Slashdot Mirror
Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit
goingincirclez writes "Cnet reports that Lexmark has won an injunction against Static Control Components, Inc., which effectively prohibits the manufacture of recycled / third party toner cartidges. Slashdot covered the initial filing of the suit. SCC also has a rebuttal site that definitely warrants checking out. I would like to think that other printer manufacturers won't follow suit, but I'm not that naive. Better start your trust fund for ink cartridges."
Start using Laser Printers.. o wait...
Newsfollow.com
How much ink do these spammers think we need? I'd only need that much if I were printing out all of their messages.
I cannot see how this is ever going to turn out good for the consumer. This will enable the makers of printers to almost charge whatever they want for their cartridges.
#jlk
Collage fund is right. Watch Lexmark cut the size of the cartridges as well.
Just print everything at work.
Life in Orange County
Of the people, by the people, for the people?
Oh...fuck the people. They left that one off.
While I'm certainly not a fan of the DMCA, I'm not sure this is a poor decision by the courts, etc. I think that it's probably reasonable for Lexmark to be able to forbid third-parties from selling supplies, if that's a business decision they want to make.
However, I don't think that, even if they ultimately win this case all the way up the line, that this is a winning business strategy. I certainly am not going to buy a printer that is tied exclusively to the manufacturer.
This can't be good publicity for Lexmark; every story is explaining that the manufacturer's supplies are more expensive. That's got to have consumers thinking about buying from HP, or Epson, or whomever.
I think this is a classic case of shooting yourself in the foot, and then sueing for the privilege of doing so again.
Lexmark owns the technology for their printing systems. _They_ developed how ink gets spit out and put on the paper. _They_ are the ones who developed the drivers for their machines.
_They_ did not give permission for anyone else to manufacture a product which will work with their printers. That would mean licensing which is not taking place.
If you don't like a businesses policies, don't buy from them. Don't bitch at them when they're trying to protect something _they_ developed.
I mean seriously, why do people cling to such an outdated technology? When it comes to documents why not just print to PDF and email it?
Read it on the screen people, not on paper!
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Oh wait...nevermind.
In other news: HP buys Gillette
Ink is the only thing that HP makes money on these days. I wouldn't be surprised if inkjets become disposable soon. Gillette has this racket down pat.
I have a Lexmark Z42, and I generally refill the cartridges with ink 4 or 5 times before the printhead gunks up to the point it needs replacing (black lasts a bit longer).
The printheads are 'disposable', they eventually clog with ink. This makes recycled cartridges worthless to me, since the printhead is oftentimes half gunked, and you get smudges and missing color, etc..
I've tried 3rd party replacement carts, and frankly the quality isnt there. They smear and leave white lines, or dont saturate the page enough..
While I think it sucks that they wont allow 3rd parties to make cartridges, it's no big loss because I've yet to find anything that matches the quality of the originals anyways.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Create a good printer with an open spec on cartridges and make them refillable (sell the refill kits). It's better for consumers, it's better for the environment and the printer company can still make good profits.
Oh wait, I forgot all businesses (especially HP who makes enormous profit off cartridges) are essentially C. Montgomery Burns. If they could block the sun, they would.
If the genuine Lexmark ink cartridges are that good, then they shouldn't have a problem convincing people to buy genuine ones. Oh wait... the ink cartridges are only expensive because of an artificial monopoly on replacement parts? Not because they're actually that good? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
This is good news for Dell. They'll be selling their own printers in about a month, and anything that makes other manufacturers look bad will help them gain marketshare. What will be interesting is to see how Dell plays in the ink cartridge business. Will they try to be like everyone else, or will they try to do to ink prices what they've done to PC prices?
I want to buy a printer and I want to pay for it. Then I want to buy ink from an manufacturer that has an attractive price.
What printer should I buy?
Once again, I believe that when I buy something, I own it. Does this now mean that if I build my own toner cartridge it's illegal for me to install it in my own printer?
How long until it's illegal to run my own code on my own hardware?
Honestly, printing has become useless. Just email everything, deliver PDFs, or if worse occurs, use public printing services for 5 cents a page. Waste not want not.
It came with all toner cartridges only 25% filled. This was not mentioned anywhere on the box or on the web site where I ordered.
The printer has actually functioned maybe half of the time that we've owned it. Two on-site service calls later, and we're still having problems:
In contrast, our HP laserjet has NEVER missed a beat. Look I know this is not a representative sample or anything, but there are clearly DESIGN flaws with this printer and it should not be on the market. Even after multiple service calls it does not work.
How the hell do these toner cartridges affect the printer manufacturer's copyright? DMCA is supposed to be about protecting so-called intellectual property. That clearly is NOT the use to which it is being put here.
What's next? My "Check Engine Soon" light will be programmed to come on from time to time and the on-board computer will make the car run badly until the proper "reset" signal is used? And don't try to figure out the reset code yourself - you'd be in violation of the DMCA!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
The same people who complain about the cost of ink are the same people who buy SUVs and complain about the cost of gas. Print in draft mode people, that's what it's there for.
While I am sure HP won't do this, a Minolta or the like could sell their wares based on the fact that inexspensive third party cartridges are available for them. As a prospective buyer, I would definitely see this as a plus. Lexmark's doing this is like Ford making you buy Ford branded gasoline or tires for your car. It's crap, it's a step backward and it'll hurt them in the long run.
That news could seriously impact my habit of printing and obsessively compulsively filing hard copies of every Slashdot story I read.
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
"In other news, General Motors win a successful injunction against Michelin for producing replacement tyres for their cars. Now only GM's proprietary brands may be used..."
Surely this must be anti-competitive? If a company providing the hardware has exclusive rights over parts needed to use that hardware, then they have a monopoly in the sense they can charge WTF they like for those consumables. It's ludicrous.
But then again, maybe market forces will decide this one... people will usually move away from the restrictive rip-off brands, as long as there is an alternative.
How is it reasonable for Lexmark to forbid others from operating in the refill market? It's not like they are preventing the sale of forged Lexmark products, rather they are trying to stop consumers reusing their cartridges.
Ford cannot stop other manufacturers offering alternative filter elements for their carburettors, for example. Why should a printer manufacturer be any different?
rebuttal : the act of rebutting especially in a legal suit; also : argument or proof that rebuts
My mom never taught me to sign.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
The lowest quality brand of printer on the market has decided that people can't copy their cartridges!
What's next?
Will it be illegal to make generic versions of RC Cola?
Illegal to make work-alikes to "No-Ad" sunblock?
No one will be able to make anything that looks like a Ford Pinto? Or one of these cars?
What is this world coming to!
Well, at least I can still buy Tandy 5000 compatible computers.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Gotta love it. What a great law. Anyway, here is another article about it: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/29526.html
Sorry, for some reason html formatting wont work.
Exepect such chips to appear in every kind of items where you have consummable, or additional part needed. Now that a judgement has been upholded that you can use the DMCA to stamp out somebody making a cheaper replacement, you can artificially make your own monopoly. Buy Ford Tire ? We have this new chip we check for air pressure in it ! Secure and stuff. You want to replace it ? Oh, bad luck you have to do it at our condition in a ford garage. Oh, and don't try to put another tire the car won't start (security check on tire pressure fail).
We do not live in republic or democracy we live in a Corporatocracy.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yeah, I'm just looking forward to that, let me tell you. There was some great parody of this kind of thing in Bloom County, years ago [Dr. Oliver's Cat Sweat Hair Tonic] where a cheap commodity goes through the roof due to restricted supply. I suppose this injunction will lead to buying printer ink kits through the mail, from Mexico or Canada, disguised as urinalysis kits to skirt the DMCA.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm not one to support the DMCA, but to "...start a trust fund" for toner cartriages? Give me a break. I mean, come on - there's still plenty of competiton out there for laser printers in the first place. Even if you are the owner of a Lexmark printer, they still have a reason to keep costs reasonable so that you won't jump ship to an HP LaserJet.
Having said that, I think that SSC's reply is very reasonable and worth supporting. They are asking for specific exemption to the DMCA which would really help independent research or cloning for competing products in specific instances.
Which printers have a label stating "Buy me because you can buy knock-off ink for cheaper than our own!"?
No Comment.
Does OSAMA work at the patent office?
It's at times like this that I take some comfort in not being american.
The DMCA is increasingly bringing the entire concept of Law into disrepute, challenging even the USPTO's unenviable reputation for crass stupidity.
How can anyone build a framework of laws which, on the one hand (anti-trust), tries to constrain monopolies and, on the other hand (DMCA), protects those very monopolies from the inadequacy of their own protection mechanisms?
As, I believe, I've said before, the DMCA is an absurd proposition in the first place, it appears to work as follows:-
Corporation X owns some intellectual property Y.
X asserts either copyright and/or patent rights to Y thereby making it illegal for others to "steal".
Not everyone else is law-abiding so X devises a technical mechanism Z to prevent theft.
Some law-breakers are smarter than X and find a way round Z.
The DMCA makes it illegal for the law breakers, who ignored the first law, to bypass Z.
Problem solved? Will all the law-breakers suddenly think "oh, this'll mean breaking two laws not one, so I won't do it!"
I don't think so. My only real worry though is that we'll probably have similar acts of legal stupidity here in the UK sooner or later.
What's next? My "Check Engine Soon" light will be programmed to come on from time to time and the on-board computer will make the car run badly until the proper "reset" signal is used? And don't try to figure out the reset code yourself - you'd be in violation of the DMCA!
Let me guess, you own a late model Volvo? I would *swear* mine did this to me from time to time - I'd have to take it in, they would reset the light, and give me some BS story about some small stupid (and probably non-existant) problem...
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
"Computer programs embedded in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product."
Sweet. So not only are they pushing to allow third party toner cartriges, they're also in favor of mod chips.
Who says that old computer is junk? The day may come when you can't buy a new computer without DRM and case screws with RFID tags that notify the manufacturer whenever you take the cover off. I guess I'll hang on to my old LaserJet III.
On the up side, maybe if this law becomes widespread, I won't get any more toner cartradge spam.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Have you ever had to replace a broken tail-light? Auto manufacturers *are* copyrighting their designs only to prevent competitors from providing inexpensive replacement parts.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
This one, for instance, seems to refer to computer programs that cannot be copied. What does copying computer programs during the ordinary operation of a machine have to do with printer technology?
This one seems even more obscure. Why would it be important that the programs do not otherwise control the performance, display or reproduction of copyrighted works? Does this draw a distinction between software or firmware that is capable of the display of proprietary information for the purposes of reverse engineering, and software which is only used to perform a compatible function without aiding in reverse engineering? Gah!! I am obviously not a lawyer. Anyone else know?
I think this is incredibly dumb on Lexmark's part; as if I'm legally obligated to uphold their business model.
Nonetheless, I think the smartest thing to do at this point is to stop buying lexmark printers.
If some of you work for small or large companies, just pass over Lexmark and choose HP, Xerox, or a host of other companies that aren't doing this kind of crazy, self-defeating costly nonsense.
If money is the only thing a company understands, then don't give them any more.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...right now, they are concerned about the cash cow of their printers. They specifically designed a machine that requires their own cartridges and then candied it over with claims of higher quality, etc. Even the average consumer knows better than that -- they created a system that hides behind litigation to protect their market share.
That's fine, but the market will have the last word -- for example, I will not buy a Lexmark printer. It won't be because of a political statement of any kind but rather one based on practicality -- they have increased their total cost of ownership to the point where it doesn't make sense for me to go and purchase their gear.
If ongoing consumables gets to be unreasonable, due to a legally mandated monopoly, people will move away from existing installations as well.
I'm telling you man, it's the printer of the future! You don't have to replace ink! It tells you when your printing has start, and finished through an excellent system of horrible screeching! You can buy a box of paper and never have to reload a tray! Plus, you get alot of extra strips of paper with the perforated tracks, which you can use to make nests for some of the local fauna!
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
this was on here either yesterday or the day before id give real money if you guys would get your act together
Thank feck I DONT use a paperless environment. Sounds like theyre going the RIAA way, theyre dying and yet the try to retain an existence.
"
-But Daddy Government, these companies are stealing away our sales by offering nearly same-quality products at a lower price.
-Son, that's what we outsiders call competition. It's what keeps your head from blowing up too big. It's all about playing fair, boy.
-
-Aww alright son, you can have your stupid injunction, now go annoy your mother for a while"
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I went 2 years without printing at home. Eventually something will come along that requires a pen signature, but you could always go down to kinkos when that happens. Otherwise, if the printer companies want to charge stupid amounts of money for a trivial product, then just don't buy. Or at least buy printers from companies that aren't afraid to compete in an open market.
It's an amazing thing having a wireless network in my apartment. We have taken such a liking to email/IM/web browsing (no pr0n, that's just kinda weird) while dropping the Cosby kids off at the pool, that we decided to coin it the "Wump", or "Wireless-Dump".
taking a shit + wireless broadband = heaven
Trust me, it is the life of kings.
My Sig is Sauer.
When does scc-inc.com get redirected to the DOJ website?
Terrycloth Lobster
Well - this problem seems to be impacting the ppl from North America. Check below for the current status within the EU - if someone knows of any new developments - please post!
Dow Jones Business News
EU Parliament Bans Proprietory Printer Cartridge Policy
Wednesday December 18, 10:40 am ET
BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- In a blow to Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News; HP) and other printer companies, the European Parliament voted unanimously Wednesday to ban them from forcing consumers to buy manufacturers' own-brand ink refills.
The printer-ink provision was included in a last-minute amendment to a bill requiring manufacturers of electronic goods to pay for recycling them. Conservatives supported it as a consumer-friendly action, while environmentalists welcomed it as a green measure.
"Consumers who are fed up with being ripped off when they need to replace the ink cartridges in their computer printers will be pleased with the requirement," said Robert Goodwill, a Conservative member of the parliament who sponsored the amendment.
The bill comes into effect in 2006.
Many color printers cost about EUR100 to buy, but replacement cartridges run as much as EUR40 each, Goodwill said. Companies have sprung up offering cheaper cartridge ink refills. But Goodwill said manufacturers had limited the use of the refills by installing computer chips on their original cartridges.
"When the cartridges are refilled, the printer comes up with an error message and many users are forced to buy expensive new cartridges from manufacturers," Goodwill said.
The practice may be harmful to the environment, as it limits recycling, and to consumers, but it has been beneficial to printer companies. H-P's ink and toner refills bring in about $10 billion annually, or about 15% of its annual revenue.
H-P dominates the market. According to consulting company CAP, H-P now has 44% of the $11 billion West-European market for printer ink, with Seiko Corp.'s Epson (J.SKO) unit with about 25%, Canon Inc. (CAJ) with 18% and Lexmark International Inc. (NYSE:LXK - News) with 10%.
Suppliers who refill ink cartridges or sell knockoffs have about one-fourth of the market, according to CAP. But their share is static.
Their complaints have attracted the attention of European Union Competition Commissioner Mario Monti. In May, he said regulators were looking into possible anticompetitive behavior by some printer makers.
"There's probably a case here for us," Monti said at the time. Since then, the Commission has been silent on the issue.
Complaints from refillers also attracted parliamentarian Goodwill. He visited the local Cartridge World shop in York and came away determined to insert the amendment into the larger bill about recycling of electronics goods. He and a Green parliamentarian first inserted the amendment back in October.
But the German government supported the printer companies' attempts to remove it this week. Bargaining between parliamentarians and governments went until 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, Goodwill said.
"The Germans wanted to defend their chemical companies which make this ink for the printer companies," he said. "When we threatened to hold up the entire recycling bill, they finally dropped their objections."
The printer companies still can appeal to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. H-P declined to comment. Spokespeople for Canon and Lexmark said they were unaware of the issue.
-By William Echikson, Dow Jones Newswires; 32-2-285-0134; william.echikson@ dowjones.com
Dow Jones Newswires
12-18-02 1040ET
Go ahead. This is the part where you call me vindictive and hateful to cover your tracks...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
From reading SCC's site, they talk only about the 'chips' that interface with the printer. What if there were a way to (very easily) salvage the chip from a genuine Lexmark cartridge, and just slap it onto a recycled ink bin ?
Perhaps some sort of cheap tool could be developed to mutilate a cartridge and extract the interface 'chip'. Heck, what if SCC did this itself, transplanted Lexmark-made chips onto their ink and sold that ? They wouldn't be violating the DMCA because they wouldn't be reverse-engineering the Lexmark interface. Just like when you send laser toner kits to be 'recycled', they pop them open and fill em with fresh dust, then send them back.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Yes, I'm serious. This court ruling makes me very happy.
... that might get their attention.
Why? The DMCA is an unjust law, and as someone wiser than I once said, the best way to get an unjust law struck down is to vigorously enforce it.
Joe and Jane Sixpack don't care about some Russian company's software or some professors speach. They probably aren't even aware of them. But if they can't get cheap ink cartriges anymore
Absolutely right! The DMCA is evil. Here's a bit of conspiracy theory for ya: Gilette makes new razor with FRID tags in it. CheapsRazors.com also makes razor blades that you can use with your Gilette razor but that don't include the chip. Well, that's reverse engineering too my friend. That's tampering with the device, etc.
it's time people read Lawrence Lessig's books and start doing something about it!
there's no place like ~
That perfect, reliable, fast, open architecture printer with great software support and competitive sourcing for toner already exists - it's called a LaserJet 4SI.
Of course, that's not very helpful to HP's bottom line today...
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Create a good printer with an open spec on cartridges and make them refillable (sell the refill kits). It's better for consumers, it's better for the environment and the printer company can still make good profits.
It would never work.
Most consumers don't take the price of consumables into consideration when they make a purchase. (Like when full-size SUV owners complain about the price of gas...) They would see a $49.95 price tag on the Lexmark, HP, and Epson printers and a $129.95 price on the 'cheap ink' printer and never notice that the other guys charge $30-$50 on a cartridge and the 'cheap ink' printer ink cartridge is $5.
From the article...
Anti-circumvention language in the DMCA has been a foundation for a number of recent copyright actions, including the Justice Department's crackdown earlier this week on a site distributing "mod chips" for Microsoft's Xbox video game console.
If the mod chips were sold as "XBOX Linux-Enabler Chips" rather than pirate devices, would it have made a difference?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I work in the entertainment industry. At least, I find it entertaining.
This precedence will now stand for chips on everything from ink cartridges, memory chips a la Sony, car parts for your vehicles, etc.
Soon we may be seeing stuff like staplers with staple cartridges, copy machines with paper cartridges, anything that can be inclosed in a 'protective' container with a chip ready to be used with only a single makers machine.
This will create a large chip industry that will provide these secure cheap chips for pennys, so corps can extort higher prices for many consumables.
Consumers will buy these goods, as software always will require you to 'upgrade' to the new items.
What a super scam. As consumers, we rarely see something really innovative, but we are and will always look for it in our products, as we always get bored of using what we know works, and buy something shiny and new.
As consumers are we reinventing ourselves out of our freedoms, because of boredom?
As Corporations, we simply compete for the bottom line dollar, innate freedoms for the people are not of concern. To law now stands firmly behind chips to destroy competition, is that what our nation is about?
This sounds like the poster at thinkgeek:
Mediocrity:
It Takes a Lot Less Time and Most People Won't Notice the Difference Until It's Too Late.
This stuff is making me sick, and the only thing I can do about it is... buy pre-chip technology.
And if Ford put a DMCA-covered chip in the filter, and your car wouldn't start unless the filter had the chip, Ford could force you into buying factory filters.
Someone has probably already done that.
From a Businessweek article: 'More important, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), which dominates both the printer and the $7 billion toner market, has no intention of following Lexmark's course. "We believe in customer choice," says Pradeep Jotwani, the senior vice-president who heads HP's lucrative imaging-supplies business. "If they want to buy from remanufacturers, that's fine. It's our job to make them not want to."'
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
I subvert Lexmark's plans by refilling my old toner carts with stuff from this vendor. While it's somewhat more difficult a process than just installing a new cart, I save over $150 with each refill.
Not affiliated with TonerRefillKits.com, just a happy customer. Don't be put off by their crappy website - the stuff ships out quick, is fairly priced, and works as advertised.
At least as far as their filters go. The AC/Delco filters are the best OEM replacement filters in the industry. This, of course does not include specialty filters.
I wouldn't use anything else but an AC oil filter, even on my Ford Ranger.
Maybe your analogy was pretty good afterall.
I hope nobody at Disney is reading this. They need to save as much cash as possible right now
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
This battle has been fought before, if not in the courts than in the marketplace.
Without saying anything about the quality of certain brands, what really allowed the PC to become the dominant computer over Macintosh was the fact that PC parts were commodities. This allowed the prices of PC parts to remain low, increasing demand.
If Lexmark continues to block other manufacturers from creating Lexmark compatible cartriges, another printer manufacturer will realize the benefits of increased market share, and allow their printers to use cheaper ink.
Just ask any economist!
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Is there actually any valuable use for the software built into these cartridges, other than the fact that it allows Lexmark to invoke DMCA against anybody who tries to sell a compatible cartridge? I'm thinking that's a serious loophole in the law if that's the case - the fact that you lock down just about anything from reverse engineering, as long as you use some form of software-based protection on it. Not that it's a very good law to begin with...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Years ago when I was looking for a printer I found a cheap Canon BJC-1000 and an even cheaper Lexmark. Then I compared ink prices and I went with the Canon which after 4 years still works great and the Canon ink is relatively cheap. I paid $25 for a new cartridge recently.
I don't think I'm that unique when it comes to basing my purchases on the cost of the things I'll need to constantly buy for the product. Maybe they think they can cash in on the console business model; give away the printer and make money on the ink.
They're just going to make themselves more irrelavent than they already are. Canon, HP and Xerox are already on top of the printer food chain so they don't need to artifically lower their printer costs to try to gain market share and try to make up for it with sales of the ink. So my guess is that they won't play this game and just let Lexmark kill themselves off.
Ben.
Work Safe Porn
until then, i must print in order to read on my sofa.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Don't buy 50$ cartridges for each colour you need.. Instead, buy one 60-100$ cheap printer, and replace the whole thing, and get some new ink cartridges in the new printer :D
See, the printer makers sell their printers at a very small margin, or at no margin. Like video game console makers, and razor blade handle manufacturers, the idea is to get you to keep on buying the consumables/content, and make fat profit on that.
In fact, Xerox has taken this so far that they actually offer a program where you can get high-end color laser printers for free in exchange for agreeing to a monthly minimum purchase of consumables.
Although I've not been at SCC for over 6 years, I must commend SCC on their uncanny ability to reverse-engineer ANYTHING related to printer cartidges. While I was there HP released a cartridge purported to be impossible to open (5Si), therefore impossible to recondition. These guys immediately manufactured a machine designed to cut them open without harm, and all the parts to refit it. Copyright infringement is not something I would accuse them of, and being extremely good at what they do should not be against the law.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
...Lexus sueing a company under the DMCA for providing a module that changes the transmission shift cycles and other optimizations that allow the owners of Lexus cars to use standard-sized aftermarket tires instead of an oddball that is only manufacturered and sold by Lexus. This isn't for real but it's highly likely. They're basicly sueing an aftermarket parts manufacturer that makes part cheaper than they do. We'd better shut down O'Reillys, AutoZone, PepBoys, and Napa then because the folks that make the aftermarket parts they sell are about to be sued.
As an "IT Manager" I get 2-10 calls a day from people trying to sell me toner cartridges. The usual pitch goes something like this:
"Hello Mr. Smith, my name is Todd and I'm calling from ABC products. We develop our own high tech toner cartridges and they are the best on the market. What I'd like to do is send you a cartridge; at no cost to you, so can you can see our quality product."
I know of a client who actually went along with it, and they were shipped a pallet of these things and billed for like $2,100.
Anyway...I have always found that genuine HP cartridges are the best value. We buy so many of them, we only pay a few bucks more than the imitations. Plus, even my users can tell when we've put a imitation cartridge in, instead of the genuine HP toner.
The ink makers need to start selling printers too. Market them as lower TCO due to the cheaper ink. Then again, it's not just about maximizing ink prices, it's about owning the market - then raising ink prices.
Basically they are saying "This protection doesn't stop the reproduction of copyrighted works, it only prevents competition, so we should be able to work around the protection." That would be an exemption to the DMCA which says it is a violation to break any access-control mechanism. They aren't asking for the DMCA to be thrown out in whole.
Although, I thought the DMCA said you could break access-control mechanisms for the purpose of interoperability, which is exactly what SCC is doing. I'm a little surprised they aren't taking that route. Maybe it doesn't apply though. Like most, IANAL.
sheephead
7d9e63e9501751ff4bf9307989d5623d *SheepHead
Just in case we forget, toner is just black plastic ground up to form a powder.
Its not even Digital! (As in not even related to the *Digital* Millenium Copyright Act), but Lexmark slapped in a chip so they could make use of the DMCA to protect their boxes of overpriced ground up black plastic.
Wow, took all of a minute to get troll on that one. Nice one, slashcrew. Do you scan for IPs, or something more insidious?
Yet, HERE is the place where people whine about MS practices of scanning computers?
Go on, you know you want to.
how is this any different than buying an aftermarket carb for my car. Or an offbrand rim for my bike. Or a generic video card for my server. I guess now all of my replacement purchases must come from the original company that built the product. How crazy is this?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I am never ever ever going to come near your keyboard.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I thought there were some pretty high profile cases many years ago where one of the razor makers (Gillette?) tried to shut out other companies from making blades compatible with their razors but it was ruled that they could not restrict other blade makers.
Also, wasn't there a case where Polaroid tried to keep (Kodak? or was it the other way around) from making film for their cameras? (and then in the Mainframe arena there was some lawsuit between IBM and Amdahl where IBM was trying to keep Amdahl's tape units out of IBM's mainframes - IBM lost as I recall). These are all pretty fuzzy rememberances, perhaps someone who knows these cases could comment?
Anyway, something seems pretty screwy here, it seems like there is a lot of precedent out there that is totally opposite of this ruling.
Alternately, this was an honest decision made by a judge so technologically illiterate that he can't understand the issues and came to his decision by counting the lawyers at the defendants and plaintiff's tables.
IIRC, there are court precedents that say that if a company is a franchise vendor, selling franchises does NOT mean you can force the franchisees to buy only from the franchise vendors, and I think there are other examples of situations similar to that one where the courts turned thumbs down on the kind of restraint of trade Lexmark is trying to pull using the DMCA.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The focus of this story seems to be whether or not the third party cartridges are illegal. Perhaps under the DCMA they are, but that doesn't seem to be the issue to me.
Sure, the cartridges in question do circumvent a form of security. But is that security legal in the first place? As others have mentioned, a car manufacturer could not create a car that rejects third party components because it artificially creates a monopoly. Perhaps the question to be asked is not whether or not the third party cartridges should be allowed, but whether Lexmark's copy-protection technology should be removed from their printers once and for all.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
paper, can I just use the cheap stuff, or will I have to buy fancy smancy paper from Lexmark also ????
There have been several cases/laws brought to light in order to allow someone to use aftermarket parts to repair their car. You can go down to your local Canadian Tire (or PEP Boys in the US) and buy just about any replacement part for your car. Brakes, Brake pads, window motors, water pumps, gas tanks, just about anything you need to repair the mechanicals of a car.
Question... How is a printer any different? If my engine burned out I shouldn't have to go and buy a new engine! If I want to go to the scrap yard and perhaps get one pulled from a wreck that's my legal right. How can this same argument not be applied to the toner cartridge in a printer? Better yet if you assoicate toner to gas imagine if the gas in your car was vehicle specific. Having to buy GM gas from GM gas stations! That's not just wrong it's completely INSANE!
I just payed $84cdn to get new ink for my Canon as I elected to buy the Canon brand. However I didn't see a choice when I was in the store, it was Canon or nothing for my Canon printer. Sure I could have bought one of those
Wow, today is a dark day for competition indeed!
Syn Ack.
- Calgon take me away!
Yes, Lexmark got an injunction... a PRELIMINARY one. That only means that those which they are suing, Static Control, cannot make/sell/whatever is in the injunction, pending the outcome of the case. It DOES NOT mean that NO ONE can manufacture replacement cartridges. It is only a temporary measure to halt production in the meantime until there is a judgment. While not good for Static Control, it does NOT signal the death knell for cartridge replacement.
I think it must be 'vague day' or something.
Maybe I should clear somthing up....I shit *into* the toilet, not *onto* my hands. I'm not French
My Sig is Sauer.
Who the hell is stupid enough to buy a Lexmark inkjet in the first place. Their business plan is so transparent that you have to be really thick not to get it.
1. Sell printers with half a cartridge of ink with a loss to atract joe-sixpack (EXTRA now with flashing colours for just 99,99 or whatever).
2. Sell cartridges at inflated price to cover for step one (joe-sixpack: I already paid for the printer so why not buy the ink).
3. Profit
In the last six years (not shit) I've gone through three tonerpacks for my HP4L. If you don't desperately need those stupid colors, then why let yourself get raped by those gorillas ? Laser is so much cheaper.
And if you really, really need those colours then for heavens sake buy two printers (one laser, one ink). It will save you in the long run. Black ink is also pretty costly.
TCAP-Abort
TCAP-Abort
Last year in Office Depot, Lexmark Z33 printers were selling for $20 each WITH an ink catridge. Replacement catridges cost $32.95. I bought three of the printers, removed the catridges from the boxes and threw away the printers.
There is a reason catridges are expensive: the printers themselves are damn cheap. Just like Microsoft's strategy with the XBox, Lexmark loses money on many printers they sell.
Is this a bad business decision? Arguably not: not so many people look at the cost of replacement catridges when shopping for a printer.
There was a time when monopolies and trusts were seen as an integral part of thriving capitalism. And now, practices like this, selling the base system at a loss and making money by gouging on components, are seen as common as well.
It's a bait and switch. They lure the customer in with a low-priced, high-powered printer and then snag him on the very expensive replacement cartridges.
Though they have a monopoly, it's not a trust situation because Lexmark isn't the only company that sells printers. But as far as I understand, all printer manufacturers follow this policy.
Are there any that don't? Are there any printer manufacturers that sell their printers and inks at market costs? Are there any who don't actively discourage the use of cheap recycled/replacement ink catridges?
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
They suck.
I grant you they're often inexpensive to buy, but it seems Lexmark counts on making their profits by selling shoddy, overly-expensive ink and toner cartridges over the clunky two year (if that) lifespan of the cheap printers.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's an unethical, shameful way of doing business.
Couldn't they make their company profitable honestly, by making QUALITY products in the first place? Hmmm. But that wouldn't help out the attorneys, would it?
Just goes to show: patents and copyrights often protect only those who are unable to run honest or efficient businesses, and who don't have the interest in making quality products.
because new cartirdges have chips in them. Specically to detect id it is an approved cartridge.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
but I would never advocate anybody registering it.
There is a thing in the US called Jurisdiction.
It means that you can tell the Federal gov't to go fuck themselves if they try to arrest you for something that they do not have jurisdiction over.
Last time I checked, they do not have jurisdiction over you building toner cartridges in your basement.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If I understand correctly, this fuss is about the chips that Lexmark puts on their cartridges to prevent them from working after they've been refilled. And "circumvention" in this case is about somehow re-programming / resetting the chip so that the printer thinks it has a brand new cartridge. So how about some specs and code to make our own programmers? Surely somebody has this info. And Lexmark isn't the only company that does this..
Lets see..
View a web page discussing a product containing the code to DeCSS, clicking once to buy it, and then printing it on my Lexmark printer with an illegal printer cart?
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's getting more and more that the hardware vendors want to let you "buy" their product, but then claim they "own" it afterwards, and you are only allowed to use it with their permission. Aiptek actually made a "hardware" EULA for their Pencam. It says (among other things) you cannot let others (except your immediate household) use it. You don't find this out until you open the box and read the manual...
The corect pronounciation for the company is actually Let's Mark.
And expiring ink! I had to replace a DJ2000 printer in the CEO's office of the company I used to work for. When I powered it up , it said the ink had expired! We purposely had this printer set aside as a hot spare for him so it was kind of self defeating.
Whatever printer I get now, it won't be a Lexmark.
I just called Lexmark on their toll-free phone number to tell them how despicable I thought this lawsuit was. I told them that, unless it was dropped, I would never purchase another Lexmark product nor would I recommend their products to clients or colleagues. If you feel that way, call them:
In the U.S., their phone number is:
1-800-LEXMARK (1-800-539-6275)
Hours:
Mon - Fri
9am - 9pm EST
Saturday
12pm - 6pm
The best email I've been able to find so far is their Corporate Communications alias: (Anyone have something for their sales division?)
CorpComm@lexmark.com
If you think that this policy would deter you from buying a printer, or for that matter, any Lexmark product, please let them know. I plan to.
"It's an amazing thing having a wireless network in my apartment."
Yes, I've enjoyed reading your emails and getting free internet access. Thanks.
This came up in our security lecture today. The EU are working towards making it illegal not to allow recycling and refilling of printer cartridges, on environmental grounds.
I can see another trade war brewing...
This practice is nothing different than razor and razor blades. If you get a free/real cheap item (printer or razor) that comes with a limited supply of a neccesary component that wears out (ink or razor blades), the company will give the item away and charge high prices for the components.
This is no different that Gillete or Mach from patenting thier razor products, because they don't want 3rd party vendors selling thier razors at half thier price.
It doesn't turn out good for the consumer.
ah, but these companies didn't have the DMCA.
Of course, this is just a preliminary injunction. It's bad, but the case isn't over. It hasn't even come to trial.
If Lexmark wins look for more companies to look to using the DMCA to bludgeon third-party parts distributors. All that's required is putting in some circuitry.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
"Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer?"
Well, yes actually. *If* they find a way to embed a secret digital code in each sheet of paper which the printer reads and authenticates before it well print.
This is a DMCA case. While it does set a nasty precedent that says you can code anything, even things in the public domain, and claim copyright to them, it does at least only apply to those things that *have* been so coded.
And it's not like that's getting easier and easier to do, every day. Is it?
KFG
Dear Sir / Madam,
As a consumer and a high-level technical consultant, I am writing to
express my regrets that Lexmark is continuing with their suit against
Smartek for providing a product which allows users to use a third-party
ink cartridge in their Lexmark printers.
Although I'm sure that the Lexmark branded cartridges provide better value
and quality, I feel very strongly that this issue should be left to the
end user, and perhaps mitigated through marketing and product engineering.
If Lexmark cannot provide a better value than a third party, the solution
is not in litigation or legislation.
I cannot in good conscience use any products from a company that supports
these business practices, nor would I recommend any such products to any
of my clients.
Please contact your legal department and urge them to withdraw their
complaint and terminate this lawsuit.
Sincerely,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Does anyone remember who the litigant was and when the suit happened? As I understand it, that suit opened up the 3rd party printer supplier industry.
> Now that a judgement has been upholded that you can use the DMCA to stamp out somebody making a cheaper replacement, you can artificially make your own monopoly.
NO, not a court judgement, just an injunction. Two VERY different things so far as setting a binding precedent. From the first paragraph of the article: "Printer maker Lexmark International won a preliminary injunction Thursday in efforts to prevent a company from selling computer chips that allow printers to use unauthorized recycled toner cartridges."
The real problem at hand is their business model. They lower the price of the printers and raise the price of ink cartridges, and thus the insane profits are made in the long run, and continuously.
Printer manufacturers are trying to sell a subscription service rather than a printer. It's all the rage with corporations these days.
As it stands, the only reason people buy the cartridges made by printer companies (besides lack of knowledge otherwise) is because some (not all) of the third-party ones are of incredibly low quality, and someone who is burned tends not to put his hand near the stove any time soon.
However, anyone who thinks an ink cartridge for a $100 printer costs more than $3 to make is a fool, and the perceived dishonesty of printer companies can only hurt business. People like to pay for what they get, and I think it would be a great step forward and a gesture of trust if ink cartridge prices were lowered, even if it means raising the cost of printers.
I blame the marketing departments, because they are the easiest and most fun to blame, and it really is their fault.
On a side note, I'm a bit torn. This ink cartridge racket is a joy to my environmentalist tendencies. Hit people in the wallet, they print less, and therefore less paper is used. I don't print nearly as much as I would if ink was dirt cheap.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Canon already does this -- the low cost per page is one of their major selling points (even without paying attention to third party cartridge sources).
...
:-). I haven't found it yet.
I had a Lexmark (came "free" with my computer), until I realised (after two refills) that buying a new Lexmark would be the same cost as buying a new refill. At that point I decided to see what was REALLY available. My new i550 kicks my old Lexmark's butt in _every_ way: faster, cheaper ink, uses less ink, monitors actual ink levels instead of trying to track in the driver (which utterly fails for network use), four independant ink cartridges, higher res, replacable print head,
There HAS to be a catch
-Billy
An injunction does not prohibit the manufacture of recycled / third party toner cartidges.
I don't see why the judge issued a preliminary injunction. In a case where neither life nor limb are at stake, it seems that the only issue is money damages for patent infringement. Where I practice, if the issue can be reduced to money damages, you won't get an injunction. Period.
On a related note, I suppose that the guy in my office who refills toner cartridges with kits from bulktoner.com should be worrying about getting sued. Maybe bulktoner.com should be worried about getting shut down like the mod-chip site did (ISO news?).
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Don't print anything at all - email it, or read it onscreen. This `paperless` office thing is taking an awfully long time to materialise. Would many companies notice any changes if they could only print 1% of what they currently do? I know my office contains loads of printouts of emails. Why? Just read it on the fscking screen, for gods sake.
One thing to consider. The cartridges in question, are *not* necessary for the printer.
Lexmark makes 2 different kinds of catridges for that printer. One kind, is sold at a higher price, and is yours. Free and clear. Once you buy it, you can refill to your hearts content.
The catridges, that have the chip embedded, are sold under a separate program. And they are referred to as "prebate" cartriges. You pay less for them up front. And are obligated to return the cartridge to Lexmark (at their expense) after one use.
The chips that are the basis of the lawsuit, are a way of reusing the "prebate" cartridges, rather than sending them back as you agreed when you bought it from Lexmark.
Lexmark VERY clearly says, all over their website. That if you want to refill catridges, just buy the "full price" product, and go at it.
Basically what this all boils down to, is SCC is selling a chip that allows the circumvention of an agreement that consumers made with Lexmark. And on that basis, I really don't see what the big fuss is about.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Do not buy a Lexmark printer. Do not buy one under any circumstances. If you have influence in any company over this kind of decision, veto Lexmark there too.
Bypass the manufacturer and remanufacturer altogether - just get a refill kit from www.inksell.com. No, I'm not an employee, just a happy customer.
They have a kit for $9.95 that has enough ink for two full refills. Your future refills are only $2.95 per ink bottle (once you've got the kit).
Takes 5 minutes or less to do the refill. The only difficult part is breaking off the top of the color cartridge but they supply a tool for that.
I've been using the same ink cartridge for about 6 months and I do a lot of printing. I've probably refilled it like 4 or 5 times now and it still works like a champ.
I don't have to feel guilty about printing full color photos anymore.
[RANT]
a fairly large college campus. The worst printers to support are lexmark printers.
Why?
Their low end printers are pieces of junk, and stop working for no apparent reason.
They have the most non-standard drivers and API's around, so far as I can tell. You always have to be running their stupid program to print anything, and it always gives inane vocal notices like 'printing complete' (as if that wasn't flipping obvious if you're in the same room as the printer.)
Cannon isn't much better.
By contrast, my HP deskjet 812, while I do get raped for ink, has always worked flawlessly. I rarely have to fix HP's, always have to fix lexmark, and occasionally cannon.
Yes, I know where tech support is on the IT totem pole. I'm a mechanical engineer, so it's not my main interest anyway. anyway, thanks for reading my rant. please feel free to reply with your similar bitching.
[/RANT]
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Now by claiming that the companies are breaking the DMCA they are effecitvely enforcing patents that are not blatnat lies that no judge would fall for.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
i don't understand why we have to print anything
in the first place...all those papers, memos, etc.
can all be sent electronically nowadays
anyways...we should save those trees
but, if ya need a printer, i agree, don't buy a lexmark...they're el-sucko
-neo
Good news:
The twits that make the nock-offs can't resell them without passing certain standards (ever gotten a nock off that didn't last a full duty cicle?)
Badnews:
Might get less cheep print toners. That's why Thermal jets and laser writers make slashdot it's bitch
859-232-2000
1. Ask for the president's office, and when connected, tell them that you refuse to do business with a company that is using a dubious law to squash competition!
2. Ask them why they don't feel that their product is a good enough value, that it will sell, without doing business in this manner!
3. Ask them what the procedure is for returning your Lexmark printer to them, since they did not make you aware, when you purchased the printer, that you would be forbidden buy law to use 3rd party replacement ink!
I haven't heard about this. Anything bad that happens to Disney is a good thing in my book.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I find that the current interpretation of the DMCA by the Copyright Office a bit obtuse, and it stands to reason, farfetching and unlikely, consequences. The printer cartridge market is a SPARE PART market identical to any other spare part market that currently exists, such as automobile parts and such. Currently, there are hundreds of automobile part manufacturering entities separate from the major auto manufacturers. They continue to supply parts to end consumers despite have not originally participated in the automobile manufacturing process.
To think the anything "electronic" should be given special priveledges by assuming full control of its spare part market is rediculous, if not anti-captilist. By granting an injunction and ruling in favor of Lexmark, Lexmark is free to set it's replacement printer cartridge pricing without consequence. I, as a consumer, find this appauling.
Certainly the consumer will begin to take into consideration not only the cost of the printer, but also cost of the printer cartridges when selecting a printer; however, Lexmark, not bound by competitive spare part pricing, does not have to guarantee reasonable printer cartridge pricing for any set amount of time. Essentially, the consumer is then "hooked" once he has purchased a printer. Once a consumer has purchased a product, in this case a printer, the consumer "OWNS" the item, Lexmark does not have ownership any longer. Under the implied ownership, a consumer is free to do whatever he/she wants to the printer.
I think that the DMCA is a vague law. Certainly there are merits within the law; however, the ignorance of the makers of the law certainly failed to realize the scope of impact of such a law. This case, in particular, is evidence of such.
Additionally, an ink cartridge can be patented, but not copyrighted. What are you guys thinking? If you care to follow this logic along, I think that it would serve the world better if any software could NOT be copyrighted, however, that it be patented instead.
What do you guys think?
A better comparison, would be a coupon with your purchase. You can get a discount, if you buy Brand X milk to go with your Oreo's. But you still have the option to buy whatever milk you want, instead.
In this case, the chip is only there, to enforce the "license/terms of use" of the particular type of cartridge from Lexmark. They sell 2 models. One is cheaper, and chipped so that it can only be used once. They call it a "prebate". The other kind is unlimited use, and refillable etc. But costs more up front.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
This could be expanded to most any aftermarket device, ink, toner, hard drives, control modules for your car, an alternator, even a thermostat for your home..
Anything that can be 'digitalized' regardless of how useless the digital component may be, could fall under this ruling..
Most anything you buy will demand you get *ALL* components from the same people on their terms, at least until they drop support for your model, then you are screwed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Let them know that their conduct is unacceptable.
Buy from some company who are trying to produce products which will reduce your costs.
The Kyocera ecosys printers spring to mind.
http://www.kyocera.com/
Deleted
There are a wide variety of sites were we can go to get information about price, performance, features, and everything else relating to a new product we want to buy. Rarely do any of these places contain any information about whether purchasing the product will lock the buyer into buying supplies for that product from the OEM only. I think this is mostly because this has hardly ever been an issue in the past. I may have a GM car, but GM can only tell me that my car will run better with original GM replacement parts, not that I have no choice.
It seems to me that this should be a part of any good review of a product. A review of a Lexmark printer on a reputable site on the web will tell me the lifetime of the cartridge, the number of pages printed per minutes, the quality of the print, and many other things, but never touches an issue such as whether supplies are available from third parties.
Perhaps this should be considered to be an important element to any product review in the field of consumer electronics. After the events of the last few years and the effects of the DMCA it certainly is for me.
Now I gotta raise the price of the inkjet scan jpg "photos" i sell on Ebay
If Lexmark wins, the RIAA will have to spend a lot more money printing all those cease-and-desist letters.
I hacked open my Lexmark cartridge (using a warm blade) and poured some toner down it. You can buy toner kits with instructions for the Lexmark printers. Its 14.95 for 4000 pages as opposed to 50 for 2000 pages if you buy a new cartridge every time you run out of toner. You can refill up to two times, thus amortizing the cost of the cartridge and sticking it to lexmark.
This helps offset the ridiculous prices that lexmark charges for their toners. For example their e210 printer comes with a toner cartridge that lasts 1000 pages and subsequent ones are 2000 pages and 50 dollars each. Im still on my original cartridge and have refilled once. Itll be a year before I refill again, then another before I have to buy a cartridge. Afaik, some printers similar to the e210 (a samsung) actually have a plug that you can remove to refill cartridge. No hacking required.
I'm not happy with the ruling. However, this doesn't spell the end of competition. There are several manufactures of printers. Even if each where to be able to lock down all sales of cartridges for their own printers, it's still a long way from a monopoly. No monopoly, then I would also assert the situation's a long way from printer manufactures charging "whatever" they wnat. They do afterall have to compete against the total cost of ownersihp of the other makes of printer on the market.
Dell's supposedly bringing it's own printer to market, that should keep the other pretty honest.
What the hell are you talking about? There are lots of companies that make replacement taillights, turn-signal lights, etc. Some of them have different styles, some are identical to the factory parts. There's nothing illegal about that.
The HP carts were roughly twice as much as the POS carts, yet even when we were sending back two carts per day for replacement before empty, and rarely an HP cart, the supply people could never see that they were wasting money: returned carts, cost for "service", lost productivity, ruined output.
And did they make output. One department had 8 printers running three shifts, and produced over 100,000 pages per printer per month. That's roughly 4 tons (3600 kg) of paper. Did I mention regulatory review?
Dell will not be selling their own printers, they will be selling Lexmark's printers with the Dell name stamped on them. It is in Dell's best interests for Lexmark to do well in this case.
-SommelierWhen the 'check engine' light comes on, open the hood, find the cable that comes up from the trans area and leads to a box usually near the driver's side fender well. Take out a ballpoint pen, and, with a flashlight and small mirror, stick the pen (either end) in the smaller hole with the (usually) blue button until you feel it trip and hear a loud (for a bimmer) click. You're done, light's off. If it's not, do the other button.
The Dot Matrix cannot be explained it can only be experienced.
I hold in my hand two cartriges.
One is filled with toner. Take it and you will wake up and all of this will have been a dream.
The other has this ribon thingy hanging off of it.
Reverse engineering IP has nothing to do with copyright. I don't understand how a law designed to protect copyright is protecting IP. Is the DMCA overly broad, or being misinterpreted? It shouldn't be illegal to modify or sell reverse engineered hardware that isn't patented. I thought the DMCA only applied when the mods allowed access to encrypted copyrighted material? The DMCA seems overly broad, even by the standards of the copyright protection advocates.
Vote for Pedro
No. If you were French, you'd surrender at the sound of your own fart.
Silly me, I always though inkjet ink was made out of silver (and maybe a pinch of platinum). After all, a troy ounce of fine silver can be bought for about ten bucks.
And that ten bucks includes shipping!
This action by Lexmark is nothing more than a BLATANT attempt by a manufacturer to create an artificial monopoly. It is in NO WAY limited to the consumer inkjet industry, and there is NO LAW--anywhere--that gives a U.S. company the right to create such a monopoly. If anything, SCC should investigate if Lexmark has violated the Sherman anti-trust act.
This behavior can be applied to ANY industry in which there are consumables:
- printers needing special paper containing "code" in the form of an IR- or UV-readable barcode,
- electric shavers containing an embedded chip in the cutter heads that tells the unit the cutter was made by the same manufacturer,
- chips in ANY recordable-mdeia form factor that validates the manufacturer,
- chips in ANY auto part that perform manufacturer validation,
- chips in common BATTERIES that force you to use batteries branded by a certain manufacturer or their partners,
- chips in, say, headphones that require that you use them with stereo equipment made by the same manufacturer,
and on and on. The list is countless. Just look around your room, office, or house and ask yourself if there is ANYTHING there that occasionally requires replacement parts. ANYTHING. Anything at all.
THIS is just how bad the DMCA has become. This is how much it can and is being abused. It's got to go.
> Better start your trust fund for ink cartridges.
:)
;). Write to ones that do, telling them in no uncertain terms what your doing.
Screw that, use inkjets ONLY when you need color. How many times do you really need to print in color? Rarely.
Get a cheap switcher box (at many places like JDR microdevices) and hook up a laser, and a inkjet. (or if you got huge amount of printing like say HOWtos, or manuals, a dot matrix) and just turn the knob.
Really, the need for inkjets is way overblown. I've got a lexmark printer, and I've only used 2 cartrages in the last 2 years of having it. However I'm still on a ribbon on my dot matrix that I bought almost 4 years ago! Okidata dot matrixes are work horses, and a bit high (Around $350US) but hell, I've got a Star NX-80 printer that's 15 years old, and STILL works. Just slower than pitch, dripping out of a container (Yes, I remember that Slashdot article
Another solution? Don't buy remanufactured cartgages, use a universal filler, boycot any inkjet manufacturer that does like Lexmart (remember mine is 2 years old. I won't be buying another one
Another idea. Stop buying inkjet cartgage for good. Just go and buy a brand new printer, with free cartgages. Around Xmas, our local Wal-marts was selling Lexmark inkjets for $35. WITH free cartgages. The cartgages themselves are around $50 or so. Do the math.
We as consumers are letting these companies shaft us. Using a little common sense, we can get the power back, we're just begging them to take!
Shadowwalker Delaforge (shado719@icqmail.com)
You expect Dell to make things that fit together?
Every Dell computer I've ever seen has as many "customizations" and propriatory parts as possible. AT, ATX, what's that to Dell? I've seen bizare two board mother board designs, strange floppy/scsi tape drives with custom connectors and documentation that conceals the type of memory the thing uses with a unique Dell Part number. Dells are as close to a disposable computer as you can get, except for the high retail price.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
My job is done. By the way: No war on Iraq (already)! Bush isn't religous, he's an actor. And a very bad one indeed. I've heard there's a Blair doll that fits into Bush's b***
The last time I tried to get a replacement tail-light at Pep-boys, I was told there were none being made for my car, because the dealer had a copyright on the lens design. I eventually got a replacement tail-light kit from the dealer for (IIRC) $125. This was about 1 year ago.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
The Epson printers I've used just use a tank of ink, and the print head is part of the printer (the way it should be).
Then what if the print head wears out? Do you buy a new printer?
Canon gives you the best of both worlds: a replaceable cartridge with replaceable ink tanks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
nt (as in your obvious "NO THOUGHT")
There's a lesson here for you. The people who work at auto parts behind the counter aren't authorities on the law or very knowledgeable about what's going on in the industry! I hear all kinds of stupid crap from people working at those places, and I just ignore it. If they tell me they think something will or won't work because of past customers, I'll put some stock in that. But anything outside their expertise, forget it. I've met lots of them who didn't even know what variable-valve timing was, and that's been on lots of cars for years; anyone who keeps up on the latest engine technologies would know about it.
You can't "copyright" a design for a physical part. How do you think all those Taiwanese companies make knock-off fenders and body panels? Why do you see brochures at the dealer advising you to only buy genuine body parts even when your insurance company doesn't want to?
The reason you couldn't get a knock-off taillight is because your car wasn't popular enough for them to make one. They only make them for very popular cars because there's too many designs. You might be able to get one for a Ford F-150, but anything else, good luck. Most of the time, you either need to buy the dealer part, or go to a junkyard. Many times, people sell this stuff on ebay too.
Just because someone hasn't made a copy yet doesn't mean there's anything besides economics from doing so.
I am going to put these #@$@$ out of business. I need $13.9 mil to start up a printer manufacturing company that makes ink jet printers with a 1 gallon ink reservoir and one pint reservoirs for each color. We'll charge more for the printers, but under most uses, you'll only have to refil once per year and you will be able to buy from whoever.
Fuck em.
The Copyright Office is currently considering a petition to exempt printers/cartridges from the DMCA (at Static Control's request, of course!). You have until March 10 at 5pm EST to comment.. html.
Tell them what you think at http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/index
Which is exactly why the cartriges included with new inkjets are "starter" cartriges which are not full of ink.
You are probably right, but then again, I don't believe *everything* I read on /. either. :-) At the time, the somewhat implausible explanation had a ring of truth to it, so I gave it some worth - probably more than it deserved.
By the way, what credentials do you have, that make you so knowledgable about copyright law, that you can say with certainty that 'you can't "copyright" a design for a physical part.'?
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
ALL the manufacturers are playing this game including HP.
Nope. The implication, not well stated, was that you have to use those Delco parts because no 3rd party can make compatible parts due to DMCA-related lawsuits by GM.
Once I got to the end of grandparent, I inferred a different implication: that you have to use those Ford Motorcraft parts because AC Delco cannot make better-quality compatible parts due to DMCA-related lawsuits by Ford.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I just wonder how much of a loss they are incurring on the printer, and how much on average they are making above and beyond this on the sale of cartridges?
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
I bought a used HP 1100 for $86 shipped on eBay and I couldn't be happier. Most laserjet printers are supported in Linux and it seems from the little research I did, there's a whole industry devoted to refurbishing and reselling laserjets, especially HPs. After a year of cursing over trying to get a Lexmark inkjet running in Linux, it was wonderful to see the HP running on my Samba box after about 40 seconds of configuration.
Save your color printouts for an inkjet and try a laserjet for everything else! You'll save money in the long run.
This guy is way out there
These comments aren't exactly about laser printers so it may seem a bit OT.
IBM and HP make a very large % of their income from printer consumbales and they will do anything to hold on to that market. However things are about to change.
The reciept printer game is big busienss for a few compaines and they spend more on R&D than the guys doing the office printers. They have never made money selling ribbions and paper so they only make their money selling the printer. It turns out they want to sell color reciept printers but there they can't do it for less than about $.01 per reciept using any of the off the shelf parts. The result is a few of them have come up with a way of using generic inks with injets to keep the price down. From what I've heard, most of the compaines with this tech are already to go but they are waiting for the current economic slump to end before they invest in the production but as soon as one goes, they all go. If any of them turn a profit, they will invest in the home printer market.
Remember Epson started out making reciept priners and then sold their MX-80 for about 1/4 of the price of the lowest cost Centronics printer of its day.
Wow, so stop buying inkjet printer cartridges.
Yes, the DMCA is an evil law, yes, Lexmark are a bunch of *&@&#*(& for pulling this stunt, but come on now. The anti-corporate hysteria some days is just plain stupid. Corporations cannot and do not have any control over you unless you allow them, by purchasing their products. Don't like it, don't buy it.
And yes, I realize that the only way to completely do this would be to live a near stone-age existence. So buy from corps that don't act this way. Remember, there isn't some evil cadre of humankind out there just ready to make your life miserable - I'm friends with many people who own their own businesses, and *gasp* they don't eat children for breakfast or have a roll of The Constitution (tm) toilet paper.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
DON'T PRINT SHIT OUT UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!!! Jeez, I don't even have a printer. If I need to print stuff out, I do it at a service bureau!
Seriously, you can read shit on-line. Do that!
If the mod chips were sold as "XBOX Linux-Enabler Chips" rather than pirate devices, would it have made a difference?
Given the language of 17 USC 1201(b), which seems equivalent to "substantial non-infringing use", a "Linux chip" for Xbox shouldn't violate the DMCA provided that it's packaged with a distribution of the GNU/Linux operating environment that's compatible with the "Linux chip". For the packaging, picture a penguin in a surfing pose atop a DIP chip.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Applying the DMCA on goods, rather than on information alone, gives non-US-based industry a great advantage over its US-based counterparts. As a European, I find this to be an excellent development and hope that Static Control's petition will be rejected.
The U.S. Copyright Office should not be used as an substitute yet uber-patent office. By adding any sort trivial addition to a mechanical device to lay a DMCA claim, one can create in effect a de facto patent protection of a commercial device, but with a much longer or unlimited term, and with a free ride of enforcement by the U.S. Government. This is clearly not what Copyrights are intended to protect.
Imagine an automotive company wishes to force people to purchase only tires manufactured by themselves. They first attempt to force consumer choice by patenting the idea of round tires, but the US Patent Office rules (correctly) that their design has not unique and denies the application. All the MBA's in upper management are crushed.
"Fear not," their lawyers cry, "we'll get something better...we'll get you protection -- and not for a patent's measly 20 years. No we'll give you 120 years of protection...AND the U.S. Government will investigate violations and enforce this 'uber-patent' for you."
"By adding a dime's worth of electronic tagging on the tire--we'll call it a Quality Verification Tag that says the tire is an 'original and not remanufacturered' and have the car check for that before it starts." "No, because we'll say their tires infringe on our..." "No--and here's the trick--it infringes on our Copyrights, unjustly defeating our 'technological controls, thereby allowing unauthorized access' to the car." "Not with the DMCA. Fear not about competition or the previously notions of an unrestrained free market." assures the now quite confident counsel, "It's nice as 'general principle' but," he says as he smiles "public policy certainly does not support copyright infringement and violations of the DMCA in the name of competition...."--
For those concerned that 120 years isn't long enough, a company needs only every 119 years just to change the "Quality Verification Tag" and get a whole new Copyright to fend off any and all competition -- for literally until the end of time (or at least the end of the DMCA)." Disney's aspirations ain't go nothin' on Lexmark.
Those who help create the U.S. Constitution wrote in Article I, section 8,
They are surely sitting up in their grave over this end run of authority, their spinning heads give out an incredulous cry of "Whaaaaaaa?"How is using the recycled toner cartridges stealing Lexmark's intellectual property? Did SCC steal Lexmark's design? Is SCC hacking the cartridges?
If I need to replace my inkjet cartridges, I can buy a whole new printer for near the cost--which has been tempting several times. I tried using refill kits, but don't quite have the knack yet. I got the color cartridge to work once, but I think I let it sit near empty too long--my fault.
If companies spent the money on R&D to develop new products and more efficient means of manufacturing the current ones instead of litigation, technology would advance faster and the consumers would benefit.
The only losers in that situation would be the out-of-work IP lawyers. And I don't see that as a problem.
If the printer manufacturers are going to void warranties and take such steps to prevent the use of third party consumables, then they need to bring the price of those consumables down a bit.
GM can't void your warranty for using a Fram oil filter or require an OEM part unless they provide it free of charge; why should printer manufacturers be allowed to block out alternative consumable sources?
I'm not saying cartridges should be free; I am saying that the consumer should be free to choose. Next step is requiring the use of branded paper in the printers.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I'm surprised.
I've got a LexmarkX73. It's one of those scan and print combo deals. It was about a hundrded bucks.
I've printed about two or three reams a week since I bought it about a month ago and I've refiled it with raw ink rather than replacing carriedges. My ink refill cost six bucks for the black and eight for the color. I've used about half the black so far and about a sixth of the color in the process of printing about 5000 sheets front and back.
I'd say it's a great deal. The thing is I'm not in the States. I don't think you can buy these dirt cheap ink refills in the US. The people of the US --and I am an American citizen born and raised-- have allowed themselves to be trapped by being too permissive with monopolies.
I buy a Lexmark printer with 2 ink cartridges off a lease return with a 1 year warranty for $100. When the ink is gone, or dries up in my case, I don't print much, I then take the thing to the lexmark warehouse and throw it away in their dumpster. If they want to screw people then they can pay the disposal fee's as well. :)
The absolute worst part about a Lexmark is their silly driver set-up that requires local install on every machine. The bottom line is similar to the Xbox. Lexmark barely breaks even on the printer and expects to make their money on re-selling consumables to you for inflated prices. If you buy an xbox and never buy any games, M$ loses money on you, if you buy a lemark home printer on sale and never purchase ANY consumeables from lexmark they will lose money as well. With a winning business plan like this is is really easy to see Lexmark's IBM origins...Can you say PS2 and micro-channel arch ? IBM can't anymore either
I feel this is like bulk snail mail. The company offers to pay postage back to them, but is only liable for the cost to the US Post Office, if the prepaid postage is used...So do you part for the cause and make sure you return ALL of the pre-paid postage evenlopes back to the companies...empty of course, that way the mail guys make more money and the Direct Marketers lose more...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Um.. how is this decision even *legal*? Hasn't a legal precedent already been set that I do NOT have to buy "consumables" (such as ink carts, paper, oil filters for my car, etc.) from the base product's manufacturer? (Surely some lawyer here knows where to find the court decision on short notice... MacAndrew, where are you? :)
If this stands, it's only a matter of time before it spreads to not just computer-related stuff, but also mundane items of everyday life. Just think, if you own a GM car, you'll have to buy only GM oil and oil filters, at GM prices! No more buying any brand you prefer at the local auto parts store, with their nasty competitive discounts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Well, that's where the DMCA thing comes in. It's not illegal for another company to make toner cartridges that are compatible with Lexmark printers. But some Lexmark printers use cartridges that have a chip embedded in them. The company that Lexmark is sueing reverse-engineered the chip so that they could manufacture a compatible cartridge, and Lexmark is charging that the reverse-engineering part violates the DMCA.
Lexmark isn't telling consumers that they can't use third-party toner cartridges, or telling companies that they can't manufacture those cartridges. They're just telling the company that they can't reverse engineer the chip thats in the cartridge. Granted the effect is the same, but the legal point is different.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
What you don't wipe? Your hands near your asshole and then on your keyboard. Did you skip washing your hands in 1st grade or something?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
HP says they won't use the DMCA. They never said they wouldn't incorporate smart chips into the supplies.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Because a lot of the editors and agents I deal with don't accept email submissions.
Because I'd rather carry my novel manuscript in a box instead of having to tote my laptop or PDA, esp. if I'm in a situation where I may have to worry about theft or battery drain.
Because big documents can be unpleasant to read on screen (and the shitwork involved in reformatting 300+ standard pages to fit an 800 x 600 screen is more than I can be arsed to invest).
Because the notion that print is an "outdated technology" is soft-headed techno-fetishism -- for most business uses, sure, it makes more sense to do things via email and intranet than by memo. For other uses, it's about as handy as writing a Perl interpreter in Fortran.
/me rues the day when it will be necessary to mod-chip a printer... (screw that, I just replaced my dying Deskjet 820 with a dot-matrix line printer, and have been saving a $bundle$ on consumables.)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
The chip's method of operation is that it sees to it that the ink level monotonically decreases - it most likely contains a small EEPROM (non-volatile memory) cell where the ink level is recorded. When the ink level suddenly goes from "Empty" to "Full" the chip senses this and locks out the cartridge. What you'd really need is a way to a) rewrite the memory, without using their DMCAed technology, or b) Legally obtain new 'blank' chips.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
--theory is fairly simplified and doesn't work in the real world except at excrutiatingly slow speeds and in a lot of cases it doesn't work at all. The cultures have to be more similar, and they have to start at a much closer economic norm for it to really work. Until they are closer together, it has to be treated almost something like the "prime directive" or something, and there has to be carefully constructed tariffs. Well, unless you don't give a crap about the imbalance, then swell, let the richer country drop until the rise in the poorer nation reaches a parity. That's what will happen and what you are seing happen now in the US, all this chimeric "prosperty" is based on mostly credit and the rest of the world using petro dollars as a reserve currency, it has little to do with "free trade", but the direct loss of productivity in the US does. Read any random slashdot thread when it comes to "jobs" see what some of your fellow forumites are going through, smart guys with degrees and experience. Guys who actually do the work and put in the time. You'll see some horror stories that are not a joke. I'm just a blue collar guy, you ain't interested what's happening with "my kind" right now so I won't bore ya, but read some of the IT guys anecdotals. This is REAL stuff happening to REAL people. I know some older folks who are realising they will never be able to retire now. I know middle class folks who are having to lose their equity because they got to sell out and try and find some place cheaper and they got to sell at a loss just to get out.
I don't class cheap gadgets bought on credit at slavemart on credit cards and longer house notes than they had just one generation ago and our lowest historical percentage of savings to be all that braggable.
And it really is *crazy* to arm and buildup a nation with a first class new vertical manufacturing model who has stated over and over that you are their biggest enemy, a nation that has political prisoners they shoot in the head and harvest organs from and sells them in catalogs. Only allows one political party. And etc, you know the drill. deal is, the drill is still true. Call me old fashioned but when I was growing up that was called "wrong", we called places that did that sort of stuff "bad places". Of course, random roadblocks didn't happen either, I certainly don't remember any. When I was a kid, my dad and moms generation as young adults, a blue collar guy could take roughly a few weeks income and use it for a downpayment on a real house, the interest rate was I believe around 4%, and the note was only about 1/5th an average guys monthly net after taxes. I guess that way of "doing trade" just sucked too bad, huh, had to "improve" on it.
Only consolation I got is I never voted for any of the morons who have been pushing this stuff. Not_one_ at least starting about 4 elections ago anyway when I finally just give up on "honesty" out of Dumb party and Really dumb party. I knew it before that, but kept getting sucked into the "just one more time, maybe this batch of bribe takers will be better".
If free trade worked in practice, then for example, since we have opened up all this trade with china we should have made money, but in reality, our annual deficit with them is 100 billion plus,that's just one nation, our total is much higher really, it's running 1.5 bill daily now, and that 100 bil number is roughly equivalent to the loss of 700 billion total, lost to our domestic economy, following the rough rule of thumb that one dollar traded locally that stays in circulation gets traded 7 times. Your theory is also flawed somewhat as the analogy isn't correct. It isn't two nations starting out at roughly the same levels in what they do and what they produce just different products. Nope it ain't. A closer analogy would be one of the nations as it is teaching and equipping and financing the other nation in how to farm corn and wheat, is simultaneously stopping growing it's own corn and wheat, so it will eventually have nothing to trade with. The "plan" then, the grand scheme, is we are going to "manage and service" this corn and wheat growing. Sweet deal I guess if you really really really think that other guy is that retarded and is gonna do that for very long. In reality once the other guy got all the corn and wheat and doesn't need any more help and has sucked you dry, he's gonna laugh at you and tell you to buzz off, and if you get pushy he's gonna knock ya on your can because you're too weak to fight because you ain't been eating because you ain't growing no corn or wheat. That's a better analogy of what's going on now.
Comes a time, we will have nothing they want anymore, and it's fast getting there. Fast. The "two billion armpit" sell we got shafted into believing never happened.. China sells us small ticket consumer items, what they primarily purchase from us are large ticket manufacturing tools, tools to make tools so they can get busy manufacturing wealth. They buy factories from us,or we even just give them to them, then they turn around and sell us stuff we made befor. And when we did it mostly all ourselves, all our loot sorta got spent with ourselves, and ya know what? It kinda was working pretty darn good most of the time. Of course, we had less uber millionaires at the top, but heck..can't have that, who needs a pesky whiny middle class anyway, buncha ingrates, they lucky we keep that inefficient minimum wage around, no matter, we'll drop it and they can be happy pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and work their way back up from 2 bucks an hour, after all, it's competetive that way...
Nope, what works, creating wealth, is actually A-making stuff,and B-growing stuff. That's it, that's all humans have ever come up with. You dig crap outta the ground, melt it refine it rarrange it into shapes, you "make something". That's one way. The next way is you literally plant a seed or you harvest stuff that is self planting, ya know, dumb stuff like wood for houses and furniture and food, ya, that's so useless it's laughable, humans don't need that stuff anymore, we can just use our replicators. Uh huh..
That's it, ya make stuff or grow stuff, that's where wealth comes from. Everything else that people call a job is "wealth re-arranging", it's not "wealth creation". You can only keep re arranging just so long until that level falls to a joke. A "service"economy is a pure -d lie. The old saying is you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. You can stay "busy" as in "busi-ness" for a while poking around in the entrails looking for flecks of gold eggs, but you won't be making any more.
People who don't really get it between theory and reality just haven't lost their jobs yet near as I can tell. That's the difference between a recession and a depression. Not saying it applies to you,no idea, but in case you haven't noticed, the economy is dismal,it's a 'facade' economy right now, don't believe me, the presidents economic advisor just quit, he's getin while the gettins good he is, the treasury secretary who sorta had a clue and who was getting annoyed at not being able to speak the truth and was embarrasing to the oil-n-blood good ole yee haw shills in the admin got fired and told to go away and shut up, greenspinner is talking the fed is hosed (as polite and quiet as he can using big fancy words) and might have to go to a gold backed dollar to stop the flight to the euro, the BLS stopped even collecting and collating and reporting some of the more important unemployment stats, and stock market levels and etc. That's real world happenings.
Run through bank derivative levels. Check out what's up with pension funds. We had like what, only 3 or 4 major companies went bankrupt who needed some qwuick bailing last year and it HOSED the reserve insurance for pensions that 38,000 other corporations rely on? Let's look at that ratio again....hmmmm... And social insecurity? please........
Nope, just have to say the practice as it stands today is a failure. From the world's largest creditor nation, to world's largest debtor nation in like what, 20 something odd years? That's some sort of great success story advertising? Almost exactly the same time frame since the great globalism "free trade" push? And NAFTA and millions of "free trade illegals" coming in? Would you personally like to cut a check for a few mil and help make our small county hospital solvent again? It was until we got a 25% increase in population of almost all total illegal aliens in the past three years, this despite them "working" here,oh whoops, 3/4ths of them ain't and are getting this and that freebie give aways, and the total cost of them is a net-loss of thousands a dollars a head per annum. A few large companies and some farmers and some contractors made some serious short term money,and that is changing already as it got over saturated, and it costs the local economy for them to make those profits, it certainly doesn't add the same per head that we had pre-illegal invasion. Really, the hospital is broke now, we need to build at least two new schools, you got the green man? c'mon, let's see it, we need it. The largest factory we had (that was here for generations) that switched to hiring mostly illegals at reduced pay folded last year and left. it's gone, buh bye. them jobs got--uhh, what jobs again? wonder how many divorces that caused, how many of them "for sale" signs I see were caused by that, wonder how many of them pretty new trucks I see at the lots came from that. I don't know really... sure seems to be a lot more for sale signs lately though, and them car lots slap fulla new lookin ve-hickles. Must be one of them "cyclic" things, ya, that's it... Guess that didn't work either. Oh ya, our crime stats about almost doubled in the past three years too, and we got our *first* gang warfare murders. I am so proud, you proud? I'm proud, we "big city" now! that happened just a month and a half ago, just so cool! And random armed home invasions. never happened before here. got the first two of them last month. Thanks again. feel just so free traded lucky! I love forced "multiculturalism" and being allowed the privelege of sharing my money for this privelege, I mean it's not coerced out of me..oh wait, yes it is.
I'd pass on this globalism free trade hoss crap if I could, unfortunately your "side" got the upper hand and will continue this "economic marvel" and the equally wonderful social marvel and the just groovy increase in "security", it's that old "just good" feeling, over and over again. Yep, your side done gonna free trade our butts all the way to bankrupting the nation,creating uncontrollable social chaos, then they get to retire to their armed guard walled villas in a US re-created as just another large two class technofuedal society.
Dang, you some smart boys. yep.
Thanks a lot. Ya, I know, it had nothing to do with you... and etc.... the theory sounds just so gosh darn good and all.... I mean really, sounded all sortsa scientific and I'm sure all kinza real smart guys with lotsa letters next to they names thunked it up and all...
Hey, read that leaked insider email from the world DAVOS economic conference? It's sorta a nifty read. Check out the economic "tone" of it.
Oh ya, p.s. and this ain't a fairy tale. tomorrow is my last day at work. I been looking for a replacement job for a few months now because I knew I was gonna need a new one. Hmm, every place I go-remember, I'm a blue collar guy now I can run this box but that's it,and even if I was a "sysadmin c-+? java caffeined out programmer" there ain't any of them kinda jobs around here that I'm aware of, and every place I go for work I can do seems to be slap fulla "free trade" people who don't seem to speak the same language I do and seem to live in places where a whole lot of them are all crammed into these places, something I really ain't seen before because I never travelled to none of them other free trade places where I guess they do that. So, that means I am ass-suming that that's how I get to live now? When I get this new free trade job wherever that is?
I just thorouhgly thank you and all your buddies who thunked this up and implemented it, for this marvelous experience. I been working over 40 years now,well close enough rounded off if ya count sumer work when I was in school, that was around at 50 cent an hour when I started, sometimes less, sometimes more, I guess this will now be what they call "fun". I will drive by freetrademart tomorrow-ya we got one of them, real cheap stuff, yep- and not buy anything in honor of this and not having a whole lotta them "spare" freetrade pieces of paper with dead presidents on them. I'll look at it though, promise.
And I have a single cartridge cannon at home, came free with my computer. The output is made by mixing parts together.
The printer I have at school measures color levels, has multiple cartridges (pretty sure), and sounds like the Canon you bought.
I think the difference between Lexmark and Canon was supposed to be, at least years ago, that Lexmark's printhead is not on the cartidges, it's part of the printer.
So with all of this, even though I lean towards Canon, in this case it seems the real difference is that you were comparing the cheapest Lexmark versus a non-free Canon.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Tho I do think this very legal point would invalidate the DMCA, in that it forces lock-in on the consumables issue. Trouble is, it's a fair bet that all the clever lawyers with the financial backing to argue this case are already on retainer to some company that makes printers, and therefore has a vested interest. :(
But just wait til it hits mainstream consumables, like oil filters. It's not inconceivable that a car's "brain" might be designed to refuse to power on if it doesn't detect the *right* chip in the oil filter. But that might be a good thing -- since then you've got some seriously huge aftermarket manufacturers being hurt by it, who HAVE the clout to go after it in court. Even if they can't argue against the DMCA per se, they could argue that it's anti-competitive, and if ALL the auto mfgrs do it, perhaps collusion.
And I think that's what it's going to take to get it challenged in court in an arena that has a chance to win and do so as a broad stroke. A narrow decision (involving only one type of product) isn't going to help us in the long run.
As it stands, I can see this hitting the computer industry in other ways -- how about a motherboard that refuses to power on if it detects any "nonstandard" (meaning not "approved" brands) components -- with this "service" provided by a chip's code that's protected by the DMCA??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
--and I hope that my economic analysis made some sense as well as my analogy. Just wanted to show an exact scenario. And therein is the main argument, with a past example of free trade following the method I outlined,a good example being our historical 50 state similar culture and more similar economic level "free trade zone". It was quite successful. Applying it to two or more highly divergent and disparatedly un-even economic areas doesn't work in the real world. It results in a lop sided two class society much faster than a developing middle class and any notions of 'freedom" or "representative republicanism". I can't even go into that "democracy" nonsense, and I am sure you know what I mean. You can have trade with uneven nations but until they approach parity it MUST be regulated so that any gains in the lower level areas are NOT offset by losses in the already successful areas, and also so that rampant despotism and exploitation don't get even worse in either of the nations.. This is by default a tedious process and has to be done on a case by case basis. And yes, it would classify as yet another of those lesser of two evils examples, and that is sad but just reality. And our current reality is that it really isn't working, situations like mine are becoming the norm and not the exception, and all indicators that I can see anyway indiciate that it will get much worse. We haven't shutdown our borders, the illegals are here by the literal million, who know's how many are AZTLAN revolutionaries or from other nations who are not here just to "get work", and millions of more still beneficial and non buggywhip jobs are being shipped offshore with no real alternatives for replacing them beyond government noises like "uhh, training, umm, loans , uhhh, ya that'll work". I can't even stand the insult to my intelligence on those "solutions", even beyond considering them to be anything more than soothing placating words to keep the two main faction's partsian supporters content. It is to me, quite embarrasing for those people. I am literally embarassed for them.
In my case, we are moving yet again,further out from our already quite rural area, several factors involved, mostly personal, and are going to a much smaller cheaper place where we intend to sit out the upcoming crash and social unrest, if we are allowed to and this government doesn't go off it's rocker into fascism even worse. I am 100% convinced it is coming, by the way. How severe it will be I cannot exactly say, no one can really, but I am pegging it now between bad and real bad, with almost armageddon style being a step or two after that. I think the next decade is critical for the survival of human beings on planet earth, strained economics being only one factor to consider but an important one. I think there will be more and larger "resource" wars primarily over oil, fresh water and some critical strategic minerals, and the chances any of these wars getting "out of hand" being quite large.
I also think, based on human nature and past historical models, that large scale use of WMD will become common, as no major weapon advances ever been *not used* extensively in warfare in human's past. Some took longer than others to be adopted, but eventually all advanced tech gets used extensively in warfare. And we could freeze technology today and it's already so far advanced into efficient killing that no more advances are needed to depopulate the planet. Michio Kaku the physicist and futurist agrees with this assessment as well, he gives the human race not much of a chance primarily from mis use of uranium, although there I disagree slightly and I think it will be from biological misuse as the primary reason, but really, that point is moot.
Not being pessimistic, just realistic. I had many conversations with older relatives about their personal experiences during the "great depression", and those were quite sobering. The primary thing I remember them telling me is those on small farms still got to eat and at least have food and water,and basic fuel for cooking and heating and cleaning purposes even if they were paupers, and as long as they could keep the tax man away they were still OK enough to survive. Those that didn't and were urban suffered a lot more. This time around it could be much worse, the percentage of people in the US who actually reside on such small farms is absymally low compared to back then, so any "crash" scenario will be correspondingly "much worse". I am talking "camps", some of them of the "not nice" variety, work camps not much better, widespread disease and famine,ratioining, governmental total command and control, etc. All the trappings. There might be even what the polite analysts call "social upheaval".
Again, thanks, sorry about the assumptions, it's just important to always put a human face on these matters.
I found a HP Laserjet 2P on the side of the road in front of a beer joint. They threw it out, it was old and broken.
I clipped a resistor on the fan control circut and cleared one problem up, then I bought a recycled laser scanner motor from http://www.backthruthefuture.com for $12.00 and fixed the biggest problem.
I buy toner carts on ebay all day long for $10 to $18 each.
So far I've printed about 6 reams of paper on ONE cartridge and have no reason to believe that it's gonna run out anytime soon because all I print is text.
When it does run out I have brand new carts on the shelf and can refill the old ones for $8 each..
I also have a LEZmark Z22 my dad bought me for a gift because it was CHEAP, like $28. I never use the damn thing, I can't get it working satisfactorily with MDK 9.0.
Not to mention that freaking carts are too damn expensive, the stupid thing is WAY TOO SLOW and it's dumping ink like it's trying to paint road stripes..
Naw, screw LEZmark. I won't buy anymore of their shit and I'll be sure to inform everyone I know about their chicken shit practices.
When the ink runs out on the one I have, BUH BYE!!!
colleague of mine just informed me that the European Commission (governmental body of the EU) has prohibited sale of ink cartridges that cannot be recycled because of a nasty chip inside, that makes your cartidge reject by your printer after refill.
Reason for this is that printer manufacturers were trying to shield of the market for refill or cartridges and refilled cartridges by their monopoly, which is not allowed under European law.
Here is a link on the investigation, I am not able to locate any news on the final decision on the net. Super Mario strikes again or at least will strike again.
Not really -- although the one I had was the cheapest Lexmark, the others spec out similarly in terms of cost-per-page. The Canon I got is not just lower cost-per-page, its cost per page is lower than any other printer I could calculate for, whether or not I calculated assuming third-party ink.
-Billy