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Brother Accused of Locking Down Third-Party Printer Ink Cartridges Via Forced Firmware Updates (tomshardware.com) 113

Posted by BeauHD from the anti-consumer dept.
Fabled RepairTuber and right-to-repair crusader Louis Rossmann accuses Brother of implementing forced firmware updates that block third-party ink cartridges and remove older firmware versions from support portals. These updates also prevent color calibration with aftermarket ink, rendering cheaper cartridges unusable. Tom's Hardware reports: As mentioned in the intro, Rossmann has seen two big issues emerge for Brother printer users with recent firmware updates. Firstly, models that used to work with aftermarket ink, might refuse to work with the same cartridges in place post-update. Brother doesn't always warn about such updates, so Rossmann says that it is important to keep your printer offline, if possible. Moreover, he reckons it is best to keep your printers offline, and "I highly suggest that you turn off your updates," in light of these anti-consumer updates. Another anti-consumer problem Rossmann highlights affects color devices. He cites reports from a Brother MFP user who noticed color calibration didn't work with aftermarket inks post-update. They used to work, and if the update doesn't allow the printer to calibrate with this aftermarket ink the cheaper carts become basically unusable.

Making matters worse, and an aspect of this tale which seems particularly dastardly, Rossmann says that older printer firmware is usually removed from websites. This means users can't roll back when they discover the unwanted new 'features' post-update. While he admittedly can't do much about these printer industry machinations, Rossmann says it feels important to document these changes which show that property rights for individuals are disappearing. Additional info about Brother's issues are available on Rossmann's wiki.

Brother Accused of Locking Down Third-Party Printer Ink Cartridges Via Forced Firmware Updates More | Reply

Brother Accused of Locking Down Third-Party Printer Ink Cartridges Via Forced Firmware Updates

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  • NOOOOOOO! (Score:4, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:07PM (#65211301)

    Seriously can 2025 get any worse?

    • Re:NOOOOOOO! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @09:55PM (#65211691)

      Seriously.

      Brother has had a treasured spot in the IT pantheon for decades. My frigging Grandfather, who had been a mainframe sysadmin in the 1970s used to sing their praises "Good reliable singaporean technology" (He had a love of the singaporeans, I guess he wasn't so concerned about their supiciously authoritarian govt, I guess he was of that generation...) he'd say. That love has been shared by IT techs ever since, 40-50 years maybe, largely because they DIDNT enforce this nonsense on customers.

      I better check my printer to see if it hasnt been "upgraded" like this when I get home, and if necessary nullroute brother in the router.

      • I guess he wasn't so concerned about their supiciously authoritarian govt, I guess he was of that generation

        What generation would that be? it is people who make prejudiced generalizations about others based on nationality or age, not "generations".

    • You can die of cancer like I'm going to.

      Does that met your threshold?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Future is getting worse. :(

  • Are there ANY manufacturers of inkjets that aren't pulling this BS around 3rd party ink and such?

    • Re:Are there ANY good printers anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:33PM (#65211363)

      The linked Rossmangroup wiki page is specifically discussing Toner cartridges not ink, so this is clearly about Brother Laser printers. Inkjets don't use toner cartridges, and Laserjets don't use ink cartridges. Although I wouldn't count on Brother Inkjets not doing the same thing now or in the future. I would suggest looking at InkTank printers if you have the print frequency to justify it.

    • Re:Are there ANY good printers anymore? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bryanandaimee ( 2454338 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:35PM (#65211371) Homepage
      I'm pretty happy with my ecotank printer. It sidesteps the whole printer cartridge experience. You still have to deal with the anticonsumer company that makes the printer, but at least you can dump whatever ink you want into it.

    • Re:Are there ANY good printers anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:36PM (#65211373)
      Still have my LaserJet III from 1994. I don't see any reason to replace it with anything currently on the market.

      • I wish I would have kept mine. Dumbest move I ever made selling it off about 20 yeas ago.

      • Still have my LaserJet III from 1994. I don't see any reason to replace it with anything currently on the market.

        I specifically use an old Brother HL-2070N precisely because I play with old OS's on VirtualBox and that printer supports everything from Win 9X/NT to Windows 11, and most Nix's are well-supported. Hell, I can even run it on Win NT 3.51 in IBM emulation mode. If it dies, I'll just find another on Ebay.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kalpol ( 714519 )
        i made a lot of money refurbing Laserjet IIs and IIIs back in the day. Came across my supply of ozone filters recently :D. Most of the time it was a fuser problem, but the feed rollers would wear out too. Learned a lot working on those things. The bottom fell out of the market suddenly one summer just after I bought a pallet of them to work on. Seemed like overnight, people stopped wanting them.

        I had a IIIsi for a long time with about a million pages on it. The lights would dim when the fuser came on...p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      I still use my working, 30-year-old, Epson inkjet printer. I've seen on TV that they now have a model where you pour the ink directly into wells.(?) If correct, I don't see how they can firmware-stop you from doing what you want with 3rd party ink.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Perhaps in a future generation printer they will invent a proprietary patented security marker chemical to add to their official Ink and a set of sensors in order to confirm the presence of the marker in the precise concentration; unapproved ink will throw an error code to require draining and refilling the tank.

    • Epson has a "Ecotank" line of inkjets that doesn't even bother with cartridges, you just fill it with ink. Needless to say, you can't exactly DRM ink so there's no restrictions on who's ink you put in it as long as it's inkjet ink. Moreover that's Epson's entire point - you can either get their subsidized printers that use official cartridges only, or you can get an unsubsidized printer that isn't reliant upon Epson to provide ink.

      So if you're desperate for an inkjet for some reason (I'm a laserprinter pers

  • I saw this video yesterday, and it really stings / stinks (stingks?) because I was *just* about to buy a Brother inkjet because they didn't do this BS. Our pre-scam-era HP Deskjet finally died and I need to print stuff. I might still get one, but it's tremendously disappointing to hear. I'll have to look for other brands - I saw a comment on Rossman's video that Konica Minolta printers haven't succumbed yet, but they seem to be pricey business-oriented laser printers, not exactly what I need at home.

    • Same. I was going to buy one too for the occasional home-printing, but no chance if they're following the enshittification trend of the others.

    • I haven't been following printers recently, but have the Epson EcoTank printers gone down this rathole?

      • I don't think so, the whole point of EcoTank printers is to do away with cartridges.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          Yes, and the current tech doesn't provide a way for them to do anything: you fill the tank directly with liquid Ink. They are more likely to earn their money off you on printer service and maintenance at this point. For example by having a Non-user-serviceable waste ink tank that has to be serviced by them at a high cost.

          As for the ink.. long as it's just ink.. about the only thing they could do is invent a proprietary nozzle + refill hole the ink bottles had to match, and patent the shape of ink b

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jsonn ( 792303 )
            Except that the waste ink tank can be serviced by the user just fine. I wonder if some consumer protection group will sue them for the need for a reset tool at some point.

    • Re:Well dangit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:37PM (#65211379)

      It's the business model for every consumer printer.
      Sell the device for the lowest possible price, because up front costs matter most in retail. Make all the profit on the consumables.
      It's effectively a subscription service. Especially when you consider most people will leave their printer turned on, where it cleans the print head several times a day by flushing a few pages worth of ink through it. I have a Brother 1050 that does this when I forget to turn it off and it sits there in standby.
      If it's been off for a while it does a cleaning cycle before it will print anything.

      The business model is obvious when you see a $110 printer/scanner requires $105 to replace the ink ($95 if you buy a 4 cartridge pack)
      It's started occasionally refusing to print black and white when one of the colours runs out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        It's started occasionally refusing to print black and white when one of the colours runs out.

        Because color laser printers generate watermarks consisting of hidden yellow microdots [wikipedia.org] across the pages on all your printouts designed to identify the maker and serial number of the printer that printed that page

        If one of the colors used by the watermarkss ran out, then the tracking code would presumably be corrupted, And the tracking code is required.

        • It's an ink printer, not laser.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            This can apply to Ink printers as well, sorry for the confusion. 10-15 years ago it was only known to be Laser printers.
            They don't have to use colored inks for this (for example, information could be encoded in the invisible noise patterns inserted into your documents), but it could be a "great excuse" for them. They can also say they use colored inks to enhance some of the monochrome shades output by the machine.

    • BW laser is the way to print (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SethJohnson ( 112166 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @12:46AM (#65211867) Homepage Journal
      Why print in color? Get a black and white laser printer. Most economical cost per page printing there is. No problem with ink drying up in the print head if not used for a while, etc. If I need to print a photo, I upload it to Walgreens and they have it ready to pick up in 30 minutes at the cost of nickels per picture.

      • It's not completely obvious from the article whether it's only colour laser printers that are affected but it's toner, not ink that is being considered here.

        I have a BW brother laser. However, I don't think it will ever get any firmware updates, it's on its own vlan and only available via cups to other machines.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          My understanding is it's Color printers only. Also, by the way... Black and White laser printers have much more modest toner requirements, since there's only one toner pack and you're likely only using it for printing text not imagery (MUCH lower amount of toner being applied to each page of print than a Color unit used to print complex images and photos), even if you are forced to buy OEM toner it's not a massive expense.

          For my >10yr old Brother MFC monochrome laser it's $73 for the Brother OEM

      • In this day and age pretty much the only thing I find need to print is patterns for sewing, knitting, and crochet. Sometimes different sizes or different instructions (like, blue means do this, while yellow means do that) is only differentiated by different colors. Often colorwork charts with more than two colors indicate where the colors go using only different colors (up until maybe the 90s it was common to use symbols instead, and some designers still do, but it's pretty common for modern charts to just

    • I saw this video yesterday, and it really stings / stinks (stingks?) because I was *just* about to buy a Brother inkjet because they didn't do this BS. Our pre-scam-era HP Deskjet finally died and I need to print stuff. I might still get one, but it's tremendously disappointing to hear. I'll have to look for other brands - I saw a comment on Rossman's video that Konica Minolta printers haven't succumbed yet, but they seem to be pricey business-oriented laser printers, not exactly what I need at home.

      Brother's also been joining the ink subscription thing. You can still buy a printer without it, but the fact they slide it into so many models by default was troubling enough. This story didn't exactly shock me. They've embraced modern profiteering and rent-seeking behavior. I wonder how long until all of their printers are "updated" to require ink subscriptions?

      You find a decent modern brand that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I'd be happy to take a recommendation. My new house needs a printer and I'll be

  • Crap. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:35PM (#65211369) Homepage Journal

    I've been a big fan of Brother lasers because they just work(tm).

    Now they're pulling this shit?

  • Annoying, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by battingly ( 5065477 )

    This kind of stunt is pretty underhanded, but if you look at the price of printers, they are crazy low by historical standards. A good laser printer is probably less than 10% of the price it was 25 years ago, inflation adjusted. There's an implicit agreement here that they give you the printer at less than cost and, in return, you pay them by buying the cartridges from them. So, it's hard to get too worked up about this.

    • That's an argument for doing this to new models.

      Changing the value proposition for existing customers is dirty. Even more by doing it automatically without their consent. No one realised when they auto-clicked the eula that the cartridge they have currently installed and are currently using with no issues is going to be suddenly arbitrarily rejected. That they'll be left with a paper weight until they go out and buy some genuine ink, and discard the perfectly fine ink they already paid for and were already

    • This kind of stunt is pretty underhanded, but if you look at the price of printers, they are crazy low by historical standards. A good laser printer is probably less than 10% of the price it was 25 years ago, inflation adjusted. There's an implicit agreement here that they give you the printer at less than cost and, in return, you pay them by buying the cartridges from them. So, it's hard to get too worked up about this.

      Horse shit. See if people make excuses for you if you commit fraud. People get worked

    • This kind of stunt is pretty underhanded, but if you look at the price of printers, they are crazy low by historical standards. A good laser printer is probably less than 10% of the price it was 25 years ago, inflation adjusted. There's an implicit agreement here that they give you the printer at less than cost and, in return, you pay them by buying the cartridges from them. So, it's hard to get too worked up about this.

      Nobody cheered when Darth Vader said, "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further." When you purchase something because it has a specific set of features that appeal to you, and the company "automagically" updates those features away after the sale, that's not a net positive for the user, and ultimately, it will lead to losing customers going forward. Or should, if we lived in a rational world. But if your only choices are bad or worse, people may just suck it up. That doesn't make it a good thing

    • I like my agreements explicit, not some dodgy wink and nod BS. If they are going to require me to buy their toner to retain full use of my printer they need to say so, clearly and unambiguously. If the manufacturer thinks printing that on the package and putting it in their documentation will disincentivize me to buy their products, that's on them.

      They only pull this shit with sales to uninformed consumers because they think they can get away with it. Try this with the products they sell to large corp

  • HP fecality sold a lot of Brothers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @07:34PM (#65211513)

    I've no reason to recommend them any more.

    Printer manufacturers have no reason to care what techies think because we are too few to affect their bottom lines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      My suggestion would be there SHOULD be government intervention.

      In the form of a $10 Million per Day fine. For every day that a device manufacturer secures consumable packages or modules with chips and proprietary secret codes, protocols, algorithms, or cryptography, And declines to make the codes and information necessary available to competitors in the manufacture of the consumables (Such as: Ink, Labels, Paper, Batteries, Waste storage units, Fuels, Greases/Lubrication Oils/Lubricants, Cleaning supplie

  • The obvious alternative which comes to mind is to use a generic printer driver.

    Would this work?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nebulo ( 29412 )

      No, because the changes Brother (and others) implement are often done at the firmware level on the printer itself. This often has nothing at all to do with the driver on your computer.

    • No, because they've auto-updated the firmware in the printer that communicates with the chip in every cartridge.
      You can't go back and install the old firmware because they've removed it from their website.

  • Brother, you ALMOST had it! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hurricanej ( 137721 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @08:56PM (#65211613)
    Dear Brother Decision Makers:

    You've built up the foundation of a good reputation. Your products are on the verge of becoming the favorite of a new generation of IT managers for decades to come.

    Wake up, roll this back, claim it was a mistake, actually learn from it, and don't blow it for short-term profit.

    • Unfortunately you don't matter. The people affected by this who know better (i.e. the people who bought Brother specifically because they weren't doing this shit) are such a tiny minority that they are irrelevant to the business.

      A bunch of us Slashdotters mourn. Most of the general public is none the wiser. The IT management never paid for ink cartridges in the first place, they paid per printed page and were most concerned with how quickly customer service can come and bring a dead printer operational agai

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        that's why you still see HP in offices around the world because as fucked up as they are towards consumers they do have a supply and service model that suits businesses

        I believe you just pointed out the example that undermines your original claim. It's likely that where you see a business chose Brother printers instead of HP printers they have a reason for that, and it's not for great service on the printers, since no doubt HP prevails in this area. By reputation HP has the highest print quality, and

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          By reputation HP has the highest print quality, and the highest level of service by far.

          Are you joking about that first one? HP's laser printers have a reputation for producing very nearly the worst print quality of any printers on the market.

          I did side-by-side comparison of several brands' laser printers before buying mine.

          • Samsung was a horrific, muddy mess.
          • HP was fairly decent at color reproduction, but banding problems made gradients look like ass.
          • Brother was too bold, but that's probably fixable with good ColorSync profiles.
          • Canon was solid.
          • Konica Minolta was downright amazing.

          Only Konica

  • In this day and age why the fuck do y'all still let auto-update run on any device you own? It's been clear for years that changes made won't be in the consumer's interests.

    I know, "but security" etc. No one cares about compromising most of y'alls printers. And if your organizations is important enough to be worth compromising, it's not going to be looking to save a few bucks on toner cartridges.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      No one cares about compromising most of y'alls printers.

      They just might. And the most likely path to compromise is through the internet. So my suggestion would be to block your printers from having internet access.

      What you should do if you have an average household is assign your printer a static IP address; set the netmask to something like 1.0.0.0, default gateway to the same IP your printer has assigned to it; leave DNS servers blank, then go to your router and set a firewall rule denying any pa

  • First HP made my "no fly" list, now Brother. I have 2 Brother laser printers right beside me, a very old color laser and a not-so-old black and white printer. When the black and white gives up, I'll get the top model Eco-Tank that puts and end to this nonsense, as well as replacing the 2 printers with one. The top eco-tank does 25 ppm, my little Brother B&W does 49. I'll just have to suffer the delay, because I'm not OK with having to pay whatever-they-charge no matter how absurd it is. And of c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      When the black and white gives up, I'll get the top model Eco-Tank that puts and end to this nonsense
      I'll just have to suffer the delay, because I'm not OK with having to pay whatever-they-charge

      I believe if you look at the Brother Monochrome laser printers they are not subject to this nonsense. Although you never know what's going down the pipe for future models or software updates. The feature they have blocked off: color registration.. Only applies to color printers. At this point ALL 4 major prin

  • Enshittification pays. That's why it's so prevalent these days, and is projected to grow.

  • I own a Brother laser printer exactly because they had no beef with 3rd party toners.
    Now, the funny thing is... their software go borked for some reason a couple years ago. It entered a Schrodinger state where, in the same window, it says "Please update the software to add features and apply any bug fixes", but at the top of the window it also says "The software on your Brother device is the latest. An update is not necessary."

    https://imgur.com/a/paVy13A [imgur.com]

    So... I guess I'm good.
    By the way, this behavior persi

  • How is this news? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ZiggyZiggyZig ( 5490070 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @05:10AM (#65212167)

    I was working in the aftermarket cartridge industry back in 2017-2018 and we saw the first Brother printers with authentication-chip-on-cartridge appearing on the market - and already by then, they were using the chips to lock out competitors. I mean, there is literally no other use to those chips, than this. The fact that people have kept a good image of Brother until 2025 is a testimony to the power of their marketing.

    • It's exactly not the power of their marketing, but the grass root recommendation that goes around that you need to buy Brother when you're disgusted by HP.
      Now that there's a public outcry they have a unique chance to commit to never locking out third party again. If they fail to do it, they lose what made them special.
      Which in the long run may hurt them, as the fight against enshittification gains traction and visibility.

    • The fact that people have kept a good image of Brother until 2025 is a testimony to the power of their marketing.

      I've never seen any marketing from Brother. That's part of what convinced me to buy one. The rest was that other people with personal experience said they worked well and with no enshittification. Only noobs still see ads.

  • this is all known by the term of art "competition". H-P would be subject to "monopoly" were it not for Brother playing the H-P lockdown card against consumers simply competing on a (Ahem) a level printing field.

  • At least that's my plan going forward. I'll accept some loss of quality in exchange for thumbing my nose at Brother.

  • I blocked my Brother printer from accessing the internet a long time ago already, after the first of the annoying power grabs.

  • I'll make sure NOT to upgrade the firmware on my home network Brother.

  • It wasn't a forced one, though.

    But when I print in black and white, all I get is a page full of color streaks.

    If I print in color, everything is still fine. Thus, I now print all my documents in color, even the black and white ones.

    Brother support said they won't support the printer unless I use their branded inks. That is about $250 and with no guarantee the problem would be fixed.

    I'll continue using aftermarket cartridges, and stop doing firmware updates.

  • https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]

    According to Brother, this is all a misunderstanding, where Tech Support Troubleshooting requires factory supplies to ensure everything.

    I have not experienced this issue across several Brother models that get auto-updates.

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