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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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @01:45AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 01 2020, @01:45AM (#988796) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:12PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday May 01 2020, @04:12PM (#989017)

    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.