Western Digital disables sharing of avi, divx, mp3, mpeg...

greggh · Post by **greggh** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 12:46 am

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/06/we ... -netw.html

Western Digital network drives crippled -- no serving any multimedia files

Posted by Cory Doctorow, December 6, 2007 10:56 AM | permalink

Gary sez, "This is the most extreme example I've seen yet of tech companies crippling data devices in order to please Hollywood: 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?" Link (Thanks, Gary!)

List of file types on a WD My Book World Edition that cannot be shared by WD Anywhere Access.

Question
What files cannot be shared by WD Anywhere Access?

Answer
Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the following file
types cannot be shared by different users using WD Anywhere
Access.

If these file types are on a share on the WD My Book World Edition system and another user accesses the share, these file will not be displayed for sharing. Any other file types can be shared using WD Anywhere Access.

File Extension File Description
AAC Advanced Audio Coding
AIF Audio Interchange File
AIFC Audio Interchange File
AIFF Audio Interchange File Format
AMF DSMIA/Asylum Module File
ASF Advanced Streaming Format
ASX Advanced Stream Redirector
AVI Audio Video Interleave
CDA CD Audio
DVI DivX AVI
DIVX DivX AVI
FAR Farandoyle Tracker Music Module
IT Impulse Tracker
ITZ Impulse Tracker
KAR Karaoke MIDI
MDZ Cubic Player/Cross-View Music Module Description
MOV QuickTime Video
MP1 MPEG Layer 1 (Audio)
MP2 MPEG Layer 2 (Audio)
MP3 MPEG Layer 3 (Audio)
MP4 MPEG Layer 4 (Video)
MPA MPEG Audio Stream, Layer I, II or III
MPE MPEG Video
MPEG MPEG Video
MPG MPEG Video
MPGA MPEG Layer 3 (Audio Stream)
MPV2 MPEG Audio Stream, Layer II
OGG OGG Bitstream
OKT Oktalyzer Tracker Module
PTM PTM - Poly Tracker Module (Audio)
QT QuickTime Video
QT1 QuickTime Video
VOB Video Object (DVD Video)
VOC Creative Labs Sound
WM Windows Media Audio or Video
WMA Windows Media Audio
WMV Windows Media Video

--As far as I know WD is the only HD manufacturer doing this crazy thing. I won't be buying Western Digital products any more.

davijordan · Post by **davijordan** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 4:43 am

So if you want to create your own files, I guess you can't. That smells like restraint of trade and violation of the fist amendment. I wonder what the FTC would think about that. The media industry are allegedly turning into fascists
Rumor has it that several people have put debian on one of those like the nslu2. http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/

I use my nslu2 heavily, you can buy old motherboards for a song. One of those old babies and freenas and you have instant file server, Why waste the money on one of those commercial boxes anyway unless space and power are critical.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 6:50 am

Ahhh, the beauty of Digital Restrictions Management!

allix · Post by **allix** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 5:20 pm

That's ashame WD make good drive, lets hope Seagate or Samsung don't follow suite.

mowestusa · Post by **mowestusa** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:55 pm

davijordan wrote:I use my nslu2 heavily, you can buy old motherboards for a song. One of those old babies and freenas and you have instant file server, Why waste the money on one of those commercial boxes anyway unless space and power are critical.

I would love to plug FreeNAS. I have an old Pentium 500 with 192megs of RAM and one 200Gig drive and a 120Gig drive. It is the perfect file server. In fact, it has been the perfect combination for storing my backups, media files, and then serving them up to my GeeXBoX which is an old Celeron 500 with 192megs of RAM and a 10Gig drive. Both of those systems have been built with parts from people who were just getting rid of them. Now I have a file server, and a media center hooked up to my HiFi Receiver. The only thing I paid for recently was the 200gig drive which was about $80, and the Ethernet cables and a $10 switch. Total cost just over $100, the joy of having a file server and media center running Linux, Priceless.

davijordan · Post by **davijordan** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 3:21 am

Cool, I have not thought about geexbox in a long time.

Big company IT departments ought to hire linux people alone for their scavenging ability alone....... Just think how much money they would save them for the bottom line. It is time for a lean mean corporate america,

If a computer company was smart the would make a commercial about the people who have kept their brand computer still useful. The auto companies used to do it and it brought big sales, I am told.

Post by **dann** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:43 am

Not having seen or read much more about this here is my 2 cents: What makes this utterly asinine is that it seems you can easily circumvent this by simply zipping the file. So what is the point?

Oh wait, why not prevent zip and .exe because there is no way to verify that you are not pirating someone else's code. Are they really that stupid and naive to think their customers are going to fooled by this? I mean, come on, the person who is going to share files the way the RIAA, MPAA and BSA are against is going to bypass this with ease. Once again they are only hindering legitimate use by legitimate customers.

I think I too may bypass western digital in the future.

davijordan · Post by **davijordan** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:08 am

Where I used to work the IT people other than me would bring up their own servers to work to download questionable material. It seemed that they had very hot music video and movie around. One department even used company equipment to do this. If you did not contribute to this area, you would be socially banished so to speak. They would also go into people's home directories and scavenge media when it seems the user was taking up too much space on the server.
I do not agree with the policy of banning certain file types. I can see why they did it. I agree that it would be easy to circumvent. Next there will be compressed file scanners on the systems god forbid.

jamathis · Post by **jamathis** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:28 am

I won't be buying another Western Digital drive. Looks like I'll be boycotting Seagate as well, that is unless than can fix this problem.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:53 pm

I would like to point out that what WD is doing is not making the drives themselves restrict the user, but people using WD's proprietary media sharing/backup software is gonna be restricted by that proprietary software. So if you don't want "digital handcuffs" (As Richard Stallman might say), just don't use WD's proprietary software for Windows and you'll be fine.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 6:42 pm

dann wrote:Not having seen or read much more about this here is my 2 cents: What makes this utterly asinine is that it seems you can easily circumvent this by simply zipping the file. So what is the point?

Oh wait, why not prevent zip and .exe because there is no way to verify that you are not pirating someone else's code. Are they really that stupid and naive to think their customers are going to fooled by this? I mean, come on, the person who is going to share files the way the RIAA, MPAA and BSA are against is going to bypass this with ease. Once again they are only hindering legitimate use by legitimate customers.

I think I too may bypass western digital in the future.

Can these companies that have made millions of dollars really be so naive?

I have to wonder if these type of things aren't just the first steps toward a different goal. Perhaps they know that these type of measures are ridiculous. But if they keep doing these types of things and people get around them then they are empowered to take more draconian steps. Like deep inspection of all data and more control.