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One man's effort to sue HP Inc for preventing his printers from working and forcing him to use its own branded, and more expensive, ink cartridges can move forward in California.
Florida man John Parziale was furious when he discovered in April last year that HP had automatically updated his two printers so they would no longer accept ink cartridges from third-party vendors – cartridges he had already bought and installed.
That month, HP emitted a remote firmware update, without alerting users, that changed the communication protocol between a printer's chipset and the electronics in its inkjet cartridges so that only HP-branded kit was accepted. The result was that Parziale's printer would no longer work with his third-party ink. He saw a series of error messages that said he needed to replace empty cartridges and that there was a "cartridge problem."
Parziale sued the IT titan in its home state of California, arguing he would never have bought the HP printers if he knew they would only work with HP-branded ink cartridges. At the time, the cartridges he bought to go with the machine did in fact work and were printing merrily right up to the point the DRM-style update was sent.
[...] But feeling ripped off and beating a tech giant in court are two different things, as Parziale found out this month [PDF] when federal district judge Edward Davila threw out most of his claims against HP. Four of five allegations he had made were under America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), accusing HP of abusing its "authorized access" to his devices. These were rejected because, the judge noted, he had granted HP remote access to his printer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:07PM (21 children)
The last HP inkjet I owned died after a few months with officially approved HP ink dripping out of the machine.
Been using an Epson and cheap knock-off ink ever since.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:12PM (8 children)
Cheap-ish Sumsung Laser printer owner here. No more dried up ink when the printer is needed. That alone is worth the switch to laser printer.
Yeah - I know - no colours but that's not an issue for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:42PM (5 children)
> Cheap-ish Sumsung Laser printer owner here.
Hello! Model number, please? Does it require proprietary drivers in order to function in Linux?
(Score: 3, Informative) by KritonK on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:33PM (1 child)
Former Samsung laser printer owner here. Yes, you do need to download custom drivers, which, apart from the PPDs contain a few executables (x86 and x86_64 only). What's more, you need to download them from HP, who now own Samsung's printer division.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:08PM
+1 Ouch
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @02:00AM
I have a HP OfficeJet 2620. The drivers and software come pre-installed with Ubuntu.
The scanning Just Works.
I don't use it to print. I go to Officeworks for that. Never put the print cartridges in.
I only wanted a scanner that works in Linux to scan letters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:35AM (1 child)
I have the Samsung ML-1860
openprinting says Black & White printer, this is a Paperweight
But installing using the Samsung CLP-310 Foomatic/foo2qpdl ppd it works, haven't tested all options. The 16xx seem more supported. They are old models though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @12:18PM
You should update the info.
I too have one that says it should be crap. A PIXMA MP640, but it works fine... now if only I could remember how I set it up in the first place..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @06:48PM
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/01/hp-completes-purchase-samsung-printer-business.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @05:52PM
Brother has some very nice color capable laser printers, I think they need drivers for cups, but work with lpr, netcat, etc. out of the box.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:36PM (7 children)
I'm pretty happy with a Brother color laser printer. It was about $350. The stock cartridges are good for a few thousand pages.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:52PM (6 children)
And I'm very happy with a ~90€ Kyocera color laser Printer. It's built like a tank, has good print quality and all sorts of features that one would expect to find only in more expensive office printers, such as a network interface and double-sided printing.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:13PM (5 children)
Model #? I've been impressed with the office-grade Kyocera's at work, but the only thing a quick search turns up in that price range is jumbo toner cartridges.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @01:38AM
I decided to look, only thing I found was on Amazon, in the $400 to $500 price range - https://www.amazon.com/kyocera-color-laser-printer/s?k=kyocera+color+laser+printer [amazon.com]
Amazon must get a kickback from Brother, because you have to scroll past a small boatload of Brother printers to peruse the Kyocera. Maybe GP will post back with a model number for his less expensive Kyocera.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @01:45AM (1 child)
Oh - I missed this first time - https://www.amazon.com/Kyocera-1102RW2US0-Monochrome-Stackless-Capability/dp/B01MXS42BL/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=kyocera+color+laser+printer&qid=1588296811&sr=8-5 [amazon.com]
Kyocera 1102RW2US0 ECOSYS P2235dw Monochrome Network Laser Printer, 37 ppm B&W, 600 x 600 DPI Up To Fine 1200 DPI, Standard Stackless Duplex, Wireless and Wi-Fi Direct Capability, 256 MB Memory
That's a little more than the 90 Euros cited above, but still an affordable printer for occasional home use. 90 dollar toner cartridges seem a bit expensive, but that still beats some of the other rent-seeking offerings from other companies.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:12PM
Nice find - I had checked Amazon as well (boatloads of Brother's included), and hadn't spotted anye. I stopped looking long before I reached $200 though. Not a bad price all in all, but a bit high for someone like myself who only occasioanally prints something, and is rarely more than 24 hours away from having a much nicer office printer a few dozen steps away. $100 would have been tempting.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday May 01 2020, @10:51AM (1 child)
Kyocera ECOSYS P5021cdn
The place I got it in Greece now lists it at 99€, while other on-line stores list it in the 159€-250€ range. I guess it pays to do one's research before ordering!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:14PM
Thanks. And yes, research certainly helps. Unless you're far enough away from the nearest $100 option that shipping will mostly kill the deal anyway. :-/
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:53PM
Second-hand office-grade Kyocera. Great printer, still actively supported despite its age and when I chuck in a random budget toner cartridge it reports "Genuine cartridge installed" and starts printing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Unixnut on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:22PM (2 children)
> Been using an Epson and cheap knock-off ink ever since.
Be careful. I bought an Epson after many HPs precisely because of HPs ink DRM. I print a lot, so I have CISS installed on my Epson. Thing is, a few weeks ago a pop up appeared on my PC telling me a new printer firmware update was available and do I want to install it. I researched online, and found that the update breaks all non Epson ink cartridges, and prevents the use of CISS systems.
So I clicked "no", however I can imagine in future they will upgrade the firmware silently. I suspect the only reason they are not doing so now is precisely because they want to see how the lawsuit pans out. If HP win, then its open season on screwing us out of our ability to use third party ink.
If they ever lock me out of third party cartridges, it will be the last Epson I ever own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @02:16AM (1 child)
How does one block a printer from connecting to open internet access and downloading drivers?
Can it really be said I 'agreed' to it doing this when it never asked?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:33PM
Don't give it open internet access - that's probably a good idea anyway since the security on printers is very often... lacking. The easiest way is probably to configure your firewall to disallow any communication between your printer and the internet. Most people don't have any need to print remotely, so nothing is lost unless it's one of those cloud-based printers that *requires* internet access to function. Don't buy those. (Seriously. Who thought it was a good idea to consume limited internet bandwidth sending every possibly-confidential print job across the internet and back again?)
Of course, in my experience firmware updates are usually done using the user's computer as an intermediary - sometimes integrated into the driver, or more likely some aspect of the bundled software (there's often a management console or the like). In which case you *might* have an option within their software to disable updates, or at least automatic ones. Of course that will work no better than they want it to. As a final defense, assuming you have a software firewall with per-program restrictions, you could simply refuse internet access to any printer-related software. Though you may lose some occasionally-useful functionality in the process.