HP Discusses Anti-Counterfeiting Measures

JohnA writes "While searching for drivers for an HP printer that was given to me, I noticed an article on the front page of hp.com that brags about how HP's R&D department was able to insert flaws into their products to 'deter' counterfeiting. I'm so glad we have HP looking out for us..."

Comments

Interfering with fair uses

[tepples]

Not all uses of banknote images are prohibited. For example, a one-sided illustration of a U.S. Federal Reserve Note not between 75% and 150% of actual size is a fair use. Some people have shown how some of the anti-counterfeiting technologies interfere with fair use of banknote images.

Re:My Rights Online

[GoofyBoy]

Ask your friend again.

From: http://www.pgca.org/pages/topics/currency.htm

Printed reproductions, including photographs of paper currency, checks, bonds, postage stamps, revenue stamps, and securities of the United States and foreign governments (except under the conditions previously listed) are violations of Title 18, Section 474 of the United States Code. Violations are punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to 15 years, or both.

And the conditions talk about destroying masters and size limits.

The US should try what Canada does

[mark-t]

In addition to the assorted anti-counterfeiting measures that are found in most money such as microprinting, special paper, etc... Canada's newest issues of currency have an anti-counterfeitting measure that I think would probably impede all but the most determined individual (who would probably need so much money in order to obtain the resources to counterfeit in the first place that there's not much sense in them actually counterfeitting).

What Canada has done is to use a UV ink design that will readily show up under even the simplest UV light source. If cashier desks are set up with a small UV lamp facing down towards the cash desk, the money simply has to be passed under this lamp and forgeries spotted in a fraction of a second as the UV ink design flouresces quite brightly.

I have yet to see any home printer that can take UV inks, so I'd be willing to bet that the reasources required to obtain one would mostly defeat the purpose of counterfeitting anyways.

Btw, for people who think just throwing money at the cashier and walking away might offer a counterfeitter a way past this, my experience is that for movies, they won't even let you into the seating area at all without your receipt from the cash desk (which means you have to hang onto the receipt for the duration of the film, since you will need it to get back in if you momentarily leave to get popcorn, for example).

Re:My Rights Online

[beegle]

(except under the conditions previously listed)

Those conditions that you neglected to mention make all the difference. From the page referenced above:

There are three main criteria included in the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Section 411 of Title 31 that permits color illustrations of U.S. currency. First, the illustration site must be less than three fourths or more than one-and-a-half times the size of the actual currency. The same holds true if you are printing just a part of an item. Secondly, the illustration must be one-sided. Finally, all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration must be destroyed and/or deleted after their final use. This policy permits the use of currency reproductions in commercial advertisements, provided they conform to the size restrictions.

So it's entirely legal for me to print out a one-sided 11"x17" picture of a $100 bill if I destroy the scan after use. If I use an HP product, though, I'll be stopped.

Re:we pay for crippled printers?

[deman1985]

I'm quite curious just exactly what they mean by flaws to deter counterfeiting. If I send an image to the printer that I want printed, I don't want my printer altering that image in any way-- regardless of what the image may be. If the printer doesn't do its job, then it's going in the trash. Period.

Why so many companies are choosing to focus on anti-counterfeiting measures anymore also confuses me. Unless things have really changed in recent years, counterfeiting isn't exactly a big problem. You might see a news story or two about it on occasion, but it's really just not that common, and there are good reasons why.

For one thing, standard printers are simply not very good at making even sub-standard counterfeit bills. The texture isn't right, the colors aren't quite right, there's no authenticity strip embedded in the paper (in $5's and above), and even the aroma of the paper and ink isn't quite right-- money has its own smell. Because of this, anybody who knows anything about money and has had their hands on cash at least a few times during their life can easily tell the difference between a real and a fake if they bother to pay the least bit of attention to these properties.

Second of all, the time and effort required to produce anything of acceptable quality that won't be checked for authenticity (ie, less than $100) using a commercial printer far outweighs the value of money counterfitted. Yeah, you may be able to get away with faking a handful of 20's, but you'll have spent a good couple thousand dollars on a printer that's good enough, the proper equipment to cut everything, the paper, etc. Anybody willing to invest this much time and effort into counterfitting is going to expect more return from it, and so they are going to find some other method.

What it comes down to is that these companies probably invested a lot more money into creating these anti-counterfeiting technologies than will be saved from bad money. So in essence, they've crippled my photoshop software and my printer for nothing.