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Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 09:57:28 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Geoff Kuenning <geoff () cs hmc edu> Date: December 9, 2007 6:44:00 AM EST To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>Subject: Re: Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives
Bill Williamson writes:
-buy one of their NAS appliance hard drives -sign up for the service -load up a bunch of movies -give the password to 50000 of your closest friends Suddenly WD is a willing, and perhaps even legally encouraging, partner in copyright infringement.
What a crock. By that logic, Xerox would be liable for copyright infringement every time somebody slapped a copyrighed work into a photocopying machine, and JVC would be liable for every VHS tape used to record and share a TV program. The courts dealt with these issues long ago. The supplier of the technology is not responsible for its misuse. Furthermore, I could make a good argument that WD is guilty of fraud for selling me this file-sharing service and then preventing me from sharing my home movies just because they have an "AVI" extension. (And I can't help noting that they _don't_ prohibit .wav or .flac, so if I rip my CDs into a lossless format, they aren't protecting Hollywood at all. It's only if I choose .mp3 that they go all Big-Brother on me.) -- Geoff Kuenning geoff () cs hmc edu http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/ "Du kannst dem Leben nicht mehr Tage geben, aber den Tag mehr Leben." -- Anonymous(You can't give your life more days, but you can give your days more life.)
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Current thread:
- Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives David Farber (Dec 07)
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- Re: Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives David Farber (Dec 09)
- Western Digital cripples (well, tries to cripple) network drives David Farber (Dec 09)