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Comment by ajay-b | Hacker News Reader

What if I just buy my own ink from a third-party supplier at a drastically discounted cost?

I hope you've already prevented updates from the mothership as carts are not refillable and HP has been locking out third-party carts for a while: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/what-hp-must-do-make-a...

That should be illegal.

It used to be, moreso. [1]

The legal 'bite' that has been attempted to be used to make these tactics work in the US (with varying success) is the DMCA. [2] [3] [4]. The argument goes, if you try to break the mechanism that locks down the print cartridge, that counts as circumventing a copy protection device. [5]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....

[2] https://www.cnet.com/news/lexmark-invokes-dmca-in-toner-suit...

[3] http://brandonw.net/skylanders/activision.pdf

[4] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/23/texas_instruments_ca...

[5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Sorry USA can't hear you over the sound of freedom.

It's more a problem of the free market. When companies grow larger and larger, the stuff they produce tends to become more and more locked down. So a freedom naturally leads to a loss of freedom elsewhere.

> So a freedom naturally leads to a loss of freedom elsewhere.

No. It is willingness to abuse others when it is possible to get away with it. It is a matter of morality and conscience, nothing natural.

Many people claim that a company has no conscience and can do anything as long as it's within the boundaries of the law.

And they are right; company has no conscience.

The people making up the company should have. That is, unless they want to live in a society, where homo homini lupus est.

But they're abusing copyright law to restrict your freedom to use your own cartridges. We're technically able to do that, but HP will take all your money if you do.

Isn't running out of ink something that requires a "repair" of the printer... So it should be covered under right to repair.

This is a theoretical right people are calling for, not any actual right people have right now.

It should be, but so far this hasn't been successful in court. I'm not sure if it has been tried.

Best to write your congressman first. When the laws are clearly success in court is more likely. Right now HP is twisting some legal arguments in a way that holds up to the letter of the law.

Instead, circumventing it is illegal.

I commented about this in the other thread, but the real evil is that the printer works as an IOT device that will order more ink at an even more premium price than official ink from a shop. You can buy your own ink, but then you'll end up with a surplus, and have paid twice.

I don't think it does.

It differentiates between 'normal' carts and 'instant ink' carts. I've just signed up, but plan only starts when I put the instant ink carts in. When these run low, they send replacements.

If I swapped back to regular carts, then prints wouldn't come off my plan.

Top tip - you can use a fingernail to swap the little identifier chip. It is just held on with the same kind of glue as holds credit cards to the sheet of paper when you get them in the mail.

Then you can use the instant ink for free.

People like me are probably the reason they started charging $0.99/month...

I'm intrigued. Not sure how that gets you free ink though - I presume printer tracks usage in software through what it prints and logs that against the chip to guess what's in the associated cart. So if say I switched the chip on my instant ink cart for a 'regular' chip I won't be charged for printing, but once that cart's empty they won't send me a new one as the 'instant chip' thinks it's unused. Or if I put the instant chip on a regular cart, I'll be charged for printing, but I'll be left with ink in.. nope, can't work it out.

Put the insta ink chip on an empty cartridge and tell it to print an alignment/test page from the menu. It uses a tiny LED and light sensor on the print head to see the printed ink on the page during the alignment process. If that sees no ink, it marks the cartridge as empty and orders another.

The same will happen if you pull the half-printed paper out of the printer midway through the alignment process, which is how I discovered it.

Yes!

That makes complete sense. I remember being slightly confused when I did the alignment test and rather than it prompting me to "type which column looks good" it just said "looks good to me"

Thank you. You've planted a seed of evil in me, I shall now try to resist (a little bit)

Assuming the cartridges work, go for it, but you might run into DRM/issues using third-party ink.

I suspect the carts are 'very' locked down. I just signed up and I'll start getting charged when I insert my special 'instant ink' carts. i.e. The printer (and therefore HP) will know when I've put in the magic ones they've sent me (and they'll send replacements when these are detected as being low).

I guess converse should be possible though - if I put in regular commercially bought carts, these shouldn't come off my print total.

I can understand (not approve of, but understand) DRM for like your OS, and anything that can install. It is easy to slip up and install malicious software, for non-tech, non-critical-thinking individuals.

But DRM on ink? What's the worst that could happen? I ruin the printer I paid for? I ruin the page I'm printing? What's the justification, outside of blind greed?

In case anyone else was interested what the justification is:

1) Counterfeit cartridges may cause damage to your HP LaserJet printer hardware – which can lead to downtimes of the whole company’s printing infrastructure and disruption of entire workflows.

2) Manufacturing and distributing counterfeit items is illegal. So, buying fakes may bring you and your organization into contact with shady business which may be operated by large-scale criminal syndicates.

3) Counterfeit toner cartridges may alter the printing behavior of your HP printer. When using Original HP toner cartridges, only then can HP printing systems perform within Blue Angel guidelines limits.

4) Due to their often poor print quality and necessary re-prints, counterfeits are likely to waste valuable resources such as paper or energy. Also at the end of life, counterfeits likely don’t get recycled.

Directly copy-pasted from https://www8.hp.com/us/en/cartridge/anti-counterfeit.html

The framing of all third-party cartridges as "counterfeits" regardless of whether or not they carry HP trademarks is deliciously dishonest. Buyers getting into difficult relationships with "large-scale criminal syndicates" over discount ink and toner also strains plausibility.

Whatever the reality, they've made it so consumers get burned by counterfeits (rendered completely nonfunctional) instead of HP, while conveniently eliminating legitimate competition.

You know, I was wondering where the italian mob had disappeared to.. I guess we have a clue now?

I was struck by the poor grammar when I read this, and there's also something that feels vaguely unprofessional about the voice and tone. I'm not sure what that might indicate other than that HP doesn't consider this an important enough PR issue to run it through their best copy editors.

With counterfeit cartridges the printing behaviour may change, leading to the almost-invisible tracking dots on each page that encode the printers serial number, the cartridges serial number, time of day, etc to either become too visible or too invisible.

Also, with different ink your printer might print content with a different color profile, so it won't look the same, and it might need to clean the printing heads more often (and the cleaning tech for that is often only designed for a limited amount of uses).

But while all these are legitimate reasons, projects like Instant Ink show the true reason is to just turn the printer into a subscription product: buying a printer at a loss, and making a profit with every page printed.

I know on my brother laser printer, when i ran out of toner i bought a new cartridge (3rd party ) from amazon for $10 and have replaced it twice without problems and printed over 2000 pages. Each cartridge lasts about 1500 to 2000 pages.

I think argument from HP is pure greed. I don't know if these actions could bleed into the laptops as well. I currently have a HP, would have to look at Dell or something else in the future.

I would assume the "justification" is something along the lines of "you get poor print quality and then blame it on the printer hurting our brand".

You did mention the real reason though.

Color is objectively worse for third party inks, whether it justifies greedy sales tactics, idk

Do you remember DRM on K-cups?

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