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Cryptography To Frustrate Printer-Ink Piracy
Zack Melich writes with news of a new front about to open in the war printer manufacturers wage with cartridge counterfeiters, refillers, and hardware hackers. A San Francisco company, Cryptography Research Inc., is designing a crypto chip to marry cartridges to printers. There's no word so far that any printer manufacturer has committed to using it. Quoting: "The company's chips use cryptography designed to make it harder for printers to use off-brand and counterfeit cartridges. CRI plans to create a secure chip that will allow only certain ink cartridges to communicate with certain printers. CRI also said that the chip will be designed that so large portions of it will have no decipherable structure, a feature that would thwart someone attempting to reverse-engineer the chip by examining it under a microscope to determine how it works. 'You can see 95 percent of the [chip's] grid and you still don't know how it works,' said Kit Rodgers, CRI's vice president of business development. Its chip generates a separate, random code for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge."
That's absurd enough when applied to simple copyright infringement, but there's absolutely nothing illegal about after market ink. In fact, these sort of shenanigans should be illegal themselves. Let the printer manufacturers compete fairly.
Is this even legal?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Decided to buy a different printer.
It is Defective by Design. Don't buy this stuff
If someone uses this chip, i don't need to think so hard if i can buy this Printer. This will make up a bigger Market for the Producers that produce Printer that play nice with the consumer. It is like the mobile Phones. They suck badly and the most people agree. So, there is a Market for Phones like the Neo1973(www.OpenMoko.com).
Sorry Guys, the Times in those you can fuck your customers are nearly over.
thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge
Or they go out and buy a laser and give the finger to printer manufacturers.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The company's chips use cryptography designed to make it harder for customers to use off-brand and counterfeit cartridges.
Fixed that for you.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Sounds like business as usual here in the Corporate States of Amerika.
That's like saying I can only use Dodge Brand gas in my car, and my wife could only use Toyota.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
There are printers now that last longer than the one cartidge? Who knew.
It is common knowledge that ink jet printers are sold cheaply, with the strategy that people must buy their overpriced ink. These companies are just trying to protect their businesses. There's nothing illegal about that. If you don't like it, buy a laser printer.
I hope any printer manufacturer engaging in this sort of anti-competitive skullduggery is punished HARD in the marketplace. I do not want the manufacturer of anything I buy encrypting it so that I cannot use MY possession as I wish. With all due respect to the special problem of digitized Intellectual Property and other reproducibles, I do not want my car-maker to lock me into only using their strangely constructed non-interchangeable tires and wheels UNLESS as in the case of say, a Corvette or other exotic, there is a compelling QUALITY interest.
I bought an EPSON CX 5200 and it turned out to be a lemon. There was no fix, no refund, it just sucked after about a year. It was a hundred-dollar Jackson Pollock(sp?) machine, and the reason was that the experimental ink cartridge design was crap. My printer would work just fine if the business model were not to use cheap printers to lock you into expensive ink cartridges. My printer would print, if that were the goal of the printer-makers.
I will never buy another EPSON, and I'm glad to say so to so many people. Unless, of course, they were to come out against this encryption nonsense.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
I'd like to know how this would square up with the EU electronic waste directive which imposes on manufacturers the cost of disposing of waste electronics. Surely such a chip would increase the cost to the manufacturer thus making it less economically attractive?
It's also possible that putting chips in disposable consumables such as printer cartridges is illegal in the EU - I recall some discussion about this during the Lexmark fiasco a few years ago.
i'll stick to my dot matrix thanks. lets seen them DRM that shit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I wonder how much an ink cartridge will cost once they add this nice new "feature"...
The printer manufacturers that don't include this will obviously sell more.
"Watch your competitors take suicide: priceless."
Unfortunately I do not remember the details, but I know that this has been tried before. A printer manufacturer placed special, patented circuitry into all their cartridges (I think this might have been toner cartridges for laser printers and not inkjet cartridges). Because the circuitry was patented it effectively prevented 3rd party companies from duplicating the design. There was an associated safeguard against refilling an existing cartridge.
A third party supplier took the manufacturer to court, in the US, and won their case. The judgement (ruling) I read in relation to this was that the circuitry on the cartridge unit served absolutely no purpose other than to preclude third party suppliers from manufacturing their own brands of replacement units.
The clone-busting design had to be withdrawn.
I'm pretty sure that something like this is likely to fall foul of the RICO Act.
Fair enough, there is this cheap razor/expensive razor blades strategy in use by most (if not all) inkjet printer manufacturers but you know it's a serious licence to print money when, by volume, that ink costs you more than an equivalent amount of vintage champagne does.
The sad fact is that the average consumer has no idea that with an inkjet that they'll spend far, far more on consumables than they did on the printer itself. And when they walk into the average PC superstore to buy a printer, no salesperson is going to rush to tell them because the margin that the store will make on the dozens of cartridges that that buyer will come back for (not to mention the other purchases s/he will make on those repeat trips back to the store) will far outstrip the amount of money made on a one-off colour laser printer sale and maybe one or two toner refills in its lifetime.
I agree that it's not illegal (although putting chips in the cartridges and then using the DCMA to prevent third-party refills from competing fairly is, at best, a rather shady way of doing business) but I disagree that the whole nature of cheap inkjet printers and overpriced ink is common knowledge. If it were, inkjet sales would have dwindled and colour laser sales would have outstripped them over the last couple of years.
The truth isn't quite out there yet.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There are plenty of printers and manufacturers out there. All you've got to do is check out the cost per page.
Deleted
Here we go again. "Official" printer ink is more expensive than heroin, but instead of competitive pricing, they go hand in hand with RIAA's marketing folks (read: more competition equals pricier products).
If they had ink cartridges with aggressive pricing in the first place, people would buy the factory-made ink simply because it would sound like a safe choice. At least I would.
Full Tilt
When I first saw the summary, my first thought was to post a joke about, "... and after that, they're fixing DRM". But then I RTFA'd (which I for some reason do before I post) and noticed CRI will also soon debut a similar copy-protection feature for Blu-ray video discs. So, other than getting a method of circumventing this printer technology (which presumably has value) posted on the Internet, would this have any effect? Somehow, I cannot get my head around whatever technology they are selling.
Oh, but I came up with an alternate joke: Finally, a market for my printer-modding business.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
* AFAIK, making wasteful products is not illegal.
o ntrol/20041026_Ruling.pdf
* The antitrust argument might have some merit, but I'm not sure if it is good enough to take to court.
* Finally, I've found a case about DMCA and printer cartridges that has already be decided in court:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Lexmark_v_Static_C
Here, Lexmark failed with a lawsuit against a company that reverse engineered its cartridges.
C - the footgun of programming languages
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070628-cryp tography-company-develops-chip-to-lock-out-third-p arty-ink-jet-cartridges.html
m ay2006/tc20060526_680075.htm - ray-content-protection-agency-certifies-bd.html
Cryptography Research Inc are also working on blu-ray BD+, the security on new blu-ray discs that will have features like:
1: expiring discs. so the media you own will need continued licence renewals to enable you to use it.
2: the ability for studios to remote disable drives permanently if yours or a line is found to be hacked/venerable.
3. usage reports to the studios of your hardware, including your location and serial number used in the fight against piracy.
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-blu
The Truth Is Out There:
When printers are practically given away for thirty and forty dollars, yet the ink cartridges cost eighty to a hundred dollars or more, it's blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to look that it's a racket. They're merely trying to regain the stranglehold they once had before others began to manufacture compatible cartridges of comparable quality at a reasonable market price. This is why I have a laser printer. The initial cost is relatively higher but the cost of replacing cartridges, their lifespan, and the print quality is far higher.
From the customer point of view, it is not silly, can be called wasteful, but it is economic sound
This is what I did when the four cartridges for my laserjet 2600n did cost more than a new printer
Really, I did buy a second printer since overall I was saving 50Euros over buying the for cartridges...
When they run out I will buy something else (more linux compatible)
What makes me sad is that it is quite difficult for manufactures to actually "convince" a customer that a more expensive printer with a cheaper "refill" is worthwhile.
Maybe they should have a simple page that says "total costo over a year", where you input how many pages you plan to print and it will compare a printer against the others. This would be good for the environment, and the customers, less for sneaky companies that tends to mess up with advertising
I really don't understand the economics and consumer dynamics around the printer market these days. Surely printer technology has reached a plateau for most normal people? Is that why some corporate madman decided to adopt a blades and razors approach to the consumer printing market? I know it's been a fixture of the corporate colour copier / printer market for a long while now ... but ... why not just charge the correct price for the printer and the consumables?
A what the hell are people printing so damn much of that the consumables business is sooooo lucrative?
I've never been all that into generating large reams of paper at home. For my day job, I print documentation, reports, manuscripts, etc at the office and lug it home when I want a hard copy of something I'm editing online.
For my photography, I send files to a lab and have my images printed. I've considered printing at home - but I would expect archival inks and decent papers to be pricey. I really don't know why I'd want to keep a printer in a corner of my room waiting for those three or four colour 4x5's that I just HAVE to print then and there - and which can't wait for Apple / Kodak / Peak Imaging to deliver to my door in a couple of days. Surely iPhoto or Picasa is a hell of a lot simpler than fiddling with inkjet printers?
When I was writing more long-form pieces, I had a Brother laser printer. Cost me $100 at the time and I could print books without running out of toner. The cartridges weren't that cheap, but it took a nice long while before I had to change them out.
Surely it makes sense for most people just to send their photos off to be printed and to keep a cheap laser printer around for text?
He hit the damned nail on the head, you idiot anonymous mod. How is this NOT "digital rights management"?
This firm has designed hardware/firmware that would let printer manufacturers digitally restrict your use of their product, i.e. the printer, by preventing OEMs from making alternative cartridges and you from having choices. Isn't that rights management? If a competitor actually succeeded in creating a knockoff, you'd see a repeat of the stunt Lexmark pulled with toner cartridges: they'd sue in court under the provisions of the DMCA. In this case, this sleazebag Cryptography Research would no doubt jump in with a patent infringement suit, as well.
It's bad enough that average people are such a complete disappointment; when I see people here mod like that, even Slashdot disappoints me.
If this scheme worked, wouldn't there be money in a manufacturer selling printers which operated outside of this system, and allowed ink from any other manufacturer? I certainly won't be buying a locked-down printer if I have the choice, and given that only one manufacturer can own the patent on this scheme that leaves quite a few of them (all but one, in fact).
I think if I had bought some cheaper printer that I would have spent 2-4x the money by now on refills, even assuming the printer even worked any more. I despise devices that have built-in obsolescence or rely on disposable & non-recyclable parts to force upgrades. Someone like the EU should force the industry to define and adopt standards that cover things like chargers, batteries and cartridges.
Why, for fucks sakes, does anyone need to print anything these days? Is emailing pictures not enough? Can you not just purchase a scanner? TEACH YOURSELF how to take advantage of technology and at least make it harder for this kind of crap to keep happening.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
... for the "pirates". Since this is going to make "official" ink cartridges more expensive, this will firstly raise the "pirates"' revenues, making it more rewarding to produce counterfeit cartridges to begin with. Duh. Each time in history, when something was forbidden or made illegal, the criminals made more money, like during prohibition in the 30s. As soon as the prohibition was cancelled, the alcohol mafia gangs had to look for different businesses. When will people learn.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Trouble is you quite soon run out of things to buy - I personally will never buy another HP, because of their crap software, so I'm currently using Epson ... but if I give up on Epson what's left?
In which you'll only be able to use brand-locked toner cartridges and drums.
Ok there's something I don't get. What is exactly a counterfeit cartridge. I'm in the business for ten years and I never heard of it. What I know is:
New genuine printer manufacturer cartridge
Refilled genuine printer manufacturer cartridge
Other brands compatible cartridge (new or refilled)
So I guess a counterfeit cartridge is a cartridge manufactured by some company which brand it with the name of another company for the purpose of ripping off the consumer.
Well that's something I never saw in my career, and it is new for me, which is why from now on a will take a precautionary measure:
Don't buy Genuine printer manufacturer cartridge as thos can be in fact counterfeit, buy instead alternative brands less likely to be counterfeit
The more they push ink lock-in with the excessive pricing and having false-negatives with "real" ink cartridges, the more people are going to get fed up with this. Some bright company will come up with the innovative idea of charging real prices for the printers and real prices for the ink (yes, it would take a while for -that- to catch on). Also, laser printers are starting to get real cheap (compared to the past). Methinks that most people use color printing for either work or for printing pictures; well, there are those idiots who have to put out a color brochure about their family each Christmas to 30 other families who could give a shit about it. Work- just use your work printer. Pics- go to Walmart/Cvs/any place that takes digital inputs now. Xmas brochure- just give 1 to your dog.
People got addicted to color printing years ago and now can't even imagine "just" black and white.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
"Pirate" is the new inflammatory word used by tech writers these days to invoke passion and get page clicks.
Just like "terrorist", it has a fuzzy meaning and can be abused to no end.
I tried several times in private email to get the author of this piece to define the word "pirate", but she would not or could not.
Thankfully, laser printers (even color laser printers) continue to drop in cost -- even to the point where most consumers can realistically afford one if they need it for any non-trivial amount of printing. And at least today, printers and toner cartridges aren't sold with Gillette-style pricing.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Am I the only person who buys anouther printer rather than catridges? We have two printers in my house a Canon i865 and whatever cheap printer I can get (usually a HP) The Canon cost something like £120 and refilling the catridges is around £6 a go. The sad thing is if we actually compare the total cost of the cannon over the last three years against my habit of buying a new £30 printer (with free ink catridges) The new printer every 12-15 months is still slightly ahead.
When you discover things like this you have to ask yourself why the printer companies haven't been taken to task and yes I'm aware the quality of the cheapy printers is less but then both are only really used to print off uni/school reports the reson why its stayed so close cost wise is because the HP catridges tend to last me around a year, where as each of the 4 Cannon's only last 3-4 months of usuage.
I just can't see this working any company that instigates these measures on catridges is just going to lose customers
Printer Companies are getting worse at this. My Canon Laser Printer locked up because the 'toner had exceeded it's lifetime'. Note the weasel words. Quite different from being out of toner! I had been using Toner Saver mode so expected a higher page couut, but nope, after I printed the predetermined number of pages it went into lockdown and refused to print anything more. The cartridge still has toner in it, a fair bit by the sounds of it, but a smartchip detects it being reinserted. Buy a new one. Others report on the web that Canon cartridges typically have 10-20% toner in them when they "reach their lifetime."
The message claims that continuing to use the printer would damage it. Rubbish. Remember laser printers and photo copies before the DMCA allowed this smart chip chikanery? They'd get faint, and you'd replace the toner, and all would be ok.
Will your printer do this? It's hard to tell, because reviewers don't print enough pages to find out. This isn't declared anywhere on the advertising material. It's unethical on Canon's part, and should be illegal. But as we saw with the Sony Rootkit, big companies can break the law on a whim and not get prosecuted.
Lexmark tried it
o ses_round/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/30/lexmark_l
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Could we please drop the phrase 'printer-ink piracy' and the concept of whatever the f*ck it's supposed to mean right now! Thank you.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You can get an inkjet for free. But I got a Brother laser printer that is very nice for $75 after rebate.
Look at the security of smart cards used by TV set-top boxes (e.g. satellite TV), after years of trying and millions of dollars later, they still cannot thwart criminals from reverse-engineering their chip and selling counterfeit smart cards, and have to use a layered approach so that as each feature is cracked, they will wait a while and activate the next to frustrate the buyers, for a few months until it is cracked again.
If CRI really got "reverse-engineering proof" technology, they would be selling that to smart card manufacturers and the military (think counterfeit proof id cards) for big bucks instead of using it for low cost printers. Their only hope would be that the profit from ink cartridges is not worth the effort to crack their chip, which sets a pretty low upper bound on the actual strength on it security.
Oliver.
When I was writing more long-form pieces, I had a Brother laser printer. Cost me $100 at the time and I could print books without running out of toner. The cartridges weren't that cheap, but it took a nice long while before I had to change them out.
Either a network laser printer or a printserver makes a nice addition to a home LAN. Many printer manufactures are counting on one PC/Printer combo and for the times you need a splash of color (google maps) a color printer becomes mandantory. With network printing, you have the choice of much cheaper printing. I have an inkjet printer on my LAN. It's on the shelf in the closet inconviently located. It's the secondary printer, not the primary. The laser printer is conviently located on a cart easly acessable and handy. It's the first choice for laptop printing. Printing to it with laptops over the wireless LAN is not a problem.
The truth shall set you free!
As usual when some company makes a crypto press-release.
CRI also said that the chip will be designed that so large portions of it will have no decipherable structure,
That happens to be impossible. It is a direct lie.
'You can see 95 percent of the [chip's] grid and you still don't know how it works,'
So what? Any competent attacker will see 100%. Seeing 95% is not much easier than seeing 100%. Not a lie, but active misdirection.
So far for clueless and dishonest marketing. However it is possible to deduce how this thing likely works: It does a key-exchange with the printer and then prooves possession of a specific secret in a cryptographically secure way to the printer. The printer remembers this and can henceforth recognize the cartridge. It will also remember that a certain cartridge was empty and refuse to use it after that time.
Attack possibilities: Depends. May be impossible to break from the crypto-side. The attack would then be to modify the printer's firmware or use a legal attack (this is, after all, anticompettitive and illegal in at least some countries).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is so sad. Cryptography Research is no johnny-come-lately snake oil crypto business. It's Paul Kocher's company--he's inventor of Differential Timing Analysis and Differential Power Analysis, developer of all sorts of (licensable) countermeasures for thosee attacks, one of the main architects of SSL, designer of Deep Crack, and an all around very smart guy.
With that background, it's probably pretty effective technology. We'd better hope it's also expensive enough that it's not appealing to the printer companies. The fact that it's been announced in the press suggests that it hasn't been getting much traction in private, but who knows?
I was just in Taipei buying computers when I noticed many of the retailers there were selling "modded" Epson printers. A chip on the quite a few different consumer-level printers had been changed, and these enormous tanks had been glued to the side of the printer. Coming out of the 4 tanks were small clear tubes that joined up in a ribbon-cable style, and ended at the cartridge. Now, I'm not sure if the cartridge was is a special cartridge, because I didnt check, but judging by the popularity of these systems, as they were on display at most shops that sold Epson printers, that they were a good deal long term. I seem to remember that the cost of the printer went up by only about $70 for the modded system. Apparently the retailers could sell you these 500 ml bottles of ink, and thier estimation was that printing costs per page shrunk to %10 of that of what a standard OEM cartridge could deliver. I wish that I had taken a picture of these modded printers to include, but I neglected to take any. Are these mods sold in North America?
My next printer will be a laser. Switch on, print, switch off.
Right now my Epson is more: "Print test page to see if it's going to work, spend twenty minutes wasting paper and squirting expensive ink into a sponge just to get it flowing, finally get to print a page."
I don't need the hassle. I don't need the expense.
A color laser printer costs about $300 and will print thousands of pages with the included toner. If I need to print photos the print shop 50 yards from here will do a better job then my inkjet for far less money (and probably in less time...)
No sig today...
the logical next step is to attack the PRINTER side of the equation. Mod chips, third-party firmware, solder a wire between point X and point Y, etc.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The only real answer is for anti-trust legislation. However, it is clearly legitimate that the use of non-manufacturer consumables should invalidate any portion of the manufacturer warranty that could be affected. In the meantime the answer is not to buy cheap printers. Although HP has the largest market share they are not necessarily the most economical to operate. For basic mono printing Samsung will suit most people, and for colour both Xerox and Oki have some nice mid-range machines (in fact I believe at least one Xerox is a badged Oki.) For high volume mono at lowest cost per page, look at Kyocera, or buy a second user machine e.g. in the HP 4000 series (anything between 4050 and 4350). If possible, before buying insist on a test, bump up the machine web page and check the lifetime page count and, if possible, belt and fuser life remaining.
Pining for the fjords
Imagine the gasoline type would match only your car brand. Cars would be cheap to buy but you were forced to use the manufactures gas. Thats how ridiculous the situation with the printer ink is.
Not to be completely off topic, but I think the print cartridge companies would have better luck if they incorporated a "lab on chip" style spectrometer in the print head of every cartridge. That way, only the "patented ink formula" could be used in the cartridge, any other kind would signal the print head to stop. In this effect, they'd lock out all re-fillers until they could recreate the ink formula exactly which would be no small task (or cheap - their only selling point)
Isnt' it about time that printer manufacturers got away from this "giving you the printer to sell the ink" idea? I know that's probably like trying to get the toothpaste pack in the tube at this point, but what would be wrong with a "tiered" system of some kind for printers? Have your $50 printers...hell, in fact give them away for free, and put in all the restrictions you can to keep third parties out of the business. If you give away the printers you could theoretically even make people sign a maintenance contract; manufacturer provides cartridges and perhaps even paper for a monthly fee or whatever, and take care of maintenance, like some outfits do now with businesses lasers. So long as the prices were reasonable people would pay for this service, and if you'd build better quality printers you could get 4 or 5 years out of them, perhaps even longer; if Ma and Pa just want a printer to print out photos the kids send them when would they ever want something more? There's got to be a "customers will pay it/break even point for making money" price in this model somewhere.
Alternatively offer the option of paying more for the printers, but let people do whatever they want to with them. Again make your printers higher quality and the hobbyists/geeks will gladly pay a premium, if they know they can count on it to last and can get their own consumables without hassle. Plus you don't destroy the business model for all the third party cart/refill businesses.
Everyone always wants something for cheaper, but in this case it really seems like this has ended up harming the consumer rather than helping them. Someone else here made the point, "Why would I get an inkjet with all these issues when I can get a color laser for $300 more", and while I realize not everyone is going to think like that, it does seem to me that inkjet manufacturers are perhaps killing their own business.
Then there are photo printers. Dye sublimation printers, which used to cost $5000, now cost $180. I know the reason there why people still buy ink jet. People say the ink jet has 4800x4800 resolution but the dye sub has only 300x300.
It's annoying being into photography and not being able to print much. But I simply despise how this market has progressed. I can't think of many other markets (game consoles?) where the use of protection is so blatantly designed to sell something simple for more than the cost (per cc) of a good champagne.
I remember when a good printer cost a few hundred pounds, I'm sure I bought one for over 400 pounds (UK) once, that was an inkjet. Naturally prices will fall, but at the same time these chips have been introduced to increase the cost of cartridges and artificially lower the cost of the printer.
There were no 3rd party cartridges about 10 or so years ago. It's time for the printer manufacturers to be fair about consumables. Perhaps the environmental angle could be used to force change? make manufactures produce refillable cartridges to cut down on waste.
I have to take issue with that term being associated with people trying to market ink and/or toner.
Yes, we all understand the printer makers are trying to follow the razor blade business model. But guess what? It doesn't quite fit because ink/toner aren't being sold as cheaply as the simple razor blade.
Making compatible products is what competition is all about.
Now if I were a printer maker, I would do something better than what they are attempting to do now. I'd set something up along the lines of a service subscription. In the business world, it's rare when people actually OWN their copiers. They generally lease them and have some sort of arrangement with the vendor to continually supply toner or ink. All that has to be done is to find a way to have consumers subscribe to that model and you're done. And to get creative, I don't think the idea would be too hard to conceive. The vendor could set up service not unlike NetFlix or better, more like Blockbuster where they can do business online and over the mail or directly at a store like WalMart or BestBuy. Bring in your old cartridges, and they replace them with new ones. You already paid your subscription for the year... and the stores would need is a means to verify your subscription each time. Other limits could apply I'm sure, like maybe up to X cartridges per month or per year or some such thing and if you exceed that, upgrade the subscription level.
My point is to sell it as a service rather than a product and they wouldn't necessarily face what they are now.
This is sickening and just more proof that capitalism is unsustainable.
Epson and Lexmark both lost class action suits brought against them for building technical blocs in thier hardware which would lock out 3rd party ink carts. And if the printer companies think they would survive a concerted effort by Indian and Chinese vendors to replace them in the home/SOHO market they are smoking the same weed that the RIAA uses. So I say let them try. They will see that market dry up.
Yea, but these tard mongers are going to manufacture the chips in china to save money and then the chinese factories are going to be producing counterfeit chips and competing with them anyways. Way to go.
Finally someone is thinking about how to help the poor printer companies and their hard-scrabble, hand-to-mouth existences! If this can raise the cost of printer ink to twice the cost of human blood, maybe they can afford to feed their own children again.
Kodak -- a new name in the inkjet printer business -- is claiming to do something along that line. Their printers are a bit more than the competition. Their ink is a lot cheaper. They don't make a lot of models, and it's not clear that their printers are any damn good. (Like any consumer inkjet printer is). But at least they may be trying.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
GM has announced a move to help make them more profitable. Effective immediately all GM cars and trucks will come with a Trusted Computing Platform Module to ensure no after market "Pirated" parts (including tires and possible gasoline..from Shell only with 5 grace emergency fill ups) can be used with their products. The platform will run on windows Vista Ultimate Best in the world Crazy Sexy Auto Edition and use HDCP connections to ensure there are no analogue holes. No GM is not doing this....
I hope any printer manufacturer engaging in this sort of anti-competitive skullduggery is punished HARD in the marketplace.>>> The problem with your logics is that ALL printer manufacturers see cartridges as a major revenue of their investments. ALL of them. Therefore ALL of them ARE interested to protect their specific market share of cartridges. To protect THEIR share and not on expenses of other printer manufacturers (are you using cheaper HP cartridges for Epson printers??? - of course, not!), but on expenses of 3rd party business which provides cheaper alternatives. Therefore if the 'chip strategy' will be successful, I expect that all printer manufacturers will eventually implement these cartridge chips, and market will not help you.
On some of the HP Lasers we have @ the office, they have a little chip affixed to the toner cartridge. If the chip isn't there, the printer won't function. Even though the cartridge is identical to one of the lesser models, you have to have the chip or the printer will NOT function.
Our re-filler got a bunch of chips from somewhere, but none of them worked. We found that if we pulled the chip off the old toner cartridge and put it on the new one, it worked just dandy..
= Grow a brain...
Copier contracts make locked-in ink cartridges look sweet and innocent. Never, ever get into a deal where you are being billed with hidden costs and where capital items are being expensed or leased. You will be in the process of being screwed.
As an example, copier salesmen like to "pre-estimate" for you your predicted usage. Then they persuade you to go for a click-included contract, e.g. 6000 "free" pages per month. Only your real predicted usage is 3000 pages...and there are penalties for downrating. Laugh all the way to the bonus for the next 5 years. And that's without "Colour costs three times as much as B/W" - so that's pretty good because everybody knows you mix three colours - only that's 3* per colour and a colour page is rated as CMYK, so that is 10 times the price of B/W the moment there is the smallest colour dot on the page.
Believe me, stick to costs you can analyse for yourself.
Pining for the fjords
Kodak has priced their new printers a bit higher than the competition, but include the print head in the printer so cartridge costs are much lower ($10 black cartridge, $15 5-color cartridge). Yes the ink prices are still higher than they should be but they are much closer in line with reality.
i like having a choice to purchase inexpensive compatible cartridges.
The title of the article is very wrong. Can "Piracy" be replaced with "Re-use" or Recycling?
It's not a free market if the business model is propped up by the government. Laws like DMCA have been passed to protect illegitimate schemes like this, threatening the consumer or competitor with fines and jail time.
In such an artificial monopoly, one cannot "let the market decide".
That shows the magnitude of the economic surplus in that business.
Selling Ink for printers is a very good business.
Don't have real information on it, but suspect making "compatible" ink and refilling is very cheap process/technology.
It seems its so good business to the extent to lead someone to want to develop and "attach" extra (unneeded) hardware to the ink cartridges (didnt rtfa), to prevent others from taking that business over.
(This is instead of giving a better service or being more "competitive").
What really shall happen is the refilling and original cartridge selling companies LOWERING the prices of their product for their captive market.
Of course don't believe that will ever happen, instead what we will get is DRM for cartridges and increased prices due to the "extra" stupid hardware.
...But simply do your homework.
I bought an Epson for the majority of my printing, but ONLY after the homework to show that I could buy CHEAP, knockoff, consumables, the printer was only $60.00 after coupon, and it was a complete throwaway if problems...
It has printed through two kids and two degrees; cartridges available for just several dollars, everywhere, and it still works well and is well supported under Linux.
It is exactly that printer and I am exactly the person that printer manufacturers want to eliminate... Funny thing is, they got their money, and I got my printing.
The article uses the terms "piracy" and "illegal". That may be libel. It's an explicit accusation of criminal activity where there is none. See SCC vs. Lexmark. As the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled,
Generally speaking, "lock-out" codes fall on the functional-idea rather than the original-expression side of the copyright line. Manufacturers of interoperable devices such as computers and software, game consoles and video games, printers and toner cartridges, or automobiles and replacement parts may employ a security system to bar the use of unauthorized components. To "unlock" and permit operation of the primary device (i.e., the computer, the game console, the printer, the car), the component must contain either a certain code sequence or be able to respond appropriately to an authentication process. To the extent compatibility requires that a particular code sequence be included in the component device to permit its use, the merger and scènes à faire doctrines generally preclude the code sequence from obtaining copyright.
The key concept here is that you can't copyright a working part. Lexmark lost on this one, and third party printer cartridges are thus legal. In fact, Lexmark is facing an antitrust case over this.
Cheap printer: $40
Cheap printer ink cartridge replacement: $60
When ink runs out on cheap printer, throw cheap printer away and buy new cheap printer. Since the printer is actually a loss leader you are screwing them each time you buy a new printer and they never make their profit on the replacement cartridge, AND it's cheaper on you.
"Its chip generates a separate, random code for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge."
They won't bother hacking the chips on the cartridges. They will hack the hardware/software that interfaces with the cartridges. It is much faster and you have a known mass distributable crack to the issue. It is also why the hackers of the HD-DVD and BluRay encryption have gone after the process keys and not the individual movie key. The process key lets them crack multiple movies, where-as the individual movie key only works for that specific movie (and even then, that specific copy of that specific movie).
No one in their right mind who knows anything about cryptology would ever state that above quote. Only someone reading what the spinmiesters in PR (who again have no idea about cryptology), would say something like this.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The news to watch here is not only that the printer makers are improving their "market control by technology" schemes. It's that a major IT site is carrying carefully crafted propaganda aimed at legitimizing the practice.
The article conflates actual "piracy", i.e. counterfeiting with false brand names, with competition in supplies for any given printer. Reverse engineering to make compatible cartridges, and refilling carts, are lumped into the category and called "priacy".
The author actually admits that the companies are trying to make money by the razors-and-blades trick, yet does not treat it as their own hard luck that it doesn't work without restricting customers. Instead, implicit throughout the article is an assumption that sellers are entitled to enforce whatever busines model they have chosen by technical tricks and anti-competitive practices, and that any attempt of buyers to evade the intent is something disreputable, illegitimate, and borderline or actually illegal ("piracy" etc.).
What's alarming here is that this set of assumptions and power relations is increasingly being legitimized in minds of the public. On a meta level this article is a warning sign. Look for attempts soon to get the "market-control by DRM" protected by law in expanded areas, hardware in addition to copyright and patent, under some mutant hypertrophism of intellectual property pretexts.
Those who perceive what's going on should fight back by raising people's awareness. Talk to non-techies and use the opposite terms and concepts, and undermine the corporate propaganda.
I mean, it's not like printer ink is $8000 A GALLON or anything... Oh wait, it is.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
I do not understand theese not joke, please to allow me to try one?
Theese peoples who say not jokes, they are NOT cool.
Oh, I get eet now! Bwahaha!
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
If you don't like the product or the company, don't buy their product. Simple, no?
Anything beyond that is whining, and overstepping your boundaries. People should be free to do as they like, and that includes business people. If they want to upset their customers, who are YOU to tell them that they can't?
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Refilled/off brand ink cartridges are commonplace, and most people expect to be able to use them with a new printer. If the printer is designed to prevent that, it should have a label. In large type it should read: "This printer is designed to prevent the use of third-party ink". The text should be larger than any other text on the box except for the product name and brand name, and it should be on the front.
I don't know how anybody could think that secretly embedding technology like this into a device isn't a deceptive sales tactic.
The DMCA won't protect this scheme after the big loss that Lexmark took. Patents on ink formulations are really open to attack under the KSR decision earlier this year under "obviousness" grounds. Basically, combining already-known techniques and getting an expected result is now considered legally obvious, and I just can't think of much ink technology that hasn't already been known.
Come on China, you churn out everything from aprons, computers, refrigerators & Xylophones. Why no reasonably priced printer that uses DRM free ink cartridges?
I don't see how this could possibly work -- as long as you have the capability to clone a "legitimate" chip, you could stick it on every single cartridge you churn out. There's no way that the chip can contain say a digital fingerprint of the cartridge, so there is no proof of authority.
... ink levels were reported accurately. I, for one, wouldn't have a problem buying ink direct from the manufacturer if my printing program didn't tell me my ink levels were low when I still have 75% of my ink left. As in, for how much ink costs and the unreliability of ink-level reporting, I will choose printers that do not adopt this technology and continue to purchase third-party "pirated" ink cartridges.
About 18 months ago I was hired to investigate the feasibility of producing counterfeit smart cards for a particular photo printer's ink cartridges to allow third parties to produce compatible ones. Long story short, the software running inside of the printer was actually doing hard challenge-response type of cryptography (based on public/private keys) back and forth with the smart card, and I couldn't get inside of the latter ... so it was un-hackable. It was a fun project despite that, though, trying to find a needle in a haystack inside of this gigantic firmware dump.
Needless to say this sort of thing has been going on for a while, and the printer manufacturers will win if they put their minds to it. Best to buy a printer that operates on free-standing ink reservoirs.
Let them try this.
Five minutes later, some Taiwan or mainland Chinese company will be formed to make printers without it.
Five years later, the entire inkjet printer industry will be out of business.
Not to mention that the cost of laser printers is coming down enough that soon the inkjet printer will be off the market anyway. Color lasers are going for $600 now. If the inkjet people start charging $50/cartridge, the laser printers will drop to $200-300, and anybody with a brain will see that inkjets are worthless.
The managers of ALL companies in ALL industries just don't get it. You cannot FORCE people to pay for your product. You have to provide a REASON to buy your crap.
Here's your fundamental flaw in so-called "capitalism". Your managers depend on the very people who are stockholders in their companies - and then proceed to screw those people both as consumers and as stockholders by ripping them off in the marketplace and then cooking the books so the company goes under.
The only reason it works is because the morons who are stockholders think that if they have a crooked management who rips off their customers that the company will make more profit and they will get higher shareholder value. They forget that the same assholes who are ripping off the consumer are ripping THEM off!
Morons.
When are you morons going to realize that management are nothing more than alpha primates who are born with the intent of fucking you over? They can't do anything else - it's in their monkey genes.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"A what the hell are people printing so damn much of that the consumables business is sooooo lucrative?" Well, I used to work as a Technical Support Agent for HP, and what they are zeroing in on is Newbies. They'll put together these fantastic packages of getting a computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and...a printer/scanner/copier/fax machine, and when these people get all this stuff, they go crazy trying it all out! They want people who do not know very much about computers to use their products because they'll use everything, and I mean everything up right away, and then they'll buy more stuff:-) Is it a scam? YES! We would just shake our heads when a "NEW" printer model would come into the centre for us to train on, and when they implemented having the print heads separate from the printing cartridges, then we really, really, really knew it was a scam! Oh my god, the amount of calls we would get about the print heads being clogged, and god forbid that they went on holidays, and didn't put their print heads, and cartridges in a sealed plastic bag....they would dry up, and be totally unusable. Then guess what...yup, they'd get new stuff again! This cycle is repeated over, and over, and over again until the "Newbies" suddenly get wise, and purchase a laser printer, or something else. I'm using a Brother laser printer, and it's not as good as an HP AIO, but it does the job, and here I am sitting with it for over a year, and I don't have to worry about going on holidays. If you really need something printed in colour, then just go to your local copier centre, and get them to do it because the costs are just too high for maintaining these ink cartridge printers! I liken them to "One armed Bandits" (Slot Machines), but we should be calling them "Print Bandits" because that is exactly what they are! Don't forget to factor in your time, and effort into adding up the costs of maintaining an ink jet printer...it really doesn't make any sense to purchase these things when you look at it from this point of view. So, yes, I agree with you, but then again look who you are dealing with, eh?lol Can a Newbie see the big picture...nope, and that's how these companies make their money.
Since when is creating a similar product considered piracy? Especially when it's in the materials department. How long till Lowes sues 84 Lumber because they're selling a 2x4 piece of organic material created from the trunk of a tree?
Just seeing the summary was enough to get my goat.
Why, oh why, do we embrace such finicky technology which enforces us to a single source vendor?
I have known since I was a little kid the economics of having to deal with a monopoly. ( Dad owned the car and could exact whatever he deemed fit in exchange for an evening's use of it.).
Why do people, with business degrees - no less - embrace enslaving themselves this way?
This kind of proprietary control crap is the number one reason I fail to embrace a new technology.
Mind you, I had to have one of the first adopters of home computers (IMSAI 8080), LED flashlights, all-flourescent lit house, all LCD displays, ground source heat pump, but still run alternate OS only because of this issue.
Although newer technology is often better, it is not always so if it comes with a hook in the bait.
I feel the guys who adopt this shit have not the sense of a game fish.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
"Have to create a crack for every cartridge" - Yeah, just like crackers needed to to break the encryption on DVDs, HD-DVDs, and BluRay DVDs? You just figure out the master key for all, say..., HP printers and you've "fixed" the problem. Security like this is ridiculous. If they're so worried about it, why don't they raise the price of the printers and say "buy Brand X, we have the cheapest ink around!" and then not bother with all this FUD?
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
...how will this matter if, as a result, all the "would-be hackers" just design a simple technique to refill the legitimate cartridges?
www.purevolume.com/martyd
I know inkjet still beats out laser for photos, but for everything else GO WITH A LASER. They're cheap, cheap to print, go long periods of time without a refill, print indelibly (vs. smudge-when-wet inkjet), and the ink doesn't jam up.
With (st)inkjet I found I was going through cartidges every 3 months whether I printed much or not at all. I think the ink must evaporate. Then I had a clogged head.
HP is of course the worst in terms of squeezing every drop out of you - printers that refuse to use non-empty cartridges after x prints and the like.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Thats the crazy thing. I cant remember the country, although I'll wager its either EU or Australia (back when the ACCC had teeth) , but I remember there was a govt ruling that blocking use of third party cartriges was anti-competitive. There was a similar ruling in Australia by the ACCC, if I remember correctly, that blocked import of DVD players that where locked to a single region due to the fact that it was deemed anticompetitive by blocking parallel imports. I think the howard government might of nuked that decision (I cant really remember)however.
I really do hope governments stand up to this and recognise that its anti-consumer, and anti-environmental (by blocking refilling).
Man. I do love my dinky little brother laser however. 3 years later, and still no sign of a need to replace the cartrige.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
These companies just don't get it. We have the real power.
crappy overpriced locked down shit + informed legislature = new laws + no more company.
Since forcing people to buy new cartridges is environmentally wasteful, perhaps we should propose legislation that outlaws this sort of behavior on environmental grounds.
"When recycling is outlawed only outlaws will recycle."
You can remove the two springs and the toner carrier separates from the front that has the chip. Then you install the toner carrier from another printer. Pretty much all lexmark network printers (and the Dell branded lexmarks) have the same toner carrier. Even different models and toner forumulations don't seem to matter.
English is obviously your second language, so please excuse me if this sounds oversimplified: The Market is not perfect, but it is the most fair and efficient distribution system ever devised. It is also the only one which comes to us straight from nature. Good luck with that socialism thing you believe in; you'll need it.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
The question how those monopolistic bastards would survive modern post-laissez-faire scrutiny of the government would leave me in utter bewilderment if not only I knew what bastards are in the same government.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
These "clever chips" are already banned in the EU, and similar directives forbid many "custom" changes to lock out third party suppliers. See the Waste Electronic and Electric Equipment Directive for more details.
I like that! That gets filed. :thup:
I for one welcome a new cheap source of parts for my robotics hobby projects. What do you people care if sixpack Joe will have to spend 50 bucks on an ink cartridge. He in no way is stopping you from buing a laser printer, but his _contribution_ will make it possible for printer manufacturers to sell printers even cheaper than now. Below 10$ maybe? There is plenty of stuff you can reuse from the ink jet printer. Like: position encoders, toothed belts, electric engines, gears, a precision ground rod etc. All subsidised from the idiot tax.
You spent a whole day lying last week you piece of shit, then when I called you on it you ran like a bitch.
You opinion is worthless.
I posted this elsewhere in the comments, but it does bear repeating that there was a directive issued in 2003 to specifically forbid these sorts of lock-outs. The full legalese is here...
If someone can give me office supplys cheaper i should be albe to get them. If they want to stop that they should get the hell out of the printer business.
Like I'm going to buy a printer that uses a cartridge with this sort of chip (or ANY sort of third-party restriction).
I'm already boycotting Brother (for building POS systems whose drivers don't work, and with outrageous ink cartridge prices). Who's next?
The managers of ALL companies in ALL industries just don't get it. You cannot FORCE people to pay for your product. You have to provide a REASON to buy your crap.
/.ers, there are enough people swayed by the current persuasive/manipulative advertising model to warrant it's continued use--blech!
I read that beyond life necessities, people buy stuff for ONLY 3 reasons:
1) To make more money.
2) To save more money.
3) As personal self-improvement aids.
Further, I read in a recent popular marketing book, that effective advertising has to answer 4 questions to the prospective customer:
1) What are you trying to sell me?
2) How much does it cost?
3) Why should I belive you?
4) What's in it for me?
Addressing as many as these as possible in product advertising (without the time wasting psychology/emotional BS) should improve your chances of making a sale.
Unfortunately for us
If printer manufacturers didn't try to scam customers with ink cartridges that needed to be replaced on a weekly basis, this wouldn't even be an issue. I could buy a new car with the money I've spent replacing cartridges. If you're with me and need to vent your frustration, you gotta check out this game: destroyaprinter.com
This is immoral, and ought to be illegal. No one should willingly work for such firms. Or stock such product. To do so is unethical and immoral (exception being that you have to to feed your family).
The only piracy here is by the printer manufacturers and chip developers.
Hey shitshake! I thought we told you to get lost!
We don't like you or your retarded comments. Go back to digg, you buttplug!
It's not narcissicism if it's true!