[IP] Can cryptography prevent printer-ink piracy?

[J.A. Terranson]

As is the case with several manufacturers today: Samsung is a great 
example.  I *love* their printers - fast, cheap, reliable, etc...  I could 
go on and on, but for one dealbreaker: crypto matched cartridges.  We have 
migrated away from Samsung (and that includes the brand new $15,000USD 
printer that *could* have been a Samsung) because of this very issue.  
IIRC, HP is doing to, although this isn't first hand so YMMV.

-- 
Yours,
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin_at_mfn.org
0xBD4A95BF

"The real point is that you cannot harbor malice toward others and then
cry foul when someone displays intolerance against you. Prejudice
tolerated is intolerance encouraged. Rise up in righteousness when you
witness the words and deeds of hate, but only if you are willing to rise
up against them all, including your own. Otherwise suffer the slings and
arrows of disrespect silently."

Harvey Fierstein is an actor and playwright.

On Sat, 7 Jul 2007, Sarad AV wrote:

> Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 03:40:43 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Sarad AV <jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com>
> To: cypherpunks at jfet.org
> Subject: Re: [IP] Can cryptography prevent printer-ink piracy?
> 
> Many end users just want to get their work done,
> irrespective of the cartridge as long as it meets
> their minimum standards. It should be annoying when
> one buys a cartridge and the crypto in the printer
> rejects the ink. The way business is done in many
> countries is that you cannot always go back to the
> seller and ask for a replacement. It will make end
> users look for printers without any encryption chip.
> 
> --- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > ----- Forwarded message from David Farber
> > <dave at farber.net> -----
> > 
> > From: David Farber <dave at farber.net>
> > Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 19:53:46 -0400
> > To: ip at v2.listbox.com
> > Subject: [IP] Can cryptography prevent printer-ink
> > piracy? 
> > X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3)
> > Reply-To: dave at farber.net
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Begin forwarded message:
> > 
> > From: Jeff.Hodges at KingsMountain.com
> > Date: July 6, 2007 7:20:55 PM EDT
> > To: dave at farber.net
> > Subject: Can cryptography prevent printer-ink
> > piracy?
> > Reply-To: Jeff.Hodges at KingsMountain.com
> > 
> > Can cryptography prevent printer-ink piracy?
> >
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/01/0221213&from=rss
> > 
> > Zack Melich writes with news of a new front about to
> > open in the war  
> > printer
> > manufacturers wage with cartridge counterfeiters,
> > refillers, and  
> > hardware
> > hackers. A San Francisco company, Cryptography
> > Research Inc., is  
> > designing a
> > crypto chip to marry cartridges to printers. There's
> > no word so far  
> > that any
> > printer manufacturer has committed to using it.
> > 
> > Quoting: "The company's chips use cryptography
> > designed to make it  
> > harder for
> > printers to use off-brand and counterfeit
> > cartridges. CRI plans to  
> > create a
> > secure chip that will allow only certain ink
> > cartridges to  
> > communicate with
> > certain printers. CRI also said that the chip will
> > be designed that  
> > so large
> > portions of it will have no decipherable structure,
> > a feature that would
> > thwart someone attempting to reverse-engineer the
> > chip by examining  
> > it under a
> > microscope to determine how it works. 'You can see
> > 95 percent of the  
> > [chip's]
> > grid and you still don't know how it works,' said
> > Kit Rodgers, CRI's  
> > vice
> > president of business development. Its chip
> > generates a separate,  
> > random code
> > for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be
> > hacker to break every
> > successive cartridge's code to make use of the
> > cartridge."
> > 
> > =JeffH
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
>  
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