Is there a compelling reason to boycott Maxtor and especially Maxtor Hard Drives?

[Asher Kelman]

Is there a compelling reason to boycott WESTERN DIGITAL drives

BBC reports:

"One of the world's largest hard disk manufacturers has blocked its customers from sharing their media files online that are stored on networked drives.
Western Digital says the decision to block sharing of music and audio files is an anti-piracy effort.

The ban operates regardless of whether the files are copy-protected, or a user's own home-produced content."

I personally was about to purchase a whole clutch of Maxtor drives today but will hold off. What do you think?

Read more here .

The article refers to Western Digital Drives, not Maxtor

Asher

 

[Clayton Lofgren]

What does Maxtor gain from this?

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Asher,

I think it is important to explain properly what is going on here.

This situation applies only to the NAS disk drives of Western Digital, the so called MyBook World Edition products. These products have on board software, Anywhere Acces, for sharing files on the internet. Anywhere Access is based on the Mionet Internet Service company which has earlier this year been taken over by WD.

One can still store any kind of files on these drives and make them accessible on the LAN (ie at home or office). The limitation only applies to those who want to share these files on the Internet. For those who really want to keep on doing this there are already tweaks available. So this is not going to stop the "targeted" users at all, it'll just delay them a little bit. But it makes things legally safe for WD and probably prevents them being sued by the entertainment industry, but I will not go into the legal and moral implications here.

So if you were planning to buy these NAS devices for office/home use, by all means do so. Nothing will change for users like yourself.

HTH,

 

[StuartRae]

Further down the article it says "Western Digital has blocked users from sharing more than 30 different file types, if they are using the company's software, called Anywhere Access."

So what's to stop us using other software? Or is it a matter of principle?

Regards,

Stuart

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Further down the article it says "Western Digital has blocked users from sharing more than 30 different file types, if they are using the company's software, called Anywhere Access."

So what's to stop you using other software?
...

Not much, really. Either use some other software or tweak the blocked one to unblock it. This scheme is totally ineffective and is all about covering WD's back legally, if you ask my opinion.

Cheers,

 

[Asher Kelman]

We only have one report so far. If this is indeed as stated by the BBC, then I don't like the news! I bristle at what I perceive as an arrogant attitude and cow-towing to the DVD industry. It's particularly egregious to the extent that we have might have to think twice about having our own creative work on a drive we purchase!

If these drives were free, then maybe I'd use them for just back up. However, this report suggests a camel's nose entering the tent!

Asher

 

[StuartRae]

........cow-towing to the DVD industry

Does this mean that we condone theft of copyrighted work? Is music and video so much different from the photographic art that we go to such lengths to protect? It's just a shame that, as usual, the dishonest minority spoil things for the rest of us.

But as Cem says, the current measures are pretty ineffective.

Regards,

Stuart

 

[Asher Kelman]

Does this mean that we condone theft of copyrighted work? Is music and video so much different from the photographic art that we go to such lengths to protect? It's just a shame that, as usual, the dishonest minority spoil things for the rest of us.

I'd love to see a fair solution that protects creative labor and allows freedom with our own work.

If I want to send my purchased music from one of my computers to another, I don't want that blocked. If I wish to share digital files, then don't tell me I cannot let others have a RAW file to work with, because that's where this can head.

We do need some new methods of protecting work, I'm with you on that and in fact over the weekend did discuss this with some software cryptologists. So far, no magic solution.

Asher

 

[Kathy Rappaport]

Piracy

In a nutshell, if they are trying to protect the rightful owners of copyrights and creative endeavors, should we as photographers support their choice to prevent other works from piracy? How many of you have had your photography stolen from you off of the web? I had two instances where I was flat out told that my images were pilfered from my website. One was from a friend's daughter, where I took her portrait and when I placed a print order asked why she wasn't going to order a print told me she lifted it. I had the same situation with my friends wedding - she copied all of the images. I have since changed websites that offers right click protection, gives a copyright warning and heavily watermarks my images and I only put up smaller low rez work.

 

[StuartRae]

...........offers left click protection,

Kathy,

Please be aware that this is no protection at all. All you have to do is disable JavaScript and you can right (did you mean right rather than left?) click to your heart's content. Even simpler is to just drag the image to the desktop. In any case, the image will be in the browser cache.

Regards,

Stuart

 

[Kathy Rappaport]

Yes, Right Click. And, the Javascript disabling might not be much of a problem with the non-techies = watermark and low res help - some.... When my studio opens, I won't be putting up any images online except thumbnails that I will consider selling other than for small prints.

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi,

Just to point out that this news is about the Western Digital drives, not the Maxtor ones as Asher has mentioned in his original post by mistake. Maxtor has been acquired by Seagate two years ago, BTW.

Further, with all due respect, the quality (or the lack thereof) of the drives is not the topic of the discussion. Neither is the question whether one's photos can easily be stolen when posted on the net or not. The question is one that borders on morality and principles.

The starting point/axiom is: sharing copyrighted material on the internet is considered to be illegal and/or immoral.

The follow-up question is whether – in case one indeed considers this activity to be immoral/illegal- producing and selling equipment that supports sharing material should also be considered illegal/immoral. This question has been discussed a billion times before, and will still be after this post of mine. People tend to get very sentimental about this, I hope we'll keep our cool here at OPF.

We could look into some analogies when looking for answers. For example, if terrorists use phone lines when planning an attack, should we ban telephones all together? Many will say no, it would be a ridiculous action after all. But this is an overused, extreme example. However, there is one more fact we should consider when judging this particular situation.

The WD equipment does not really know what copyrighted material is! It just assumes that if it is an mp3 (or divX, avi, wmv, Quicktime, etc), then it should be stopped from being shared. The producer assumes that we all are criminals, period.

We are nowadays getting used to being treated like potential criminals in other aspects of life, for instance when travelling by plane. That part can be partially justified since preventing a plane hijack might be worth the hassle the extra security checks cause. But this is no life threatening situation, merely a matter of financial interest of certain companies and individuals.

And with that, any sympathy I might have had for the original idea disappears like snow before the sun. I do not approve the measures taken by WD, much like Asher wrote before me be it a bit more eloquently and emotionally.

Regards,

 

[Ray West]

Maybe they'll put a performing rights tax on hdd, like the blank audio cassettes from a few years ago.

I have started a new thread and moved the hdd reliability type posts to there - this thread is more about performing rights issues.