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.

Actually...

[suman28]

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

personal firmware

[gmthor]

Just thinking if it is possible to edit the firmware so that the restriction is gone.

Re:I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets.

[HTH NE1]

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.

Re:I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets.

[me at werk]

The NFSU2? I had read about it as a linux server.

I happen to use an Apple Airport Extreme myself, because I can hook any usb hard disk/storage device to it (even though a hub) and share it over the network. It has the ability to have unrestricted access, guest access for the 'public' portion, accounts with passwords and their own private shares (sorry, no quotas, but I think you can setup partitions directly on a computer and it'll work fine). Works with Mac and Windows easily, and probably with Linux since it works with Windows. I personally like it a lot, and freedom of drive model/manufacturer choice is nice.