How can I replace the firmware on that thing and make it my bitch?"

  • More like... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:28PM (#21604645)
    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.

    • Re:More like... (Score:5, Funny)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:36PM (#21604809)
      I can't wait to hear about all the noobs out there complaining about their "crashed" computers because they tried to open a 700MB file in NotePad... : p

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by oatworm (969674)
            Hmm... now you make me look. Tried an 85 MB ISO with Notepad 5.2 (Win 2003) - yep, it's taking a while, but it's trying. Tried a 400 MB ISO and it didn't hang at all - it said "The %path of file% file is too large for Notepad. Use another editor to edit the file." So, the limit must be somewhere between the two.

            (Note: Yes, I'm abusing my work's terminal server.)

  • I believe (Score:5, Informative)

    by sdsucks (1161899) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:31PM (#21604709)
    Sounds more to me like they just can't be shared via "WD Anywhere". Not that they can't be stored on the drive. I may misunderstand though.

    *Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access. A list of the non shareable file types can be found here.

  • Just remove WD Access Anywhere (MioNET) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mononoke (88668) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:32PM (#21604721) Homepage Journal
    Or just never install MioNET in the first place. Either way, here's how. [custhelp.com]
  • The limitation on the media files is when using the WD Anywhere Access. You can still backup and share your music files within your own network and even remotely. Not being totally familiar with the product, but I assume they have "guest" or anonymous sharing folders where you can "Offer your clients an easy way to access business documents, designs, and artwork." They probably also include some proprietary WD client program that lets you access your media files from remote locations so you can play your MP3's while at some hotel in Aruba. So the drive isn't an anchor, but it can't be popped on to the net and easily used to share MP3's with the world. Seems simple enough.

    Comcast would likely throttle down your Internet connection anyway once they saw all those MP3's being streamed. :)

  • From the manufacturer's product page: (Score:5, Funny)

    by harmonica (29841) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:35PM (#21604773)
    My Book(TM) World Edition(TM) [wdc.com]

    What it holds:
    Up to 285,000 digital photos
    Up to 250,000 songs (MP3)
    Up to 25,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
    Up to 76 hours of Digital Video (DV)
    Up to 400 hours of DVD quality video
    Up to 100 hours of HD video

  • It's irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)

    by Trailer Trash (60756) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:38PM (#21604833) Homepage
    The mybook we II runs Linux, and it's trivial to get shell on it. You can make it do whatever you want.

    If you really want to know the travesty about the internet access to it, read up on the web. It's a java-based system called Mionet which requires a special client on your windows machine that you'll use to access it remotely. Did I mention the $50/year that you pay a 3rd party to access your own files? Mionet inexplicably forces you to go through their server to get to your files. Do a google search to find horror stories of Mionet being down and people being unable to reach their own files for more than a day. I'm a programmer - I know of no reason to create it this way other than to extract ongoing revenue from those who don't know better. Using dyndns and an open port will let you get to your files reliably from anywhere.

    As for mine, I got shell, disabled the mionet stuff, made sure sshd was coming up every time, and I use it as a really slow Linux machine with a large disk. Be forewarned, it's dog slow. It has a gigabit ethernet port on it that typically pumps out about 50Mbits/sec. Seriously, a 100Mbit port would be half-wasted. Let's not even talk about write speeds.

    If you buy one, note that you also don't need to use their windows setup utility, it has a complete web interface.

    I paid $300 for a 1TB drive, which, frankly, was little more than I would have paid for a plain external drive at the time. Bonus is that I can connect another usb drive into it and share it on the network.

    And one other bonus - it comes with a complete toolchain on its 3GB linux partition, so you can build software on it without having to install other toolchains on another linux machine. The 200MHz processor isn't the fastest at building, but it does fine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by IronChef (164482)
      ...I know of no reason to create it this way other than to extract ongoing revenue from those who don't know better.

      Making something easy for someone and charging them for the privilege isn't evil.

      Using dyndns and an open port will let you get to your files reliably from anywhere.

      Some people do not know what those things are. Fortunately, there is a service they can choose to purchase.

      Too bad it sucks, but that's another issue.

  • Dvix? Oog? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mike260 (224212) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:39PM (#21604849)
    How on earth are they going to block these formats when they can't even spell [custhelp.com] them?

    I hope the device genuinely blocks the extensions 'dvix' and 'oog' instead of 'divx' and 'ogg', that would be too funny.

  • False advertising? (Score:4, Funny)

    by AusIV (950840) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:45PM (#21604937)
    From the site:

    Use This Product When You Want To
    * Securely access and edit your files on any computer.
    * Get files from home while at the office.
    * Listen to the music on your My Book World Edition drive while you're on vacation.
    * Securely share photos with your friends anywhere in the world without uploading them to the web.
    * Back up your laptop data to your home computer while you're traveling.
    * Offer your clients an easy way to access business documents, designs, and artwork. Eliminates the need for a separate FTP server.
    * Back up critical files to a remote drive for the ultimate protection from loss.
    * Simplify your home network and access data from any computer or external hard drive in the house.
    * Automatically back up all your PCs to one central location.
    * Gain peace of mind with a mirrored back up of important documents and images.

    What It Holds:
    Up to 571,000 digital photos
    Up to 500,000 songs (MP3)
    Up to 50,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
    Up to 100 hours of Digital Video (DV)
    Up to 800 hours of DVD quality video
    Up to 200 hours of HD video
    Now, granted these limitations only extend to "Anywhere Access", so you could still presumably use the device on a local network or plugged in to a specific machine, but it seems like blatant false advertising to say that you could listen to your music while on vacation when it doesn't let you use that service on the vast majority of music files.

  • even then... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustNiz (692889) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:55PM (#21605071)
    >>> 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.

  • QNAP (Score:4, Informative)

    by michrech (468134) on Thursday December 06 2007, @05:59PM (#21605109)
    I think the QNAP devices are far nicer, though they will be more expensive in the long run. They even run linux and are customizable (people run all sorts of different server services from them).

    Here [newegg.com] is a bunch of their different devices (newegg.com link).

    I'm considering getting the TS-209 (or the PRO, haven't made up my mind), personally. I have two 320gb SATAII drives sitting around not doing anything since I've stopped running WHS and could really use a nice low power device to replace the computer I was using for this task. :)

  • Madness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WhiteWolf666 (145211) <moornblade at gmail.com> on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:13PM (#21605309) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Last time I buy a WD drive... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gillbates (106458) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:45PM (#21605743) Homepage Journal

    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.

    1. In the first place, this is a troubling precedent. My own hardware won't obey my instructions? Does WD believe they still own the machine, even after I've bought it?
    2. Technical issues aside, this means that most users won't be able to share their home videos and sound recordings. So, no garage band videos allowed.
    3. Media files aren't the only things copyrighted. For example, most text files, binaries programs, etc... are also copyrighted. In fact, almost every file on your PC, is copyrighted. So if WD is concerned about copyright violations, they shouldn't allow any type of file to be shared.

    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:

    • RIAA Lawyer: So you manufactured the device knowing full well it could be used for copyright infringement, did you not?
    • WD: Well, um, yes.
    • RIAA Lawyer: So you admit that you contributed to copyright infringement, do you not?
    • WD: Well, it's not like that -
    • RIAA Lawyer: Yes! Yes it is like that! See - you put the restriction on filesharing on one of your drives, but neglected to place it on the rest of them! So you could have prevented filesharing, but chose not to. You deliberately made this device capable of copyright infringement...
    • Later... During Congressional anti-terrorism hearings...
    • Expert: Yes, we've known for a long time that simulating a nuclear weapon requires large amounts of data - typically beyond the capacity of the PC, until WD started manufacturing large capacity disks...
    • Congresscritter: (to WD) Why did you make such large capacity drives?
    • WD: Well, we intended them to be used for media...
    • Congresscritter: Such as movies?
    • WD: Well, um...
    • Congresscritter: Because that would be copyright infringement.
    • WD: Um, no. We didn't intend them to be used for copyright infringement.
    • Congresscritter: Ah, so you intended them to be used for something else? What else would someone do with a terabyte of data?
    • WD: Well, um...
    • Congresscritter: It's fairly obvious to everyone here that you helped terrorist countries with their nuclear ambitions - you even went so far as to make the drive unable to share media. Clearly, you had some other purpose in mind.... Let me help you out here - you knew they could be used for terrorism, but hoped that no one would find out. You put your profits above the safety and security of the American people.

    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:

    1. Manufacturers will be held liable for any illegal use of their products, and:
    2. To minimize liability, the functionality available to the end user will be extremely crippled.

    It is really unfortunate when our fear of what someone might do with technology overrules the good that they are doing with it.

    • Re:Here's the deal. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mystik (38627) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:20PM (#21605383) Homepage Journal
      What if Joe created the mp3, and has owner rights?

      What if Joe has Worldwide distribution rights?

      How does Joe explain to his hard drive that he's not a criminal by default?

      Why does Joe have to explain to his hard drive that he's not a criminal by default?
    • So, why doesn't the media companies sue MS for letting Kaza run on Windows? Same logic. Or what about Dell for selling computers that can function as a server?

    • Re:Here's the deal. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegrassyknowl (762218) on Thursday December 06 2007, @06:25PM (#21605473)

      Both record companies and Joe can sue WD.

      What kind of sad world is it when a manufacturer makes a device that can share files on the Internet. Joe puts his files on there and puts it on the Internet. Jane (and everyone) can access all of Joe's private files because he was too lazy/ignorant to bother securing them. Joe and record companies sue product maker because product performed AS EXPECTED!

      There's been a lot of using the legal system to get compensation for people's own stupidity lately. It's sad that it's spilled over to products that now carry spurious warning labels (the frisbee that says "do not throw toward people") or functionality so limited as to make it not worth buying in the first place.

      Of course, this whole post is based on the postulation that WD have implemented this blocking of files to cover their asses from legal action.

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