I’ve just finished reviewing the QNAP TS-119 NAS drive. It’s interesting, in a geeky, all-your-stuff-on-one-device kind of way, and the review can be found here.

Among the drive’s long list of features is the ability to run BitTorrent downloads in the background. This is great news for anyone who currently leaves their PC running overnight. But before you do, the manual has the following warning:

“Warning: Please be warned against illegal downloading of copyrighted materials. The Download Station functionality is provided for downloading authorized files only. Downloading or distribution of unauthorized materials may result in severe civil and criminal penalty. Users are subject to the restrictions of the copyright laws and should accept all the consequences.”

All well and good, of course. We wouldn’t want people illegally downloading content, and no sane hardware manufacturer would condone it in a manual. Except that QNAP has used the following screengrab:

This suggests two things: firstly, someone at QNAP has a much more realistic idea of what people are going to do with their products than the text of their manuals suggests. And secondly, that person has horrible, horrible taste in films.