Toner Cartridges new DMCA victim

anarkhos writes "Lexmark leads the curve by being the first to invoke the DMCA to prevent 3rd parties from making Lexmark-compatible toner cartridges." It's gonna get worse before it gets better. Update: 01/12 14:13 GMT by J : Yep, it's a dupe; see here and here for more info; for more on the DMCA, see our next story ;)

Comments

I'm disgusted:

[Anonymous Coward]

The site www.linuxworldexpo.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on unknown.

And it renders horribly in a gecko based browser.

Re:Heh

[rc27]

Scary, but that looks like where we're headed. If the court rules in favor of Lexmark, what's to stop HP from allowing only HP printers to be used with their computers? Where does it stop?

Yo

[Scalli0n]

Seriously, this is stupid. This is like people not being allowed to make 7.62mm bullets anymore because they might fit in an AK-47.

What Lexmark doesn't realize is that if there's lots of cheap toner cartridges for their printer, the educated buyer will buy their printer over others with the realization that it's upkeep costs will be lower.

STUPID LEXMARK! GO JOIN MICROSOFT!

Nyeh, so anyway...

Re:Reminder?

[Tony-A]

I *assume* there are readers who don't check out Slashdot at least daily.
If so, it makes sense to repost stories of major significance.

Think of Slashdot like a soap opera. Major plot twists need to be repeated for the benefit of sporadic listeners.

How about reprogramming?

[jridley]

I have an Epson inkjet printer, which has chipped cartridges. I have a little white box which I press up against the chip, and it changes it back to "full".
I wonder if this would also be considered "circumventing a media protection technology"?

"Legal", but Smart??

[JZ_Tonka]

"The next thing you know, you won't be able to use non-Ford and non-Toyota gas with Ford and Toyota cars respectively."

Maybe they could do that, but why would they want to? Would anyone really buy a car that required you purchase their (higher-priced) gasoline?

Maybe from a technical/legal viewpoint, Lexmark has the right to do this. But personally I believe it's a poor business decision. It's not like they're knocking anyone dead with the quality of their printers as it is.

Re:"Legal", but Smart??

[squiggleslash]

Why would anyone buy a printer that you can only use with Lexmark cartridges?

Answer: Because the printer's cheaper than the alternatives.

If Ford were to release a car that ran on Ford fuel only, but it cost $1000 for the car, which was comfortable, speedy, and safe, do you think they'd be completely unsuccessful?

Ford would, of course, need to make it easy to obtain "Ford" fuel, and it's the logistics of this that makes it difficult at this point for Ford to go ahead with such a scheme. But I don't think the scenario is as unlikely as you suggest, especially if Ford could find some way of packaging up 20 gasoline-gallons worth of energy into a brick sized unit that could be sent in the mail.

Re:"Legal", but Smart??

[Jeremi]

Seems like more and more companies/industries believe it is the responsibility of the courts to ensure their
business models remain effective, and profits guaranteed.

They paid good money to get their self-serving laws (e.g. the DMCA) passed, so of course they expect a return on their investment. This is the sort of thing that should be expected when money becomes more important than votes in politics.

Glad to see you're enjoying time w/ your wife, Rob

[Kiwi]

Glad to see you are enjoying time with your wife, Rob.

I, on the other hand, was bored enough to read this article here a few days back. Perhaps I should aspire to have a life the way you seem to.

While I have you attention, I wish there was some way to encourage people to post smart things to older articles. There was an article about DNS a day ago; alas, I did not have time when the article was posted to post anything more than a single rant; I now have finally gotten enough time together to write a number of actually useful postings; which, because of my timing, will not get read.

This is what I prefer about Usenet; if someone has something worth saying, but it takes them a week to say it, what they say will have an audience. Slashdot, on the other hand, has a 1-2 hour time frame for someone to post an comment on a given topic before it goes off the front page.

- Sam

Lexmark, HP, and the other printer mfgs: YOU SUCK!

[salesgeek]

Warning: Rant Follows, Sorry in advance:

I am absolutely SICK AND TIRED of buying a printer for, say $99.00 and having to pay $33.95 for a tank of color and $29.95 for a tank of black. (Stuff the comments about "that's just the business model" -- company store scams aren't a business model, they are a racket) Just make the damn cartridges refillable already.

As far as toners and laser printer parts that have predefined failure points, it's a total rip off. Why can't the printer business just make the best damn printer they can, and sell me on quality and the economy of operating their stuff. I don't care about how hi-tech your cartridges are. I don't even care that by replacing my printhead with the cartridge, I get optimum print quality. I want to replace the print head WHEN IT WEARS OUT. I don't want to buy a $250 developer unit when the one I had worked fine on page 10,499 and the engine clicks over to 10,500 pages. I want to replace "consumable" and worn out parts when they are expended!

Finally, $30 for 2.8ML of black ink is a rip off. I can get a gallon of ink for $5.00. Toner - my god that stuff is cheap when bulk packaged outside the combo drum/developer cartridge.

Lexmark: drop the lawsuit. I know you all just want to rip your captive customers off, but can't you figure out how to make money by say MAKING A BETTER PRINTER!????

BTW: I have a Lexmark inkjet. Great print quality BUT it costs $.33/page because the cartridges cost $60 and last 200 pages. My favorite feature is the "clean the printhead" option... It never fails to take 10-20 pages of life out of a cartridge and it NEVER works the first time I use it, forcing me to run the self-clean again and waste another 20 pages of ink!

I want a decent color printer that I can print for $.10 per page. And no chips, counters or hermetically sealed, kevlar-armored, heat treated steel covered unrefillable cartridges!

better solution: don't do it

[Lxy]

This is semi-offtopic, it has nothing to do with Lexmark. Lexmark is flat out crap, I wouldn't give a Lexmark printer to my worst enemy.

It sucks to see that printer manufacturers are stooping to this level. I have to maintain something on the order of 50 HP laserjet printers (I won't count the deskjets, maybe 100?). People don't like paying $80 for an HP toner cartridge when they can get a recycled HP for $40 or an off brand for $30. HP has nothing to worry about.. EVERYTHING ELSE SUCKS.

Most people opt for the $40 recycled cartridge. It's an HP cartridge that's been cleaned and refilled. Most of the time these things leak toner, occasionally requiring printer cleaning. When the users get the bill for printer cleaning, they see why I tell them to only buy the real thing.

Generic cartridges are even worse. At least with the recycled there's a warranty on them, if you get them in a shoddy condition you can usually send them back. I've used 4 different flavors of generic cartridge. Most of them either leak toner (accompanied by a cleaning bill sometimes) or in some cases just break apart. I had a user who went through 3 cartridges in one day, she'd print about 200 sheets and then the printer would start making a crunching sound and little plastic pieces would start flying out. Yup, toner cartridge broke apart. No warranty. You're out $30x3 because you went with a non-HP toner. Do the math, it's a bad deal all the way around.

I say go ahead and use your el-cheapo cartridges, you'll get what you paid for :-).