Western Digital has built a new line of Defective by Design Hard Drives with forced “features” that limits the user’s ability to share files. Western Digital is the world’s second largest hard-drive manufacturer.

This is a terrible sign for Fair Use and users rights. The technology is being sold to protect copyright but have not safe guards for your rights even if the files to be shared are created by the users themselves. I put my work under a CC license for a reason I want to share it and I do not want my hardware screwing with that. Adding digital locks at the hardware level* allows for no discrimination by users and breaking this system my be a violation of the DMCA.

The good news is that the software Western Digital is using only works on Windows. I see where Linux and Mac will become the OS’s of the free world, although this is not Microsoft’s fault this time, the blame is all on Western Digital.

Write Western Digital and let them know that you want them to remove all DRM from their products before you buy another hard drive from them. I have personally purchased between 5-10 drives from them in the past, I used them for a RAID Array when I was EQing before Law School devoured all my time. I will have to check out Maxtor and Seagate now.

Press:
Wired

*Technicly speaking this is a software lock that is embedded in a peice of hardware.