Monday, December 10, 2007

*siiiiigh*

Why?

Why is it that I find a hard drive manufacturer that I really, REALLY like and then everything goes all pear-shaped on me...

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In short, Western Digital (WD) has made a wonderful new external drive with a massive 1TB capacity with full 10/100/1000 network connectivity with the ability for external net access and totes this ability as access to your media from anywhere...

But there's a catch... you're not able to access your files from anywhere "Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access." as per WD's support site...

I love WD, a lot. They are probably the only manufacturer that breaks the Law of Hard Drives which states "Hard drives are fast, cheap and reliable; choose two."

Yet, their software is jumping into bed with the MPAA/RIAA and grenading types of files universally because of their type...

No. It's NOT your job to police users. Yes, you may be feeling pressure from the nazi's at the recording industry due to the particular feature set of your hardware, but you do not make universal assumptions and restrictions that limits access to a users potentially UNLICENSED and LEGIT user data.

There is an infamous "phrase" on the internet to describe your actions.

"Fail."

That said, please keep making your very excellent hardware, but tell your software division to keep it's paws out of consumers affairs. The media police can handle us dirty rotten thieving scum-bags if need be.

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