Chip shortage it’s leading to all kinds of surreal situations. The last of them, and probably unthinkable just a few months ago, has Canon as the protagonist. The company has been forced to sell DRM-free ink cartridges, and even explains how to bypass it to customers.
In other words, Canon is doing what it has spent much of its life trying to avoid, a contradiction that, as we say, is given by the chip crisis that has been going on for months around the world. Of course, even if they sell cartridges without ink, it is requested not to buy them from third parties.
The company’s main problem lies in obtaining the chips that are attached to the ink cartridges that confirm its legitimacy for its printers. As a result, they have to explain to customers how to bypass their own DRM.
For now, the problem only exists at Canon Germany, who have issued a public statement on their website (which was also emailed to some customers) explaining that due to the lack of chips, even the official Canon ink it might be considered counterfeit on a variety of their printers. As part of the statement, the company also issued instructions on how to bypass its own Digital Rights Management (DRM). A problem that may extend beyond Canon Germany to other Canon Europe entities.
According to the statement:
We value you as a constant customer and user of Canon products.
Due to a persistent global shortage of semiconductor components, Canon is currently facing challenges in sourcing certain electronic components that are used in our consumables for our multifunction printers (MFPs). These components lead, e.g. B. Functions such as detection of the remaining toner level.
To ensure a continuous and reliable supply of consumables, we have decided to deliver consumables without semiconductor components until normal supply is restored.
There is no negative impact on print quality when using consumables without electronic components, but certain additional functions, such as ex. B. Toner level detection may be affected.
According to account, it would be 19 lines of printers and multiple models affected by the problem, which is why the company has listed instructions on how to fix the problem for each one on its website, which is basically the official instruction to ignore the warnings in its own printer software.
How they count in Petapixel, the absurdity of DRM has led Canon, which was recently sued for disabling its printers’ scanning functionality when ink cartridges are empty, to have to explain to customers how to circumvent the methods it uses to frighten customers to only buy “official ink” and have error messages ignored.[[Petapixel]
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