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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
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.
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'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....
The printer manufacturers that don't include this will obviously sell more.
"Watch your competitors take suicide: priceless."
It may easily be illegal:
* It increases the amount of waste. A whole printer is price-dumped into the market, and when the ink goes out, people buy a whole new printer.
* Waste again: Preventing cartridge refills, which is easier on the environment.
* Anti-trust: Preventing fair competition in the marketplace of ink cartridge manufacturers.
* Making devices Defective By Design, thus artificially restricting customer choice and creating artificial shortage. The devices are sold normally without any extra labels or warnings. Consumer-laws may have a word or two on that.
Clearly, a company is not justified in any means in order to make a buck. Far from it. Economics theory even includes that companies should invest in local infrastructure and provide services to the community. They are part of the community, not separate from it. The more they sell their soul to Mammon, the worse they make our community. We should then revoke the privileges as a person, which the companies now enjoy.
OTOH: Reverse-engineering might well be illegal in the USA, because of the silly DMCA in said country. Fix your laws!
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
Vintage champaign? stop dreaming
Currently, the ink of some printers is going above 10% of the price of gold per gram.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I could only imagine the results of this lawsuit were before congress openly sold laws to the highest bidder.
see keyword openly.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
* 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
Most certainly, but it seems to be almost cyclical.
1. Corruption becomes out of control
2. Profit!!
3. Locals get pissed, get corruption back to acceptable levels.
4. Locals become complacent, stop keeping their good eye on officials
5. Corruption becomes out of control
6. Profit!!
I'm no genius but, I can see a slight pattern developing here.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
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?
You should be mailing your old cartridges back to the manufacturer. It's free, easy and they recycle them. Printer cartridges disposal isn't regulated in the US because the manufactures here have been responsible so far by providing this service.
You could also just reuse them, using off the shelf refill kits, but it's not going to be the same ink your printer prefers, so it's not going to have the same drying speed, and possible not the exact color, but in most cases, this is more than adequate.
Btw, I see nothing in TFA that suggest this will prevent refilling.
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.
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;
And you'd have to be bubbling marijuana through nanotech-quality water in a bong made out of U-235 to pay those sort of prices for printer ink.
I guess the plan for printer makers is to a) hope that not too many of their customers notice that they don't have to pay these prices, and b) pray that some other printer maker doesn't come along and makes lots of noise pointing out that by paying an extra $40 for the printer you can save $200 on ink over the next year or two.
Of course some companies already lock print cartridges to printers. I have a Xerox color laser printer with some sort of chip in the cartridges allows the printer to identify genuine Xerox®(TM) cartridges, and throw a screaming fit if it doesn't find one. Naturally Xerox claims this is protect you from non-genuine cartridges or something like that, but we have a pretty good idea what it's really about.
Now in theory you could put off-brand cartridges in the printer, just like you could drink a milkshake made by shoving your hand in the blender, but the practicalities of doing so effectively deny it. Of course in the case of the Xerox printer the inconveniences you'd have to tolerate are artificial -- that is they're only present because Xerox doesn't want you cutting in on their toner revenue -- as opposed to the intrinsic pitfalls of making a milkshake out of your lower arm.
So there you have it: owning a Xerox color laser printer is only sort of like sticking your hand in a blender.
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
"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.
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
I am a graphic designer that uses a high end inkjet printer to produce prints for sale. Not all of us want laser printers. Lasers are cheap office tools, not designed for print quality. My printer uses eight cartridges, original Epson price: $25, Epson Compatible price $5. You do the math. The inkjet cartridge market always was a scam, and like any other market, the supply will fit the demand, so refills and compatibles move in. Apart from people fraudulently pirating lookalike OEM cartridges, I see no reason why quality inks cannot be sold by other companies. It ensures that the likes of HP and Epson keep their prices down.
"I like to skate on the other side of the ice"
Hewlett Packard "chips a number of their cartridges. I know one major ink-refill franchise that has a device to override the electronics. Basically, it just fries the chip, and the printer doesn't recognise it has been refilled.
"I like to skate on the other side of the ice"
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)
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.
Inkjet-printed photos are crap compared the the printes produced by dye-sub photo printers. The only advantage the inkjet ones might have is lower cost.
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...
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.
The title of the article is very wrong. Can "Piracy" be replaced with "Re-use" or Recycling?
Sound like a ciss system...
http://www.continuousink.com/
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.
"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