[IP] Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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From: Rich Kulawiec [rsk@gsp.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 10:30 PM
To: David Farber; Richard Forno
Subject: Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives

Spotted on the excellent Boing Boing site, where Cory Doctorow writes:

        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?"

And sure enough, it's right on WD's own web site:

        http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1495

---Rsk

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