News WD MyBook locks your media files

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12/10/wd_mybook_locks_your_media_files/1

Western Digital 1TB MyBook NAS adds overly restrictive DRM to deny access to the video and music you legally own, when you try and play it from outside your home network.

 

Yay! Flac is not blocked!

 

I just hacked the firmware, installed SSH, disabled the mionet service and then installed a FTP server (It runs linux btw). No problems accessing any content outside of my home network

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot WD.

 

Well, I'm not buying one of these.

 

Wont be buying anymore WD products then.

 

Too bad. Thought I'd buy a MyBook, but that won't be happening now. And I wouldn't even have stored any of these file types on it. Damn it, WD, it is a matter of principle.

 

Surely you can log in as the Administrative user who created the share, right?

 

I wonder if they're drm is covered under the GPL maybe some one should threaten them the way ASUS were.

 

Surely a bit of cunning file renaming will get around this ? ... was only planning on letting mates download it to play anyway. Streaming is poo.

It was on my list of new years purchases.

Shame as it was mostly going to be used for uploading DM videos of the clan etc. I will be looking for an alternative before buying but it does have some (otherwise) nice features and the price is good.

I hope WD catch wind of the shame.

 

create a dedicated PC whats the issue here thats what i have

thats what you get when you buy a prebuilt solution its always (almost anyway) better to spec up a solve the problem yourself.

its fairly simple to setup a dydns then use IIS or apache to create a web shareto give access to your files may be a little more convoluted but in the end offers a better solution

 

True... although the 1TB was going to be a back-up drive too for tunes, videos and pictures I don't want to share. I do have an old P4 2Ghz PC sitting there (massive 30GB storage).

Might set this up as a NAS just for sharing and then buy a non-WorldBook for backup.

Good plan, cheers.

FreeNAS looks interesting, albeit complicated. Anyone here using it for sharing across the web ?

 

tut tut, why do it WD, only going to push customers away in this move.
Ah well there are other solutions.

 

WD is great stuff. To bad they made a cool device then made it completely useless.

I'll still buy WD HD's for my computers, but this one is on the naughty list.

 

I feel dirty for having been a loyal WD harddrive user for the last decade or more.

 

as usual an over reaction and the actual way to get rid of privacy is provide what consumers want not try and stop them doing what they want as they ignore or find a way round it. when tv shows downloads are avaliable at a decent price (subscription models rather than per show) in decent enough quaility without drm or restrictions then you will see a change, before that not very much.

 

Never used it for sharing over the web but I used it at work to set up a simple file server and it worked like a charm.

 

makes it pretty damn useless.

 

this is very dumb.......

edit: just read the list....this is dumber that i thought....

 

This is a real shame. I was dead set on picking up a gorgeous red WD passport 250GB drive to go with my WeePC, but now I think I'll have to find another brand. I really feel like I need to do my tiny bit to punish WD for dicking around their users like this.

Some companies need to remember that WE pay their wages, WE create their profits, and WE control whether they live or die. Not the RI-MotherF***ing-AA.

edit: corrected for noobtastic spelling ;(

 

Strange - i didnt know the MyBook came in a NAS version
My 500GB model has eSATA and USB ....