Secret Printer ID Codes May Be Illegal In the EU 229
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In response to a query from a member of the EU Parliament, an EU commissioner issued an official statement (.DOC) saying that, while they do not violate any laws, secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. If you don't remember what these are, Slashdot has discussed the issue before. In short, most color printers print small yellow dots on every sheet in a code that identifies the printer and, potentially, its owner. The EFF is running an awareness campaign, and a couple of years back made a start on deciphering the yellow dot code."
Re:Prevent your printer from being registered (Score:5, Informative)
Tag badsummary. (Score:5, Informative)
Or connect to a network... (Score:1, Informative)
Come on, if you use a grocery loyalty card and cash every single time, there is no tie to your spending habits. Until you accidentally use a credit card once. And then your entire history can be backfilled.
Better option? Old printer or black ink/toner only printer.
I'd like to see somebody sue the printer companies for prematurely drawing down the yellow ink.
Re:Simple enough fix (Score:4, Informative)
EFF Code Cracking Guide (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights? (Score:5, Informative)
No-one ever gets this right. Including the summary of this article.
The Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is a document of The Council of Europe.
It has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the European Union. This is not the same organization, despite having SIMILAR membership, and the word Europe in the title. In fact, not all Council of Europe members are actually European -- Turkey for example.
Re:Privacy is over-rated. (Score:5, Informative)
a)The license plates are clearly visible, while the printer code is intended to be unnoticeable by the user. I.e, most users don't even know they are being tracked.
b)When you drive your car you are using public infrastructure, such as the roads. In many countries there is no obligation to have license plates on a car you only use in a private space.
c) The license plate identifies one particular car, not [necessarily] the factory that made it. The printer code identifies the printer, not the paper it is on.
I'm sure there is more, but clearly the parent post is just another example that car analogies suck.
Re:Simple enough fix (Score:5, Informative)
On the bright side, most color lasers do not insert the yellow dots on black and white pages, though a few models from various manufactures DO tag every single page.
Re:"human right to privacy" (Score:5, Informative)
Please see Amendment 4, Amendment 5, Amendment 9 and Amendment 10.
Re:Nobody noticed... (Score:3, Informative)
Hate Microsoft (or the EU) all you want, but this is rather stupid as a reason.
Similar technology in scanners/copiers... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about digital cameras? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, EXIF is a pretty open standard and there exist numerous utilities to strip the data out when desired. You very well might not want everyone on Flikr to know the serial number of your camera. There is also a "Maker's section" where the camera manufacturers can place non standard, obfuscated and / or encrypted data.
Both Canon and Nikon use these features to create a system to prove that a given camera actually took a given picture [nikonusa.com]. So it can go both ways depending on how you have your tin foil situated.
Re:Similar technology in scanners/copiers... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Simple enough fix (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about digital cameras? (Score:3, Informative)
Watermarking technology for copyright-protection already exists. Canon is simply one of the first to be building it into their cameras.
Given that image plagiarism is a legitimate problem for professional photographers, the feature does make a good bit of sense.
Blue Light Special (Score:4, Informative)
They stand out just fine on white paper under blue light, as one of the EFF pages [eff.org] illustrates.
1. Every color laser printer made in the last 10 years from every manufacturer that I have ever encountered uses the "yellow dots" tagging.
Then I guess you haven't encountered HP 4500 or HP 8500 series printers (maybe they don't need to be repaired as much?). One of the other EFF pages lists a number of other printer models that don't use yellow dots (which isn't to say that they don't use some other kind of tagging).