DRM printing paper.... How low can they go now?

[Beerzerker]

Summary

Seems now Dymo, a manufacturer of printers has cooked up a new way to make their printers exclusely use their own brand of printing labels.

 

Quotes

Quote

"The new label rolls come with a booby-trap," writes Doctorow, "a RFID-equipped microcontroller that authenticates with your label-maker to attest that you bought Dymo's premium-priced labels and not a competitor's. The chip counts down the labels as you print them (so you can't transplant it to a generic label roll)."
 

"The idea is that by doing this, users are locked into buying Dymo consumables for the life of the product."

 

My thoughts

Talk about a new way to make sure your customers pay you again and again just to use a product they've already paid for and if they don't.... well, you know.
DRM for printing paper and labels....
What could possibly be next?

 

Sources

 Dymo causes a stir by adding DRM to printer paper | ZDNet

The Worst Timeline: A Printer Company Is Putting DRM in Paper Now | Electronic Frontier Foundation

[WereCat]

Not so long ago I think it was Canon that made a guide on how to "hack" their printers to allow printing with unofficial cartridges because of the chip shortage. Now this UNO move from a company that I have never even heard of.

[Lightwreather]

Wait, who's Dymo?

*Checks internet*

Ah.

Well, someone might be able to hack it. But it's too bad they didn't call it "unhackable", that certainy would've accelerated it.

[da na]

What's next, DRM clothes that can only be worn with certain others?

[WereCat]

11 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

What's next, DRM clothes that can only be worn with certain others?

You can't tie those shoes unless you also wear the socks of the same brand

 

Don't give them ideas

[porina]

Dymo have been around forever. Early ones were mechanical and deformed plastic tape. If you look it up you'd probably recognise the look, even if you didn't know what made it.

 

Modern ones have gone the thermal printer route (paper and plastic) and are quite handy. Guess I can't be too surprised they want to lock in their revenue stream on consumables.

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, Caroline said:

What's next? DRM protected bread that only works with this (amazon.com) stupid toaster?

I'd say it's more likely to be the other way round. A stupid smart toaster that only accepts specific bread.

 

I can imagine it now. You go to the website of the toaster manufacturer to order your bread, sign into your Toaster Account™, and it generates a unique ID for each slice of bread you order, which is burned into the slice as a datamatrix. Every time you start the toaster, it scans the slices of bread and checks the IDs with the server to make sure that your account is allowed to toast that particular bread slice.

[Quackers101]

NFC money, that becomes NFT and eaten by my lama

now the lama locked me out of the house, it swallowed my NFT key!?!

[wanderingfool2]

For myself, DRM should only be used on physical products like this when there is a need for it, or if it's just a warning (so you know it's not genuine).  [Well to an extent]

 

I'm okay if DRM is used to lock out features (which have a paid option)...but only if it's clear that it's being done so.  An example being if you could buy a CPU with 4 cores but instead of burning off the other 4 cores you have an option to pay for an upgrade to unlock it (with the concept that in general it lowers the cost by only maintaining one SKU).  Other than a few limited cases, DRM I don't think has any purpose.

[Mihle]

Label printer/machine from Brady already have an electrical ship that have a counter of uses. I use one at work. Tho I have no idea if it's something special that don't allow others to make copy chips as I have never tried personally.

[Techie_Freak 99]

I purchased the 5XL before realising what they had done with the nfc BS at work. I used the 4XL printer and it worked perfectly for what I intended it for. So when I switched jobs I purchased the 5XL thinking it would be better! I couldn't even use the tags I got through a 3rd party and Dymo doesn't make the kind of tags I need. I returned the piece of shit and sent a bad message through my vendor. 

 

I hate stupid stuff like this. Ruined a perfectly good product. Im actually happy to see them getting bad press!

[poochyena]

wow, thats crazy. I use a Rollo label printer with 3rd party labels just fine. Glad I didn't go with Dymo. I guess at the very least, they are very open about it. This is on their amazon product page

 

[poochyena]

sorry for double post, but I found the cost of their labels

$24 for 220 labels

https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Authentic-Extra-Large-LabelWriter-1744907/dp/B001U729QK/ref=pd_bxgy_img_1/143-0039407-9654562?pd_rd_w=kK3MV&pf_rd_p=6b3eefea-7b16-43e9-bc45-2e332cbf99da&pf_rd_r=DC14N4Q46T8GM6TEMT85&pd_rd_r=31c26768-f8ed-4793-99ea-13b752351385&pd_rd_wg=Hn0Gu&pd_rd_i=B001U729QK&th=1

The 3rd party labels I buy for my rollo printer are $25 for 1000

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S5GVSB8/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

paying a 4.5x premium for 1st party rolled labels that offer 0 advantage as far as i'm aware.

[mr moose]

This is disgusting.  A completely unnecessary move.  If they aren't selling enough labels then it's because they are charging too much.  You know that free market concept big companies keep telling us is important? I guess it only applies to them being free.

[suicidalfranco]

obligatory "their platform, their rules" comment to please the corporate slaves in this forum

[AudiTTFan]

I've got a little handheld Dymo printer from 2009 that I use all the time for labeling the folders and folders worth of owner's manuals I keep in my file cabinet, so fortunately I'm able to use label spools from other brands

[Heliian]

4 hours ago, WereCat said:

company that I have never even heard of

 

4 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Wait, who's Dymo

LOL, they practically invented the label maker and have been around near 65 years. 

 

I use a dymo label printer at work and it works really well.  I will for sure not be upgrading to another dymo product with this label lockout. .  There's a lot of other options on the market now so it's near financial suicide for the dymo line.  

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

sorry for double post, but I found the cost of their labels

$24 for 220 labels

https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Authentic-Extra-Large-LabelWriter-1744907/dp/B001U729QK/ref=pd_bxgy_img_1/143-0039407-9654562?pd_rd_w=kK3MV&pf_rd_p=6b3eefea-7b16-43e9-bc45-2e332cbf99da&pf_rd_r=DC14N4Q46T8GM6TEMT85&pd_rd_r=31c26768-f8ed-4793-99ea-13b752351385&pd_rd_wg=Hn0Gu&pd_rd_i=B001U729QK&th=1

The 3rd party labels I buy for my rollo printer are $25 for 1000

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S5GVSB8/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

paying a 4.5x premium for 1st party rolled labels that offer 0 advantage as far as i'm aware.

Well the official one is likely better quality.  So there is a slight advantage; is it worth the 4.5x the cost...absolutely not (unless you need it for the consistency and quality...which I bet most won't).  Then again you can do trial and error to find ones that likely are acceptable quality.

 

An example of something similar was with a thermal printer one of the cheaper rolls didn't have uniform coating on some of the rolls/bad coatings.  As a result it didn't match the quality needed for the print receipts at the business (some of the receipts were fading to quickly as well, a few rolls had half the roll missing the thermal coating).  Tried different varieties but couldn't find any that matched Zebra's thermal paper roll...so eventually had to bite the bullet and just print using those rolls (as it was given to customers).

 

Not saying it justifies at all, but often time I find 1st party stuff is just "better" (more costly but better).  Front line employees not recognizing that they have to just reprint or switch the roll and wasting time calling IT claiming the printer is acting up.  Sometimes it just adds up in costs to be more than just buying the more expensive stuff in the first place (a very limited scenario though).

 

I would say that I generally still buy the generic rolls (and just try finding a supplier of the generic stuff that has consistent enough quality)

[Salv8 (sam)]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

An example being if you could buy a CPU with 4 cores but instead of burning off the other 4 cores you have an option to pay for an upgrade to unlock it

intel is already trying this with their enterprise CPU's.

except that it's a subscription service and when the CPU is discontinued, the user no longer has access to a feature that's been arbitrarily locked away.

imagine getting a 24 core CPU but only having access to 2 of the cores.

but how would you access them? by paying intel!

it's like that secondhand hand activation thing that happened a few years ago (i can't remember who did it, it was either EA or ubisoft) where in order to play a secondhand game you bought off a friend, you had to re-activate it. i remember this going very poorly and the entire system being dropped.

imagine if intel did the exact same thing for their consumer CPU's, oh how this would back fire.

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

intel is already trying this with their enterprise CPU's.

except that it's a subscription service and when the CPU is discontinued, the user no longer has access to a feature that's been arbitrarily locked away.

imagine getting a 24 core CPU but only having access to 2 of the cores.

but how would you access them? by paying intel!

it's like that secondhand hand activation thing that happened a few years ago (i can't remember who did it, it was either EA or ubisoft) where in order to play a secondhand game you bought off a friend, you had to re-activate it. i remember this going very poorly and the entire system being dropped.

imagine if intel did the exact same thing for their consumer CPU's, oh how this would back fire.

Yea, well in cases there are very fine lines in my opinion between what you get and what DRM should control.

 

Actually another example would be Tesla's and their heated rear seats (available in all vehicles behind a software lock, one time purchase).  For them, splitting the line into different SKU's might be more expensive than keeping a single SKU, but software locking (and hoping that enough people will buy the heated seats to compensate for it being in all vehicles).

[WereCat]

35 minutes ago, Heliian said:

 

LOL, they practically invented the label maker and have been around near 65 years. 

 

I use a dymo label printer at work and it works really well.  I will for sure not be upgrading to another dymo product with this label lockout. .  There's a lot of other options on the market now so it's near financial suicide for the dymo line.  

So I've searched 30 stores in my country and they all literaly only have Dymo label markers. Since I never had to use one I guess that's it. But nobody sells anything from them except label markers.

[Heliian]

3 minutes ago, WereCat said:

30 stores in my country

What about Zebra? 

[WereCat]

28 minutes ago, Heliian said:

What about Zebra? 

scanners and eticket printers, just few of them

[Heliian]

40 minutes ago, WereCat said:

scanners and eticket printers, just few of them

Can your order online in your country?  

[WereCat]

6 minutes ago, Heliian said:

Can your order online in your country?  

lol, what kind of question is that?