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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..."
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Shit thats terrible. They insert flaws just so we can NOT do things with thier products? Hello, I'm the customer....are they commiting corporate suicide or what? It's like saying, oh we put some holes in your boat - just in case you decide to race against cops they will open and you will sink!
I don't think you need a tin-foil hat to start drawing the dots between Adobe, Jasc, and HP, and coming up with a picture of the government putting pressure on companies to handicap their products like this. It certainly isn't market demand that's motivating them.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
At least they're upfront and forthcoming about it. It's they're gamble on if it will affect sales or not, but at least they were responsible enought not to try sneaking it in.
-Trick
With queen carly declaring her love for all things drm and protecting the megacorps from the great unwashed masses, one has to wonder where it stops. How long until my printer wont print a copy of a cd label with "adobe" on it? How long until my scanner refuses to scan in the most recent article from "time"? At what point do they stop trying to make my choices for me? This is probably just practice under the auspices of preventing counterfeiting to get things right for upcoming DRM castrated mobos and hard disks. At what point while I stop "owning" hardware I buy and discover in actuality I have license that includes some hardware on the side?
There was a show on the histroy channel about this. There is a lot of digital money currecny going on. But for some reason people like cold hard cash. There's nothing like having bills/coins in your wallet.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
How the hell do you make decent counterfeits w/o the polyester paper that bills are made with? ANY half decent cashier can tell paper from a bill by touch, let alone the dozen other easily checked features.
If your store hires people dumb enough to accept 1 sided black and white bills... you have bigger problems.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I tried to make a copy of a 20$ bill on a cheap HP Officejet G95. It came out perfect, if I where to spend a bit of time roughing it up the result would have been very hard to tell from a real bill. Instead it went into the cross shredder. The point is that most counterfeit bills are not being made in large quantities but by people making one or two fake bills each.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Would you really use HP printers for this?
Thousandths of an inch is an extreme tolerance a probally requires a non-commerical printer.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
The question is: Because of DRM-type issues, should we be required to spend thousands of dollars when a $200 printer has the same capabilities, were it not crippled in software?
Do you honestly think that switching to Digital Money is going to stop counterfeiters? All it would do is change the type of people doing the counterfeiting. Suddenly it would be hackers instead of printers. I for one don't like the idea of my money being digital. I just don't trust the technology yet.
seems to me they're acting perfectly ethically and responsibly. Counterfeit currency is a significant cost for many businesses (particularly small cash-based businesses) and the cost ends up being passed on to consumers. Good for HP if they try to prevent their technology being used to facilitate counterfeiting.
It takes a serious disconnect from the real world to see something threatening about this.
They said that at certain densities of bank note green the printer changes color bands noticeably. I am an amateur photographer and have recently taken pictures of some interesting fields and other natural settings just after the sun has completely set but still has the surrounding slightly lit. The green in the pictures is fairly dark but not too dark and I wonder if these new printers would print them out looking like it was day light on the grass and dusk everywhere else. The pictures turned out really nice and I intend to do some other similar ones in the future. I currently print with an HP printer, but I can't see getting another HP being a viable option once this printer breaks. A photographer would like his pictures to print as photorealistic as possible without having to worry about whether or not it will print wierd, especially when your in the middle of shooting. This is ridiculous.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. And no, film is not a viable option, especially long term, considering that major companies like Kodak are going to stop selling film.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who buy HP printers don't care about these things.
HP, like most inkjet printer manufacturers, produces printers which have an inordinately high operating cost due to the cost of ink carts and their relatively short lifespan. But does this stop people from buying them?
Absolutely not.
HP has a reputation for producing inexpensive printers and proving good customer service for them. I have an HP Photosmart 1115, and I had a problem with it. No biggie. They fed-ex'ed me a new one with instructions as to how to package the old one and send it back. It didn't cost me a dime and it took a matter of a couple of days to handle the complete transaction.
They can afford to do this because their profit margins on the ink are so high. And since most people don't add up the cost of ink, they don't realize just how much they're spending. They only know that the printer was cheap and they can actually talk to a human if they want technical support.
This doesn't mean I intend to buy more HP inkjet printers. Since I bought the photosmart, I have learned a lot about inkjets, laser printers, and operating costs. I know there are better alternatives.
But we slashdotters are somewhat unusual among humans in that we tend to research what we buy rather than judging products based on plastic color and price tag at BestBuy. We are, unfortunately, a tiny minority. Those who are not like us will continue to buy more and more HP printers and ink carts.
Actually, domestically, due to the sheer magnitude of the US (i'm talking geography, here), we've got tons of machines that read money. Vending machines, lottery machines, atms, car washes, cigarette machines, laudry, post office stamp machines, etc etc etc ...
Literally, we have millions of machines that deal with our money. Retrofitting or upgrading all of them to detect currency correctly would cost billions of dollars.
Already, we've had enough problems with the recent slew of new bills over the past few years. Changing it AGAIN would create more problems. Inluding installing fancy new hardware that can detect the UV ink or phosphorescent threads that you might want to introduce.
This is an example of the US gov't actually trying to save you some money, rather than forcing the entire country into an upgrade cycle.
The article states that counterfeiters turned out 44$million last year. Do you honestly think anyone would spend 100 times as much money to stop that?
The Gov't is putting measures in the money. It takes time.
My favourite part of the article: "Until the 1990s... U.S. banknotes had changed little for decades. Federal officials told the HP team they wanted to keep it that way." (my italics)
And they wonder why they're seeing more and more counterfeit bills...
Until the 1990s, when the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing added new security measures such as a watermark and a security thread, U.S. banknotes had changed little for decades. Federal officials told the HP team they wanted to keep it that way.
That precluded any major changes to the currency itself, including techniques used by some other currencies. The Euro, for example, contains fluorescent fibers and foil features, which cannot easily be reproduced by conventional copiers or printers.
So, the US government is too lazy to fix their "broken" currency? Instead, they compel private companies to fix their problem for them.
Nice.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Here's a legit reason: You wanna show your students how the moire patterns appear on copied bills, to make a point about practical applications of optics.
As another poster mentioned, it's the intent to defraud that make it a crime.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
"Counterfeit currency is a significant cost for many businesses"
Oh good, facts without proof. Can I play?
Counterfeiting actually helps the typical small business in that it increases the number and amount of cash flowing through the local economy.
Surprising, and counterintuitively, studies have indicated for years that counterfeiting is mostly a concern of hollywood movies and that in a large economy such as that of the united states, counterfeiting has proven to be so difficult as to be a non-problem.
Do you see how easy it is when you can just make up facts? You make up facts, I make up facts, we all make up facts, and we still have no understanding, just the word of a *lawyer* to shed light on the truth. Please, no snickering from the back row.
Absolutely wrong. Too many times in this age, people are punished for what they MAY do wrong. That is NOT the way it was intended for this country to function.
I really get bent out of shape over this type of lawmaking (DVD/CD encryption, Macrovision, currency detection) are all. I don't care if only ONE SINGLE PERSON is out there using any technology lawfully, then it is wrong to do this. Punish the people who actually DO the wrong thing. Not everyone.
.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
This has nothing to do with laws, crimes or punishment.
If HP wants to make a printer that prints all text in piglatin and all images inside out and upside down, they can go ahead and do so. No law says you have to buy or use it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As far as the offset, couldn't you just offset the image to print on the backside to accomodate for the slight change?
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
We as the consumers and public should not have to settle for purposefullly flawed merchandise. Especially as this could set a rather nasty precident fullly in the manufacturers favor.
When companies introduce flaws into their product as a means to prevent theft, we are the ones paying the price.
This is not the first such "flaw" that has been introduced, remember those audio CD's that were given "flawed" audio so as to make them unreproduceable?
The problem with this flaw is that it is the actual mechanics of the merchandise we are buying. They will be selling a printer that is made to not print as well as it could.
Any one want to challenge this in court?
It's fully in HP's favor and could set precident for many other manufacturers. Down the road this could have serious implications as to the quallity of the technology the public recieves. In effect, rolling back decades of progress and empowerment of the common man. Multi-media and desktop publishing were still very expensive in the early 90's... look at the cost to get into that now, magnitudes of order less. What this threatens is to lock us out of the high-end, and put the power back into the hands of the businesses. This effect will not be felt this year or the next, but in 5 or 6 years.
What I find rather ugly about this is that currency is something that enjoys uncontested proprietaryship in it's manufacture. A few years back they did a massive overhaul, adding special strips woven into the paper fibers, special inks that would last through wear/tear and show up under UV light, a special paper fabrication, and now the color process and microdetialing that has been added to this years 20's.
Why is it that the consumer must pay when our goverment has the ability to alter the currency at will? The only argument I could see that would make sense is the old "greenback" that can still be found in circulation.
And if that's the case, do like the euro and put out a public moratorium worlwide, "Redeem you greenbacks for up to date currency by so and so date" and those who miss that date, tough.
But to stifle the consumer and intentionally flaw the product? There may be a day not too far from now where noothing really works as well as it should.
I know I am in the minority of slashdoters here but I think that HP is being ethical and responsible in their efforts to protect currency from unauthorized duplication.
My concern isn't that they are doing this but that the methods and perhaps the very technology that they use may (and in some cases will) interfere with legit uses. Crooks are smart, inventive, and resourceful. This means that the "lock" that HP and other manufacturers use has to be tough and almost necessarily will interfere with some legal uses.
The part that I keyed on was the front to back registration. If it is so small that humans won't notice it, how will that prevent counterfiting? Yet, in some applications, where you are printing on transparent Mylar, I can see this being a significant drawback! I know that this kind of stuff isn't done by everyone every day but it can be done for artistic purposes now. Laying a background layer on the backside of a transparency adds richness and depth to the foreground. I am not an engineer but I suspect that this same kind of trick is often used when designing limited run double sided circuit board masks.
Crooks can walk into any computer store and buy a box of blank checks and print out whatever they want on the checks including whatever routing number and account number they want. These checks can then be easily passed wherever a check can be cashed using a fake ID purchased over the internet or from someone who specializes in such forgeries. Why hasn't there been a hue and cry over this? Because it isn't currency, banks and people eat the cost of these crimes.
HP has the right idea but needs a better implimentation. People (especially clerks) need to be better at spotting counterfit bills, and even high schoolers with scanners and printers have to be afraid of getting busted. Counterfitting is a crime that is being done more frequently by juveniles who get their hands slapped only if they get caught. The "system" needs to fix this.
But people who handle a lot of money every day *DO* know what to look for.
More specifically, they handle so much real money all the time, that if or when a fake does happen to come along, it sticks out like a sore thumb, while the person who doesn't really handle money that often (keeping it out of sight in his wallet most of the time) might not be able to discern the difference.
I've seen it happen... sometimes they even spot a counterfeit even before they know exactly what's wrong with it (with a second slightly longer look being all that's usually required to confirm what the problem is).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just like in the Adobe case people seem to be igoring the "why" of the whole situation.
Does HP want to include these technologies? Hell no. Just like Adobe [and every other company that makes imaging software, printers, scanners and copiers] they're under tremendous pressure from the government to include this stuff. I don't know exactly what legal precedent the feds have over including this stuff but everyone in the industry is complying.
There's several more techniques that aren't mentioned in that article as well including ways for counterfeits to be traced to specific [as in serial number] devices on higher-end equipment.
No dilemma here.
"These proofs were done on an HP printer that adds artifacts - see here and here? - when it tries to print something that it thinks is counterfit money. Those gowns were just the right color. Now, I did this proof on photographic paper to show you how the prints will really look."
For what wedding photographers are known to charge, as a customer of theirs I'd be appalled to get proofs done on a cheap HP printer.
If HP's doing their job right - as they described in the article - Money Green gowns won't get stripes. Why? Because while they are money color, they don't look like a bill.
While you're certainly right that there will inevitibly be artifacts cropping up in some prints and scans due to their anti-counterfiting measures, you're not going to be encountering it in a "Professional" environment.
As a User, I agree with you. Any sort of product degradation is bad. I want to use it however I want to use it.
As a Person, it doesn't see so clear. Yes, degradation is bad, but they are doing it for an honorable reason. One of those rare situations where a company is doing something we don't really like, but doing it for the ethically and morally correct reason.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Good: HP likes Linux and open source
Bad: HP supports DRM and "trusted computing"
Somebody please...tell me. Am I sopposed to like HP or hate HP?
What?
Vote Quimby.
I'm disappointed that everyone is focusing on the FUD related to the money factor and ignoring the other items in the article, such as the "FAX back" and barcoding schemes. Do you think they may be valuable?
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If it's hurting businesses then maybe the US should do what every other country in the world has done and make banknotes that are hard to forge?
Trying to solve the problem at the printer level is ridiculous; it's like trying to solve the spam problem with intelligent monitors.
1.- The CEO's becoming rich will pay more taxes, and so will do the shareholders that obtain higer dividends or whose shares climb as a consequence of the savings made.
2.- The standard of living in the US is artificially high and it is artificially low in India or China (the first as a consequence of colonialism and then protectionism, the second as a consequence of feudalism and then communism). There is no way in which the Western world can remain extremely rich while half the world population in these two countries remains too poor. We have two options: we either help India and China have a soft landing in capitalism by means of allowing competition (no matter how one sided is on their favour) or we live to regret the consequences. The standard of living in the US *has* to decrease, that means all those wasteful SUVs, money wasted in trash entertainment, excesive consumerism, will be curbed. People in rich nations will have to curb their appetite for superflous goods, refocus and become more responisble with credit, and that way will be able to accept lower salaries (that by no means will make them serfs as you ridicuosly claim) in order to become competitive again. When people in the US are earning 7 or 8 times more for the same work there is no way to stop the evening out once some of the constraints that allow economic pressures to work are lessened by technology (communications mainly).
Something that normaly escapes protectionist people is how by protecting "national jobs", they punish the consumer in their own country. When companies save money by outsourcing, the savings are passed to the consumer. The steel controversy stirred by Mr Populist Bush showed that nicely.
3.-Although there is a widening between the very rich and the rest of us, in average people live better everywhere where stable goverments commited to free markets are in power, it is ironic that the same people that cry for local jobs being shipped abroad very often also refuse to allow to tax the rich to allow for some basic redistribution of income by means of social projects.
In rich countries particularly, the major causes of decease and mortality are related to excess, consumerism , overconsumption and hedonism (traffic accidents, obesity related problems, smoking, AIDS) from the point of view of poorer countries one just can't see how it is that the level of life is worsening on rich countries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
3 years later:
"HP and Adobe both broadly support the implementation of the Protect Our Economy act, which requires manufacturers and software developers to implement Anti Counterfeiting measures."
Bye bye free software to compete with Adobe and people who don't want to pay for HP patents.
No, these aren't free speech issues in general. (This particular situation might be; despite HP's warm and fuzzy claims I suspect that the government strongly encouraged them.) There is no law against this behavior. But it's unethical (not that that bothers most large businesses). As citizens we should stand up and demand that companies actually try to serve their customers first.
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