Canon can't get enough chips for the DRM in its ink jet printers, tells users how to ignore the DRM

[thewayne]

I'm sure HP will follow suite any moment now.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I think I might have peed a little bit there!

With the ongoing world-wide chip shortage that's creeping into everything, it has now crept into the ink jet refill supply chain! I guess Canon has either been getting slammed with support calls or has decided to be preemptive and is telling people that the refills they are now producing will not have chips, like third-party refills that you can buy for much less than the Canon-brand refills. And when you get a warning on "its imageRUNNER large-office printers how to defeat its own protections against cartridges that don’t have chips.

The software on these printers comes with a relatively simple way to defeat the chip checks. Depending on the model, when an error message occurs after inserting toner, users can press either “I Agree,” “Close,” or “OK.” When users press that button, the world does not end. Rather, Canon says users may find that their toner cartridge doesn’t give them a low-toner warning before running empty.

“Although there are no negative effects on print quality when consumables are used without electronic components, certain additional functions, such as the detection of the toner level, may be impaired,” Canon’s support site says.

So don't worry about print quality, just don't be surprised if it runs completely dry without any further warnings. Seems fair.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/chip-shortage-has-canon-telling-customers-how-to-skirt-its-printer-toner-drm/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/01/10/1959243/chip-shortage-has-canon-telling-customers-how-to-defeat-its-drm

Comments

[bibliofile]

Yeah, I saw this too. Wish I'd predicted it, but you can't have everything.

[dewline]

DRM on ink cartridges is a ridicule-worthy practice on its face anyway.

[thewayne]

Considering the ridiculous price markup and insane profit manufacturers make on them, and the fact that a majority of users will buy brand-name cartridges anyway, it really is pointless to have the chip and DRM anyway.  Just put a Q code in it with some copyrighted code in it so it's illegal to copy it and be done, forget the chip and save the penny.

[silveradept]

Chips in cartridges has always been about leveraging DMCA 1201 than it ever has been about improving the experience of the printer consumer. I just did a swap of the official cartridges that came with a printer for some lookalikes, and the printer, bless it, might be old enough that it didn't care, and printed happily with the new tanks instead of giving me DRM grief. I just want ink that's cheap, effective, and prints to the very last bit that it has.

[thewayne]

I bought a Samsung B&W laser shortly before the HP Borg ingested them.  I'm pretty sure it won't care since it was $100 and doesn't have an LCD control panel.  It is, indeed, purely a profit motive. One of my favorite profit motives debunked was a GE refrigerator water filter that either required the use of "Genuine GE" filters or bugged you incessantly if you bought third-party.  The solution?  Take the filter that came with the fridge, use a pair of tin snips to cut out the QR code when the filter is used up, tape it on the new much less expensive filters.  Problem never arises again.

[silveradept]

I would probably try to rig that up in such a way so that the code stayed in the right place for all filter changes, rather than having to move it from one cartridge to the next, but yes, that's a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem of a machine complaining about not having what the installers demanded it should have.

[thewayne]

It's possible you could tape it in front of the camera eyepiece, dunno.  Myself, I wouldn't own a smart appliance, and would not likely own a fridge with a water/ice system.

[silveradept]

It turns out it's really convenient for me to have one that does, but thankfully, there's no faffing about with DRM on this one, so long as I can find someone who's selling the filter cartridges these days for something other than ridiculous markup.