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."

Re:Piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please RTFA.....
Who said it was illegal?

They're just trying to minimize profit loss, and I don't blame them.

Re:The truth isn't quite out there yet...

[imsabbel]

Vintage champaign? stop dreaming

Currently, the ink of some printers is going above 10% of the price of gold per gram.

Details...

[Lonewolf666]

* AFAIK, making wasteful products is not illegal.

* 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_Co ntrol/20041026_Ruling.pdf [eff.org]
Here, Lexmark failed with a lawsuit against a company that reverse engineered its cartridges.

Cryptography Research Inc And Sony In Alliance

[im just cannonfodder]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070628-cryp tography-company-develops-chip-to-lock-out-third-p arty-ink-jet-cartridges.html [arstechnica.com]
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/m ay2006/tc20060526_680075.htm [businessweek.com]
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-blu- ray-content-protection-agency-certifies-bd.html [arstechnica.com]

The loser here? The consumer.

[Kuroji]

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.

Re:not in the EU

[steve86-ed]

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.

Re:Piracy?

[MindKata]

Doh, URL was slightly wrong... (it don't work with the last slash symbol).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitru st_law [wikipedia.org]

Pirate = Terrorist

[FranTaylor]

"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.

With Canon, empty != empty

[BillGatesLoveChild]

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

[DrSkwid]

Lexmark tried it

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/30/lexmark_lo ses_round/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:Piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its illegal in the EU from next year....

Re:With Canon, empty != empty

[karmatic]

With HP printers, you can remove the battery [netonecom.net], and the printer forgets about your cartridge.

Perhaps the same is possible with a canon?

Re:Why is ink jet still around?

[The Cisco Kid]

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.

HP Does this already ...

[robpoe]

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..

Re:Taiwanese retailers have a great solution

[MrMr]

Sound like a ciss system...

http://www.continuousink.com/ [continuousink.com]

Re:Stop using printers then

[lena_10326]

Why, for fucks sakes, does anyone need to print anything these days?

I guess you don't do your own taxes with tax software. Gotta print signature forms to send to the IRS and archiving copies for the file cabinet. As you know hard drives crash and CD/DVDs oxidize. Paper copies will outlast me.

I also needed to print copies of electronic receipts and paper billing statements to put in the 2006 tax drawer to explain all those deductions.

I also run into hospital, insurance, rebate, and government forms needing printing, copying, signing, and snail-mailing. Just 3 weeks ago it was a passport application. Before that it was a birth certificate request form. Before that photocopying an employee contract for a new job. And then were the rebate forms for various products purchased over the year.

Oh did I mention I was taking a night course? Needed to print several essays I wrote to hand in to the professor. Requirements: printed on 8.5x11 legal paper, double-spaced, 1 in margins, and title page. Oh. And wait until your kids start doing school reports. TONS of printed projects, papers, reports, essays, drawings, research, etc.

There are an uncountable number of things in need of printing if you run a typical household. Running to the office or Kinkos for every print job is not feasible. I guess you're still single living in an apartment with no responsibilities?