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Regionally Encoded Toner Cartridges 'to Serve Customers Better'
sandbagger writes: The latest attempt to create artificial scarcity comes from Xerox, according to the editors at TechDirt, who cite German sources: "Xerox uses region coding on their toner cartridges AND locks the printer to the first type used. So if you use a North America cartridge you can't use the cheaper Eastern Europe cartridges. The printer's display doesn't show this, nor does the hotline know about it. When c't reached out to Xerox, the marketing drone claimed, this was done to serve the customer better..."
Otherwise you would end up printing in PAL instead of NTSC.
Your edit makes the market-bot's statement more objectively true, but from the company's perspective, the customer's number one problem is that they haven't given the company enough money yet.
They're just helping their unfortunate customers with their money-infestation problem.
"We'll just take that nasty revenue off your hands."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"To Server Customers Better"
Its a cook book!
I've been in the copier/printer/fax/computer business for over 30 years. Region locking things has been going on for about that long. It first started with designing a tab, prong or other plastic part, to prevent a cartridge from working. Savin, some Lanier, Ricoh boxes are the same, but their cartridges won't fit. Toshiba, some lanier, Kyocera boxes are the same, but their toner won't fit. They use to do it with the above mentioned "break away" tabs (if you knew what to change), but that wasn't good enough, so they put a different drive gear coupling on the rear. But that wasn't good enough. Now a lot of them have either a CRM chip, or an RFID chip on the back of the cartridge that gets close enough to the one in the machine to read it. If they don't match, it won't work. In the "olden" days of dry toner copier, they did this to prevent a person from refilling the toner cartridges. With the color copiers/printers, the particle sizes have reached such a small size, and, the temperature melting points are becoming so small, that if you vary the toner or carrier just a very small amount, it makes a mess and can destroy some components. The DRM on cartridges is a PITA because if you slap a genuine new one in, and it doesn't read, it creates a service call. Sometimes, you can go in and tell it to look for the cartridge again, but if that doesn't work, you have to reject the cartridge and RMA it back to the company.
When I was staying in Europe for a few weeks (I'm from the USA) I had to wire some money over to the landlord. So I opened the PDF form from my (American) credit union, filled in the details, pasted in a signature and sent it back. "Sorry sir, but we are unable to accept an electronic copy; please print out the form, sign it, and then scan+email or fax it over."
So of course I just opened the document in GIMP, rotated it slightly, added some noise, turned down the contrast and sent it back. Landlord was happy, credit union was happy, and all I had to do was forge my own documents...
So if they region lock it so we can't use the (same, but) cheaper cartridges from Eastern Europe and Asia, can we region lock it so they can't use the cheaper workers from Easter Europe and Asia?
The release was written in Neuspeak, invented first for banks and hotels in the mid-twentieth century.
In neuspeak, "for your convenience" really means "for our profit."
"For your safety" means "For our convenience."
Neuspeak is spreading slowly to other industries, as well, but its form and syntax were perfected when used on a sign on a shuttered bank office in Sycamore, Ohio, which read: "For your convenience, this branch is closed."
"Actually, I think it should be unlawful"
You're not looking at this in the right way. It should be lawful to encrypt cartridges as a way of making more money, and it should be equally lawful for a customer to decrypt them as a way of saving money. THAT is how real capitalism would work.
Xerox is ripping us off not by region encoding its products, but by using federal power to criminalize whatever consumer forms of post-purchase hacking of its product that consumer may find advantageous.
Sounds like somebody has been messing with your stapler!
Yea, he can totally go to one or 2-3 identical companies with identical products that do the exact same thing. SO MUCH FREEDOM! Only repeated studies show that if fewer than 5 companies hold more than 70% market share, there is no measurable competition, and therefore no relationship between supply, demand, and price. Just look up the list of things required for perfect competition, a third of the items are physically impossible, a third extremely unlikely, and less than 5% of the factors exist when markets have so few major players. Markets are only free if they are very competitive. Xerox can only get away with this because they don't have to care about pissing off customers, so long as they aren't an order of magnitude worse than their fellow giants.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn