Cryptography To Frustrate Printer-Ink Piracy 305
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."
Anti trust? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cryptography instead of Quality (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Piracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or have the prices sunken so badly that there is no point of return anymore to selling hardware at its price?
Be careful, I wil buy another NEW printer (Score:4, Interesting)
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
What the hell has happened to the printer market? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I think the wider issue is, the continuing attempts to prevent 3rd party printer cartridges, shows blatant violation of antitrust laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitr
Its about time legal action was taken against these companies.
Off-topic my ass... he hit the damned nail! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Piracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
And actually, I can usually pack the thing back in the box and take it down to the pawn shop and get $15-20 for it thus further offsetting the cost of replacing the printer every month.
Re:Ink Jet Profit Margins (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This has been tried Before (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Be careful, I wil buy another NEW printer (Score:5, Interesting)
The manufactures fudge the numbers if they are published at all. Case in point, my old HP 722c printer used a large color cartridge. They came out with a newer 950c printer. You had a choice of the half full cartridge (at the same price point as the old 722 cart) or the high capacity cart for almost double the price. They touted the new cart as a bargain because it printed oh so many more pages and at higher quality.
I checked online... The first thing I noticed in the fine print is the comparison of apples and oranges.
The page count for the 722c printer is based on 15% page coverage. The page count for the 950c cart is based on 5% page coverage.
It's not that hard to adjust the 722c's page count based on using 1/3rd the ink for 5% coverage instead of 15% coverage. If I didn't pay attention to the details, I may have missed it. Needless to say, the newer 950c became a spare printer while I ran the 722c to the point the belt broke. The replacement belt is under the price of one cart for the 950c. My only problem is the color carts for the 722 are getting harder to find.
Due to the price of ink and the reduced price of photo prints, I no longer print photos at home. The printer manufactures have priced themselves out of the market and left the market wide open for photofnishers to take the market. With all the digital cameras out there, the printer manufactures are leaving lots of ink and photo paper unsold.
With the high cost of ink, many are very stingy with full color prints.
Lab on a chip (Score:2, Interesting)
Support Kodak and change the market (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:never buy a bubble jet (Score:1, Interesting)
Ink is not the only consumable you need to buy in professional printers, there are a lot of flimsy plastic components that tend to break more often than others. When you take a look at them, you'll see it makes perfect sense to have them made of metal, but that will last longer
($60 USD for a little 2" by 4" plastic L-shaped ribbon holder ??)
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because while I may agree that the pricing is obscene, I'm honest enough to admit that it doesn't rise to a level that I really give a crap about. Have a problem with inkject cartridges being so expensive? Do what I do - use a laser printer, and forego all the pretty colors that cost so much.
Voila, problem solved.
The "OMFG print cartridges can't be refilled" community is like any other tightly knit, very tightly WOUND group of nerds....pretty much nobody outside the group really cares.
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now, I am wondering if I should buy a set of replacement cartridges before they go out of production or just replace the printer when its toner runs out... at the current pace, it is going to be over a year past its warranty by the time its OEM cartridges are spent anyhow.
I hate throwing stuff out but we're really living in throw-away consumerism, this is quite a contrast to all the pro-environment face so many try to put on.