Western Digital Service Restricts Use of Network Drives 315
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.
"The Ironside" (Score:2, Insightful)
I hereby dub these crippled drives The (Western Digital) Ironside [wikipedia.org]
Make it part of the vernacular, no amount of advertising $ can beat that.
Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
So rename your files and go on about your business (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the right question... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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:So rename your files and go on about your busin (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin (Score:4, Insightful)
A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org]. Watch out for the Next DMCA type act to outlaw general purpose computing access to networks. ESR predicted stuff like this three years ago [catb.org]:
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.
I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin (Score:5, Insightful)
Dvix? Oog? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope the device genuinely blocks the extensions 'dvix' and 'oog' instead of 'divx' and 'ogg', that would be too funny.
Re:Not the right question... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the question we should be asking is "who sells a device that we don't have to jump through hoops to do what I want?"
Seriously, why even bother giving money to a business that restricts usage like this?
Better Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:From the manufacturer's product page: (Score:4, Insightful)
Hahah; what a POS (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
even then... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
duh (Score:1, Insightful)
Cause they don't want to get sued.
Here's the deal. (Score:1, Insightful)
So nothing evil here, outside of the fact that WD probably has to do this to CTA (cover their asses).
My guess (Score:1, Insightful)
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"?
Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin (Score:3, Insightful)
Really?
Oh well. Their drives are banned here for near universal premature and catastrophic failures anyway.
Figgers.
Madness (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Here's the deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Here's the deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's the deal. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:WD My Book driver suck. Stick with Seagate (Score:5, Insightful)
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.'
Re:A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight. (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a bash on Microsoft insightful when the article is about Western Digital? Did microsoft force western digital to restrict file types?
Microsoft eats babies. Mod me up as insightful.
Last time I buy a WD drive... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooo, if I want to buy one to use as a server to allow all of my relatives to get pictures of the family and such, it will work. If I throw in an MPG of my son playing soccer, oooops... denied.
Wow. What a great feature.
Point is, it still sucks. Arbitrary limits based on the file extentions are stupid and pointless.
Re:I wouldn't. This is as stupid as it gets. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's the deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
That defeats the point (Score:4, Insightful)
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:A Sign of Things to Come and How to Fight. (Score:3, Insightful)
If WD cared about keeping your ISP happy, they never would have included any remote-access features in the first place. But they obviously did, but then they blocked it from serving certain types of files. That's not for the ISPs' benefit, clearly. It's for the media companies'.
Besides which, the whole "you can't run a server" rule is barely enforced. It's there, as far as I can tell, to keep idiots from calling the tech support desks asking why GoToMyPC doesn't work right -- it's an easy way to end the conversation and get the clueless people to give up. If ISPs really wanted to enforce that, they could quite easily block incoming connections much more effectively than they do. But they don't bother, and are mostly content to just tell you that servers are prohibited, but let people who know what they're doing access their computers remotely anyway.