Western Digital 1 TB drives with DRM

Bound to happen sooner or later. Western Digital's 1TB hardrive will not let you stream certain file across a network. Such as AVI, MP3, WMV... These formats of course indicate that you are thief so you must not be able to use them.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/w ... gital.html

I stand corrected WD software assumes you are thief.

av8r wrote:DRM is a joke. It doesn't work and people have shown that they won't support it by boycotting products where it is invasive (Sony and others) Even Apple's iTunes DRM is easily circumvented by anyone that can use a decent search engine.

Agree but Apples Itunes DRM is peanuts considering the "unhackable" DRM on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD that took less than 6 months to be cracked. There's a saying in video circles, if it can be seen it can be copied and that has held true to this day.

They will tell you they put it on their to prevent casual piracy but I don't think that is that case. The business model for decades has been to sell the same content over and over as new and better formats become available. How many have purchased the same album on LP, 8-track, cassette and finally CD? With advent of the digital age that business model is broken because digital files don't go bad, they don't degrade and as far as audio goes with the advanced formats that have not yet hit the consumer market are at their pinnacle, many people don't even realize the music they are downloading from places like itunes is a step backwards as far as quality goes. These formats can last forever... Enter DRM, it will prevent the casual user from making copies but more importantly it imits the useful lifetime of the file.