Oh, Brother.
Some people, including our own gadget nerd Chris Velazco, love Brother’s line of $160-and-up laser printers for not being complete garbage. That’s the nicest thing you can say about a home printer, which often drives us batty.
Earlier this month, though, an influential technology enthusiast said Brother undermined its reputation by making its printers less capable if you use cheaper replacement ink. It’s a common tactic used by other printer manufacturers.
Brother denied that it’s restricting people’s ink choices and probably still deserves its crown as the least-hated printer in America.
I’ll dig into details that seem to exonerate Brother, but know that this dust-up is about far more than printers.
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We’re increasingly finding that as more products are connected to the internet, you never fully own them. At any moment, manufacturers of your car, music speaker, baby bassinet, digital books and, yes, printers can flip a switch to demand more money, restrict your product or siphon your personal data.
Printer hell
When we wrote a week of articles about dysfunctional printers in 2023, readers flooded in with tales of woe. Many of them were about ink abuses.
People groused about models that blared scary warnings if you installed ink that wasn’t sold by the printer manufacturer. They complained about software updates that restricted print or scan functions if owners bought cheaper ink or didn’t purchase the manufacturer’s subscription for ink cartridges.
Those types of measures, which have been the subject of lawsuits and complaints for years, haven’t stopped.
“All of the printer companies are playing the same game of using software to restrict what we can put in our printers,” said Lucas Rockett Gutterman, director of the “Designed to Last” campaign at the Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocate. “It’s absolutely absurd.”
In his view, tactics that discourage you from buying whatever printer ink you want break laws that restrict companies from making you buy one company’s product to also use another, like requiring you to use a blood-monitoring service from the same company that makes a medicine you need.
Louis Rossmann, a computer repair business owner and prominent advocate for more consumer power over products, cited user complaints in a YouTube video about Brother beaming software updates to printers that made it harder to use replacement ink that wasn’t made by the manufacturer.
Doretta Sullivan, senior director of product marketing at Brother who is responsible for ink and toner, said the company dug into the claims and believes they’re incorrect.
“We don’t do that,” she said, referring to tactics to block or discourage use of other companies’ ink in Brother printers. The company said it does “encourage using Brother Genuine ink and toner for optimal performance and reliability.”
Rossmann posted that he was reviewing claims in his video.
Our possessions hold us hostage
Given the track record of hostile tactics by other printer companies, Sullivan said she understands why people assumed the worst about Brother. (I even saw one video from an IT professional giving the middle finger to Brother.)
And Gutterman said printers show how manufacturers can mess with us by reaching into the products we already own to make them worse or fatten the companies’ profits.
Some car manufacturers, for example, have turned off features like remote vehicle starting and automated emergency calls over requirements to make car repair data accessible to all mechanics. Maybe your TV will stop working if you don’t agree to a corporate legal agreement, or your kitchen gadget and $2,600 mattress might switch off features unless you pay for a subscription.
“Manufacturers have learned they can get away with restricting features after we’ve already paid and bought something” Gutterman said. “That’s unfair and deceptive — we should get what we pay for.”
One tiny win
If you own a printer, try one of these steps to lower the risk of the manufacturer remotely reprogramming your machine to restrict your use of whatever ink you want.
Turn off your printer’s automatic software updates. We almost never recommend you do this for other products because it can compromise the security of your phone, computer or Wi-Fi router. But printer manufacturers have a track record of abusing software updates to make your printer less compatible with cheaper ink.
Start by looking on your printer’s display screen — if it has one — for the Settings or Setup menu. That often looks like the image of a gear.
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Next, look for an option for “printer maintenance, “update the printer,” “machine info,” “device settings” or something similar. You want to uncheck any boxes for auto-updated firmware. (That’s the software that operates your printer.)
You may instead need to make those changes on a website or app for your printer.
Disconnect the printer from your Wi-Fi. If it’s an option, only connect your computer to a printer with a physical cable. This stops the printer manufacture from remotely futzing with your machine. “Your printer doesn’t need to be on the internet,” Rossmann said in his video.
You may need to look for what’s called a LAN or Ethernet port on your printer — see these images if you’re not sure what that means. The downside: You won’t be able to print unless your computer or other devices are plugged into the printer. And some printers may require you to connect it to the internet.
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.