Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:18AM   Printer-friendly

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:11PM (21 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:11PM (#988508)

    It's so confusing. I want a mono laser printer for Linux, but when I look around all I find are companies which provide their proprietary bullshit deb or rpm, rather than Linux just detecting it and having it work. People say, "Use Brother!" or "Use Canon!" No, I won't trust their fuckin files. It should be detected and simple to use, without blobs.

    Now I find out HP is *cough* allegedly *cough* fucking us with ink shit? How many companies have been sued for this behavior, hasn't HP already been sued for this?

    So what do I fuckin buy? I don't want an inkjet, I don't want an "all-in-one" scanner, fax, bidet, whatever...

    The mafia like grip on brand name ink is such bullshit. I've heard about people buying shitty inkjets, using them, then just buying another one because it's the same or cheaper than the fuckin ink refills.

    I'm surprised these companies aren't requiring fresh animal blood. It would probably be cheaper.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:38PM (8 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:38PM (#988518)

    Sounds like you want a 30 year old HP laserjet.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:46PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:46PM (#988522)

      Whatever gets the job done!

      I mean, fuck it, if I can't find anything which works without blobs, I may as well just buy an ancient dot matrix printer.

      To add to the insult, every fucking printer has to be WIRELESS. What if I don't want wireless?

      Dot matrix, how I've missed you.

      • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:05PM

        by epitaxial (3165) on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:05PM (#988581)

        You going back to a 60mA current loop for an interface?

      • (Score: 2) by TheReaperD on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)

        by TheReaperD (5556) on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:25PM (#988597)

        There used to be a company that refurbished HP LaserJet 4050Ns and would replace all the wheels and cogs with brass replacements. The resulting refurbished unit was far better than when it was sold new and would only need a set of belts every 10-20 years (depending un usage). They'd even repair the PCBs if something happened (rare). But, I went to look them up for this post and I could no longer find them. It looks like they are no longer around. Sad.

        --
        Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
        • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday May 01 2020, @02:18AM

          by vux984 (5045) on Friday May 01 2020, @02:18AM (#988802)

          We recently finally let our workhorse 4050N go this year because it broke down and the replacement parts simply weren't available anymore.

    • (Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM

      by fadrian (3194) on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM (#988574) Homepage

      It will go with OP's perceived age. His "Get off my lawn"-style printer rap is classic!

      --
      That is all.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:15PM (#988620)

      LaserJet Pro M402dne serves me well.
      Todays' LaserJet Pro M404dn seems not any different besides a different (a bit pricier) cartridge.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 30 2020, @09:37PM

      by edIII (791) on Thursday April 30 2020, @09:37PM (#988714)

      Confirmed. It's only a little over 20 years old, but an HP Laserjet 4000 w/ Jetdirect gives you a networked attached printer in 1997. I've never been worried about the inkjet mafia, because I had access to laser printers from the beginning. Except for the dot matrix stuff with the punch holes and built-in carbon copies. I do kind of miss those.

      Other than some large format inkjet printers, and photo printers, that same printer has been with me now for over 20 years. Had it serviced exactly once to fix something that got bent, but otherwise has printed millions of pages.

      Never had a problem yet printing to a network attached printer from Linux. HP's software supports the communication protocol really well, and it's 20 years old. So the generic network printing drivers have always worked for me.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday May 02 2020, @04:42AM

      by toddestan (4982) on Saturday May 02 2020, @04:42AM (#989337)

      About 20 years ago I bought a used Laserjet 4P. I'll probably never need to buy another printer again. I don't actually use it that much, but very recently used it to print out my state's tax return (I mail it in due to a lack of free electronic filing options). Still works great.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Fishscene on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:22PM (3 children)

    by Fishscene (4361) on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:22PM (#988563)

    Actually, I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 and it automatically installed my wireless HP printer - I didn't even ask it to. This is neat, but due to this article, I'll be reconsidering ever buying anything HP again. Who knows? Maybe their computer lineup will only allow HP-branded USB drives in the future.

    In other words, HP, stop pulling this crap - it's hurting your image on ALL your product lines.

    --
    I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:41PM

      by TheReaperD (5556) on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:41PM (#988603)

      Some more history about HP for you. Decades ago, they did a survey as to why they were losing printer sales and who their chief competitor was. The result came back that HP was HP's main competitor and the reason they were losing printer sales was because the old ones were still working well. So, atter a board meeting with many lawyers and engineers, HP decided on a new official strategy: "planned obsolescence." They would make products designed to fail within an expected timeframe. In addition, they would change from making their primary profits from the printers to the consumable components. All was well with this strategy until ink/toner refills came about. First, they tried to sue to copycats but, as they weren't using their patents or products for the ink/toner refills, no IP violation took place. The only area HP might have had a case was covered in the "compatibility" exemption in patent and copyright law. So, HP lost the case on all counts. Thus, the war between printer/ink/toner manufacturers and refillers began. This is just the newest round.

      --
      Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:53PM (1 child)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:53PM (#988767) Journal

      I too just installed Ubuntu (really, Lubuntu) 20.04, and it found my network printer (a Dell E525W all-in-one color laserjet), and ... would not work with it. Keeps giving me this "cups-pki-expired" error message. Lubuntu 18.04 works just fine with that printer.

      I am afraid to update the firmware on that printer, in case they too are trying to sneak in DRM. It does have a problem easily worked around. Seems after a few weeks of use, it gets into some strange state and refuses to print. I blamed Windows at first, because that's where the difficulty started. Was still printing fine from Lubuntu 18.04. I reinstalled drivers in Windows, and that didn't help. Then a few hours later it stopped printing from Linux. Power cycle it, and it's fine again. Argh. All that time I wasted fooling with Windows drivers, and the problem was the printer all along. Perhaps the update would fix that problem. But now that I know what to do to work around it, I'd rather live with the problem than risk having all my 3rd party cartridges instantly rendered unusable.

      Really, I'd rather not have a printer at all. Age of Information, Paperless Office, hello? But damn it, sometimes the fastest way to fill in a form is print the stupid thing out, fill it in by hand with a pen or pencil, and scan it, because electronic document handling still sucks. Lot of PDF forms weren't made fillable. Even if they were fillable, PDF is still a poor format. It wasn't meant for editing. But businesses get really weird about letting customers have the source document, be that Open Document Format, LaTeX, or even (ugh) MS Word. Afraid a competitor might "steal" it, as if they couldn't recreate it from a PDF. Also afraid to admit that's what their real issue is, preferring to fob customers off with excuses that don't hold any water. True, there are compatibility concerns, especially with MS Word's doc format. Hit them with the suggestion that if they believe that's a big deal, then they ought to switch to LibreOffice, and they'll squirm and find another excuse.

      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:55PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:55PM (#988769) Journal

        Oh, I meant to mention a big prob with 20.04. LibreOffice Export to PDF does NOT work. They even say so in the release notes. Ouch. There's a workaround, but I think they ought to have delayed releasing 20,04. Major problem for office work.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:23PM (#988564)

    People say, "Use Brother!" or "Use Canon!" No, I won't trust their fuckin files.

    I don't have a Canon so I can't address that, but my Brother works just fine as a plain ps printer.
    If you won't trust a vendor-supplied .PPD file, how exactly do you expect this to work? How in the world should your OS know about the capabilities of a printer made after the OS was released, if not by vendor-supplied information?

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:59PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:59PM (#988642) Homepage Journal

      My Brother colour laser printer works fine, and understands a variety of well-known printer protocols,a s well as understanding Postscript.

      I do have the ppd from Brother installed on my old laptop. It was quite a effort to get it to work *without* installing that massive inscrutable blob of printer handling stuff everybody uses called CUPS, but instead using the simple lpr commands that have been around for ages. It turns out there are several different Debian packages that install different lpr commands, and it matters which one you have! But browsers and word processors can't figure out how to use lpr, so I ask them to print to pdf and do the lpr myself.

      But on my new laptop the default Devuan install did install CUPS, and I didn't have the energy to go and figure out the whole mess all over again. Now the browsers and word-processors know about my printer. But they think the printer doesn't have two-sided printing. The official straightforward old-fashioned method I used on my old laptop does do two-sided flawlessly.

      And yes, on occasion I've hand-written my own Postscript files.

      The one problem I have with the drivers provided by Brother is that instead of providing a driver, they provide a binary installer for the driver. I would have been happy with just the ppd file and instructions where to put it. That would have been enough.

      -- hendrik

  • (Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM (#988575) Journal

    At home, I have a Brother laser printer, admittedly an older model, hooked up to my Linux Mint distro. It was automagically setup when I plugged in the USB cord. Maybe there's a binary blob involved -- I don't know.

    At work I'd been using Brother stuff for ages which all worked great until recently I decided to replace an aging printer with an HP laser printer because it seemed like a good deal. I didn't do my research well enough and learned too late that even taking the chip out of my OEM toner cart and putting it into an aftermarket cart doesn't work well -- once I did that swap, it wouldn't print from the envelope feeder. I was so pissed.

    Anyway, for the internet record and people googling, if you randomly find this comment, HP sucks, is a slimeball organization even with their Laser printers, and if you buy one of their printers, you will regret it. Buy absolutely anything else.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:09PM (#988616)

    How about a printer that supports Postscript direct printing? The original "lower-cost" example was the first Apple Laserwriter and I strongly suspect that any printer with a built in PostScript interpreter can be installed as a Laserwriter (or something newer).

    My first laser printer was an NEC Silentwriter with PostScript interpreter and I installed it (MS-DOS) as a Laserwriter. Worked great with my DOS wordprocessor that could print to .PS

    Side note, those old .PS files are now viewable directly in SumatraPDF.

  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:27PM (2 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:27PM (#988695) Journal

    In fact, fresh animal blood would be cheaper. You can probably get that for free.

    Per unit volume, inkjet ink is more expensive than fine wine.

    Currently, I'm using a years old Samsung CLP-320 color laser printer with no binary blobs. So of course HP bought out Samsung's printers so they could kill off the more open competition. I guess if/when it fails, I just won't do any more printing. The current options are actually worse than nothing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @03:09AM (#988812)

      > Per unit volume, inkjet ink is more expensive than fine wine.

      And if you live in a low-tax state (or near an Indian reservation), gasoline is currently cheaper than bottled water.
      Think about that -- oil comes from deep, expensive wells and goes through countless refining steps. Bottled water might go through a filter before it goes into a bottle and is trucked to the store (using diesel fuel).

      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:30AM

        by sjames (2882) on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:30AM (#989322) Journal

        There's a great case of a broken market. It's why I own a water filter and reuse water bottles.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @06:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @06:33PM (#989094)

    brother supposedly has some driverless printers out. i don't have model numbers. i think there is a video about the current state of printing in linux from the 2019 linux plumbers conf that talks about this issue.