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EFF Calls On HP To Disable Printer Ink Self-Destruct Sequence (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fix-it dept.

HP should apologize to customers and restore the ability of printers to use third-party ink cartridges, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a letter to the company's CEO yesterday. From an ArsTechnica report:HP has been sabotaging OfficeJet Pro printers with firmware that prevents use of non-HP ink cartridges and even HP cartridges that have been refilled, forcing customers to buy more expensive ink directly from HP. The self-destruct mechanism informs customers that their ink cartridges are "damaged" and must be replaced. "The software update that prevented the use of third-party ink was reportedly distributed in March, but this anti-feature itself wasn't activated until September," EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow wrote in a letter to HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler. "That means that HP knew, for at least six months, that some of its customers were buying your products because they believed they were compatible with any manufacturer's ink, while you had already planted a countdown timer in their property that would take this feature away. Your customers will have replaced their existing printers, or made purchasing recommendations to friends who trusted them on this basis. They are now left with a less useful printer -- and possibly a stockpile of useless third-party ink cartridges."

5 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Just don't buy HP by mmiscool · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just don't buy HP

    1. Re:Just don't buy HP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That doesn't help all the people who bought HP before they knew this "feature" would activate at a later date.

    2. Re:Just don't buy HP by spire3661 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is where we are now. Everything you buy today is sold with Darth Vader terms "I've altered the deal, pray i dont alter it further" with no recourse other than to not buy or stop using it. IN the past you could work around these things, but DMCA kills most of that.. Unless you are running open solutions, you are at their mercy. We are here, we have arrived. Its not some dystopian future, its here, now, today.

      --
      Good-bye
  2. The real (and very bad) message: no updates by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This promotes the notion that you should never install updates. That's a really bad lesson.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  3. Re:Probably actually illegal by rijrunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably, but I am reminded of the Microsoft/Stacker lawsuit. Stacker was a company that did on-the-fly disk compression for DOS systems. Microsoft met up with them and went through a lot of due diligence and saw a lot of Stacker's software code as part of a discussion about Microsoft licensing Stacker for the next version of DOS. They did not reach an agreement. Microsoft then incorporated a product in the next version that looked a lot like Stacker. Stacker sued and eventually won, but was already driven out of business by the time everything cleared court.

    So, I ask you.. does it really matter if something is illegal if no one goes to jail and it is cheaper to pay a fine than deal with competition?