HP’s Printer Ink “DRM”

Everyone’s familiar with how the recording industry back in the day decided that DVD’s should be locked to a particular part of the globe to enforce, well who knows what.

Then the games industry had a crack at it and Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft locked down their games consoles to only allow games bought in the same region as the console to work.

Needless to say these barriers have long since been destroyed by a community of free minded individuals determined to rid the world of Digital Rights Management.  Whilst DRM still exists in music (although Apple have finally gotten the message and moved away), DVD/BluRay and games it is obvious that the industry is wising up to the rising tide of unaccepting users.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the printer industry – or at least Hewlett Packard.

Our recent move from NZ to the UK meant we brought our all in one printer with us, and on advice rather sensibly removing the installed cartridges as they would clog over the months in shipping/storage.

Last week I stuck in the four brand new inks (HP 02′s) shipped with the printer, and a couple of new inks (HP 363′s) bought from/through Amazon.

No joy,  the printer bitched and moaned about being configured only to accept “02 cartridges.”  Some digging around revealed that HP region locks printers to stop one buying ink in other regions (where it may be cheaper) and using it!!!

DRM for ink!

An email from HP support states that in the Autumn of 2004 they implemented a programme “to enable customization of printers and supplies products to better meet specific local customer needs.”

Now the printer didn’t come with a note saying one couldn’t do this, the new 363 cartridges are clearly marked as being for the printer in question.  Quite how enforcing regionalisation of ink cartridges enables HP to better meet needs I am unsure.

Once I finally found a way around the 60p a minute “out of warranty” call centre and spoke to a technician it sounded like some progress was being made.  First an offer of a new printer swapout sounded great until it was established  the machine was out of warranty.

Next they offered to re-programme the printer to UK settings.  But to do so I needed to have i) a full set of NZ 02 cartridges AND ii) a full set of UK 363 cartridges.

I pointed out that I had neither, and couldn’t buy 02′s in the UK due to HP’s embargos on retailers.

So for now I am sitting here with a printer filled with new but incompatible cartridges waiting on a call back from HP to say they will either supply both sets or find another workaround.

For a company that makes it’s money on selling ink not the hardware I wonder just how much they value my continued purchasing of genuine HP ink?

UPDATE:

Another 3 calls with HP tech support and they have agreed to send out new UK 363 cartridges to replace those HP02′s I purchased in NZ.  Just for good measure I visited Cartridge World and their refill process includes a new chip on the actual ink cartridge which fools the printer into thinking the refill is a 363 – so double score.