The Technical Exorcist

December 8th, 2007

Western Digital's DRM Infected Hard Drive

Posted by exorcist in Hardware

Western Digital makes a huge Network-Ready hard drive that blocks all music formats from being shared with other users. This means you can pull music files off your hard drive, but you can’t let anyone else pull music files off your hard drive. There are legal, legitimate reasons why I could want to share my files with other users. I guess I’ll be preferring Seagates drives.

More information can be found on their website, or on this Register article.

The commentator Chronos is full of you-know-what when he says WD has to cover their asses due to Common Carrier laws. Common Carrier laws apply to “organizations that transport persons or goods”. Western digital does not transport data, they provide tools that may be used to transport data, so they are no more liable for what gets transported than a boat manufacturer.