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.

Re:"The Ironside"

I object to that. I am not a cripple.

Ah, Time for the Tinfoil Hats?

I think its because advanced aliens are against file sharing. If we don't have good copyrights, then the planet will be vaporized, as advanced civilizations basically sell travel books to each other. Piracy threatens the Galactic economy. You do know that the original Cylon - Human dispute was over DRM?

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

Why is everyone willing to write long essays without even spending a few seconds confirming that the story is correct? BoingBoing and Slashdot have it wrong. The drive stores and retrieves whatever files you put on it. It has one particular feature, optionally installed, that allows access to your drive from the Internet at large, and this one feature limits the filetypes you can share.

Please stop the spread of bullshit on the web, do at least a few seconds of research before assuming everything you read is true.

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

t has one particular feature, optionally installed, that allows access to your drive from the Internet at large, and this one feature limits the filetypes you can share.

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

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.

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

LOL. Now you'll never know whether it was your point or the "Microsoft eats babies" remark that got you your insightful mod.

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

Give him a break, at least he didn't use a '$' even once.

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

That's GNU/Stallman, you insensitive clod.

In Soviet America....

file types restrict you.

Why bother?

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.

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.

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

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.

Hey, I didn't see Ogg Vorbis on the list. I demand Linux equality!

So rename your files and go on about your business

Seems simple enough. I'm downloading "The_Golden_Compass.pdf" or some such rubbish should take care of it.

Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin

You should check out some of my .txt files

Metallica_Enter_Sandman.txt is a great "read"

Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin

Or, just set associations so .REM files open with Media Player Classic.

Doesn' scale

Or, just set associations so .REM files open with Media Player Classic.

Oh sure that works great for "Shiny Happy People".REM. But then you need "Sunday, Bloody Sunday".U2 and so on - imagine the size of the file association list! :-)

Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin

How about not buying a crippled product in the first place?

Re:So rename your files and go on about your busin

Gmail currently does not restrict *.rar files (nor does Gmail scream at you for what file types your compressed RAR volume might contain). Use WinRAR for free. http://www.rarsoft.com/download.htm [rarsoft.com]
It works in: Pocket PC, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and MS DOS. I love it so much I *GLADLY* PURCHASED IT! ($29) So call me a WinRAR fanboy.
It is a superior replacement to WinZIP (and other zip clones) with better compression algorithms (and you can also encrypt your compressed files AND their filenames WITH authenticity verification plus it handles everything WinZIP does).

WD My Book driver suck. Stick with Seagate

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.

Re:WD My Book driver suck. Stick with Seagate

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.

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...

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...

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?"

Re:Not the right question...

Here [wikidot.com] (http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/hacks-and-howto)

Re:Not the right question...

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

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?

More like...

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...

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

I believe

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)

Or just never install MioNET in the first place. Either way, here's how. [custhelp.com]

MP3 and other media CAN be stored...

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:

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

Re:From the manufacturer's product page:

And that is indeed what it holds. What it lets go of is a different list. Caveat emptor.

It's irrelevant

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.

Dvix? Oog?

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?

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...

>>> 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

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. :)

Re:Here's the deal.

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?

Re:Here's the deal.

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.

Madness

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.