~~Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals~~ [see comments]

Buy an ecotank printer, they're more expensive initially but that's because they actually make you pay for the printer
Ecotank's use liquid ink that you fill in tanks instead of cartridges
There's no way they can check the ink on ecotank printers

We seriously need a FOSS+FOSH printer
I have even thought of some names:
Gutenberg
Aldus
Manutius
- It's really surprising this doesn't already exist. It's such a hated piece of tech, I would have thought someome would have thought they could do better! I don't know enough to do it myself but I'd sure as hell support a project to do it!
  
  In my experience, people who are aware of open source and the like are also people who only print something when they absolutely HAVE to.
  
  It's not, though. Printers are actually fairly expensive to manufacture, and they're sold heavily subsidized by the companies in order to sell you a decade of printer cartridges where you make up for that loss. It was the first tech subscription model.
  If someone made and sold a shitty inkjet printer at cost, the last time I saw something written up on this years ago, it was several times more than the current cost of printers. And consumers are stupid, so they will go for the immediate cheap thing and get locked in to buying proprietary cartridges rather than invest in saving money long term.
  What we need is a Graphine OS for existing printers. A repo of firmware updates that anyone can install to jailbreak a handfull of widely sold printers to allow printing every drop of ink, and DIY refills. Let's be real, we're not a huge part of their market, so IMO the gains are to exist like wolves preying on the occasional sheep, rather than be wolves that try to evolve thumbs and force everyone to learn how to cook and go shopping in order to eat.
  
  It will cost too much because they can't get back R&D money back via sales of proprietary ink and spare parts, plus competitors will immediately take advantage of your improvements
  Like a prusa (open source 3d printer) costs like 3 bambulab (walled garden closed source 3d printer that uses a fork of prusa slicer)
- 1000x this.
  We've got all this figured out for 3D printers with all kinds of cool tools to make the job easier, and yet, take away a dimension and there's crickets?
  The hell?
  Let's make a 3D printable 2D printer.
  
  Or a modular printer

Foss printer when?
- Unironically, this is why RMS was radicalized.
  
  RMS: gestures at GCC and the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem Look man, all I wanted to do was to print this letter to my ma...
- i came across this explanation of it, haven't verified it directly but he seems to make good content:
  https://youtube.com/shorts/ZX8OaZZDlM8
  he says theres identification each time you print using the yellow ink, and basically is a counterfeit currency countermeasure
  id kill to have a foss print setup though
  
  It's a feature that can be turned on the confidential documents but I don't think it's actually on by default.
  You can check for it anyway, just print a document then attempt to scan it, if it's got the track marks it will refuse to scan because one of the things the track marks do is block scanning, although you can still take a photo of it because the camera probably won't be able to see the track marks so it's not 100% secure. In fact it's largely considered an obsolete security method these days, along with pink flimsies.
  
  I know about the yellow dot thingy. Literally metadata on paper for no reason imo. I highly doubt a person could make a realistic fake through the use of a conventional printer.
  In the UK, we don't even have paper money anymore, it's plastic... Maybe it's more of a USA skill issue, too?

I really hope Brother is telling the truth!
- Same. My printer works fine, and I recently replaced my toner (went genuine because I found a decent deal), so I probably won't need another anytime soon.
  That said, I will no longer be recommending them until this is cleared up. I won't be recommending against them though, because I don't know of a better company, but I'll just recommend people go to their local library or print shop or something and not deal with having a printer at home.
- I got a 4 acre lot on Mars that I'm selling for cheap. You seem like a gulli...great fellow. $10k. Its pretty cheap right now because people don't known the real estate trend yet. I'm taking amazon cards.

I'm curious how this will go down in Australia. Seems like a pretty solid slam dunk refund, oh the product doesn't work as advertised anymore?
Cool, I've had this for 5 years and now I'd also like a full refund under Australian Consumer Law.
Motherfuckers.
(I don't actually own a printer)
- I imagine they have some stupid note or sticker somewhere saying "to avoid damaging your printer only use genuine Brother replacement cartridges".
  Then all they have to say is "we patched a bug where unverified 3rd party ink cartriges could erroneously be used and cause malfunction or damage to the product."
  
  I found this help article where they say "Although not all non-genuine supplies may cause quality issues".
  They said they recommend using theirs, but up until this they didn't say you couldn't.
  https://support.brother.com/g/b/sp/faqend.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=dcpl2647dw_us&faqid=faq00000184_002
  Plus, it's been universally understood that you have been able to use third-party cartridges. I really think if you're persistent enough, you'd get a refund in Australia. Because else (in Victoria at least) you could take them to VCAT for like $70, which will cost them wayyy more in lawyer expenses than the price of a refund.
  This is not legal advice, but I reckon a refund under Australian Consumer Law is extremely doable if they go down this path (for existing printers).

Brother deny the claims: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/

They deny it was the firmware update. But not that something else has happened
I’ve had issues with colour but not B&W

So… when there is some controversy over an article in Lemmy it gets the strike though? How did this evolve?
- If you read the article:
  We are aware of the recent false claims suggesting that a Brother firmware update may have restricted the use of third-party ink cartridges. Please be assured that Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines.
  So there’s no reason to leave an inflammatory and likely wrong title unchanged or otherwise without notation. The title is completely readable. I’m all for wrong information being flagged, and a strikethrough is a fine method of doing so.
  
  We don't know if it's wrong though, we just have a statement from the company claiming it is. Now it's on the community to prove it.
  It's potentially wrong. I guess we'll see in the coming weeks as people try to prove it one way or another.
  That said, the allegation that old firmware isn't accessible is easy to verify and very troubling for Brother if true (what are they hiding?).
  
  Totally agree. Just the first time I have seen the notation.
  
  I see editability as generally an improvement, especially since the older versions are still visible with a couple of clicks. Reddit titles are not editable. Tweets used to be uneditable; toots are.
- You can edit the title, so if you want to strike through it, go ahead.

As much as I love the brand, this was just obviously going to happen. It always happens, it's the eventual outcome. All that is needed is one middle manager wanting to get an extra bones to come up with some short sighted idea that will make a little extra money in the short run and possibly bankrupt the company in the long term.
See Boeing, see Intel, see....
The only way to not have this happen is to get open source hardware. The open source eco system is amazing already but we need more focus on that, hardware. CPU's, Computers, printers, phones, everything
- What's worse is remaining "ethical" in the world of business they exist in is a flat out detractor. A financial hindrance of the utmost.

"You were supposed to be the one"
- "IT WAS SAID YOU WOULD DESTROY THE COMPETITION, NOT JOIN THEM"

Anyone have recommendations on thermal printers?
- Why thermal? Seems odd, but alright.
  I recommend laser for just about everyone.
  Don't print much? Get a laser. Otherwise your ink will dry out and you'll have to get new ink every time you want to print.
  Print a lot? Laser. Super reliable, can do tens of thousands of sheets before there's a problem, maybe more.
  In fact, the only time I'd recommend an ink printer is for color accurate work like photo printing, and if you're not using photo paper for it, then there's not really much of a point, is there?
  I used to think bubble jet/ink jet was the shit, then I started working in IT professionally and discovered the truth.
  Just buy a laser printer folks. Don't bother with all the rest of this shit. If you want/need inkjet, then you already know you need it and why. If you're not sure, get a laser. You'll pay wayyyyyy less on materials to keep it running
  
  Don’t print much? Get a laser. Otherwise your ink will dry out and you’ll have to get new ink every time you want to print.
  I've literally never had this happen and I print so infrequently that if I have to buy a new cartridge, I'll just... not print at home anymore. Is it really that common?
  I'm not going to recommend inkjets to anyone though. My recommendation anno 2025 is don't buy a printer if you can get by without one.
  
  Dot matrix is also an option, if they neither want to bother with toner, nor inkjet.
- Any particular reason for going thermal? Personally, I'd recomnend against them, since thermal paper is coated with BPA, and that can come off and might have health effects if ingested.
  
  I think it's because thermal requires no ink.
- My client has a few dozen zebras. Reliable, but cost a little more up front. Some of theirs are 10+ years old, prints thousands of inventory labels a month off each one at each site.

I really wish we had open source 2D printers like we have open source 3D printers. That could solve a lot of the problems I think as we could have an open spec to allow people to do whatever they want. My Prusa doesn't care what brand filament I want to use, just as long it can drive it, melt it, and lay it down the way I need. Also why is it my 3D printers are more reliable than my 2D printers most days?
- Can't a 3D printer double as a 2D printer? It'd only have to print one "slice"; you'd replace the heated nozzle with some sort of writing stick, hey presto instant plotter!

Et tu, frater?

Brother losing all competitive advantage they had via reputation. Doing a very big 180 and reversing the changes and commiting to no do t his BS is the only way to undo this
- They must've hired some new analysts that said "hey, people are willing to accept less! Why are we doing more?"
  It's up to the people to prove them wrong, but that usually doesn't happen :\
- Losing*

My brother did what!?!?

Any brands left? 🤔😅
- FedEx if you only need to print once in a blue moon...
  
  Or the library or office supply store.

If Brother starts playing that game, they will lose. Why bother buying their considerably more expensive printers over those of HP if they are going to be just as bad in the third party ink department?

Thats's a shame, I always considered brother one of the better makers of paper manglers.

I'm only letting my latest Brother printer connect to my computer through the USB cable. No Internet connection at all.
- RPi as a printer server, with the printer connected to its USB port. Use FreeBSD on RPi just to make sure...
- Careful with that you though. I thought the same thing but someone pointed out in another thread that depending on your system, it may update the firmware over USB when you do system updates.

These motherfuckers are actively making tech as a whole less secure by destroying any trust the public may have had in firmware updates.
Urgent security fixes are gonna go unpatched on a lot of shit because consumers are seeing more and more firmware or software updates actively making things WORSE.
- Definitely true. I’ve been putting off an upgrade of my NAS because they have randomly decided to completely remove the video streaming software that came with it when I bought it. So infuriating.
  
  Time to DIY.
  I use a regular Linux system and set stuff up manually, but there are options that do more out of the box if you don't know how (and don't want to learn) to DIY the software.
  
  Tell me you are using synology without telling me you are using synology
  
  That sucks.
- Urgent security fixes are gonna go unpatched
  I don't understand why a printer would ever need an "urgent security fix". Or a software update for that matter.
  
  Any networked device can be used to gain access to the rest of the network (kind of).
  
  ... Because products can contain security exploits, and if not patched could leave homes and businesses vulnerable.
  This shouldn't need to be explained, but here we are.

And this is why I'll never connect my working printer to the internet.
Taking a USB stick to it to print is annoying, but fuck this shit.
They're all horrible companies
- What's stopping you from connecting it to the local network but denying internet access? E.g. via a firewall rule or separate VLAN?
  
  effort
- Just connect it to a Server (like a raspi) via USB and share the printer through CUPS
  Its a little tedious to set up, but it works
  
  This is the way.
  
  How many cups does it take to transfer the printer over?
  
  Is there a step by step anywhere to achieve this? I'm adept in tech. But don't have the training or knowledge to just do it
  
  Why do that when you could just connect it to the LAN and put it on a separate VLAN?

You were the chosen one! 😭
- They had two things going for them... Decent linux support and non-shitty DRM ink/toner
- I have a Ricoh that doesn't give me any problems, works out of the box with Linux pcl6 drivers. Bought a third party toner cartridge like 8 years ago, still using it today. It's an old model, but worth checking newer ones.
  
  I Remeber something about that being buyitforlife on reddit, would you consider posting it to !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

Oh FFS. Not Brother as well. I used to recommend them to everyone. Who is left with unshittified printers?
- Kyocera.
  Also Japanese, and plenty of cheap generic toners available online. They even publish Linux drivers.
- Epson inkjets with refillable tanks probably.
  
  That printer is a nightmare. But financially makes sense.
  
  Depending on the frequency of your printing, they can suck as well. Chronically clogged nozzles are maddening.
  
  The printer has the same ink problems, clogged, runs out easy, can't print b&w when missing a color. But I can buy random ink.
  
  Did they ever make the excess ink parts user replaceable?
  That they weren’t in some models kept me from getting one when I was in the market a few years ago.
- I don't know if it matters, but I just bought a Canon laser printer. Didn't see anywhere about forced subscription options for toner.
  
  we bought laser canon printer to, toner cartridge doesnt use color, so if you want color you would need an ink printer, its better to print a library or a printer shop anyways. we are using an MF class one?
- ill have to recommend buying old refurbished printers
- I don’t at all feel vindicated, but my Brother printer is the worst printer I ever owned (this was 20 years ago admittedly). Absolute hunk of junk with nothing but problems. I’ve always wondered why they were so well recommended online.
  
  Could have been a Friday afternoon one. The one I have is a workhorse that could print on bark using toner made of charcoal and dust.
- use a laser printer? preferabally the ones that doesnt use updates or any newer versions.
- I've got a Lexmark laser printer, and while there are cheaper subscription toners, you can pay the higher price for normal toner, and buy compatibles, for now at least.
  
  you seem to have gotten a smart printer, new ones have that one, we got a canon laser.

Proton, Mozilla, Brother
Its not gonna stop there
😓
- The issues with each are very different:
  Proton - CEO sucks and for some reason is sucking up to Trump; products are still good
  Mozilla - PR team sucks, though AFAIK the product is still fine, and you can use a fork to avoid the PR/legal team
  Brother - actively screwing you
- Every single company.
  All it takes is your favorite company to suddenly be run by a CEO who wants to maximize profits or increase shareholder value, or worse, think they're God's Gift to the World. Or in the flip side, they're fighting for survival so they have to make scummy decisions to keep afloat.
  
  Pro tip: don't have favorite companies, have favorite products. And don't assume the next gen of your favorite product will be good.

In case anyone was thinking this applies only to inkjet printers: no, it ONLY seems to apply to laser printers -- the thing that Brother used to be known for. Where the article says "ink", they mean "toner". There is no ink in a laser printer.
- Could this be anything related to government printer tracking requirements?
  
  I believe that only applies to ink jet. You can hardly make secret dots in B&W.

ink printers are total scams, you might as well use a printing shop or library to do it, if you are planning on printing large number of pages. we got a canon laser jet printer, only need toner cartridge, no subscription based models. we orignally had scam-epson.
- The printers in the article are using toner. The title is misleading.

It's like every company that wasn't complete shit just suddenly decided to...go to complete shit.
- If regulators don’t stop them from doing it, the CEO’s of publicly traded companies will get the boot from the board for not doing it. They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
  We need laws to stop this, but the politicians are all bribed not to.
  
  They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
  They don't -- that's a cargo-cult misunderstanding of Dodge v. Ford Motor Co -- but it's so widely believed I guess it might as well be true.
- Unrestrained Capitalism. Without those pesky regulations, companies can charge us all unlimited amounts and not have to consider our rights or health/safety.
- It's like every company that was~~n't complete~~ playing the social good will game and didn't appear at a casual glance to be shit just suddenly decided to...go ~~to complete shit.~~ masks off, because they saw it might finally be acceptable to be ghouls again.
  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I FTFY. Wish it weren't so, but that's definitely what it looks like....
  
  The mask of humanity fall[s] from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed.
  The Deserter, Disco Elysium
  They are just taking the mask off since they don't have to wear it right now.
- That's what happens when the government allows it openly.
- With the current US government, there's far more roadblocks to running a company ethically than turning it to absolute shit
  
  Brother is a Japanese company.
- The government has mostly turned a blind eye to dark pattern business for years, and now the president is openly saying that he encourages it and wants companies to step up their game. Of course things are going to get worse, especially now where everyone will have forgotten this by the next election, so it'll get to stay as "the norm"

Et tu Brother?

Going to be honest, didn't realize my Brother laser printer got firmware updates, lol.
In 7 years I've replaced the toner cartridge once, given that the stater cartridge isn't very full I imagine it'll be awhile before I have to replace it again, at least.

Brother used to be the good guys... Damn.
- Right? I used to recommend friends and family invest in a brother laser printer instead of inkjet, especially if they didn’t need color

I suggest whoever has old firmware files to upload them to the Internet Archive (if they allow those).
- Internet Archive is extremely lax in what it allows
- Got this link from reddacted
  mega.nz/folder/gjgiXA4Z#VHJqPNUx8wgcPYyfq44zag

anyone know about jailbreaking printers
- It absolutely baffles me that there isn't a huge custom printer firmware movement.
  
  I've have had this thought too and the only reason I can think of is that the inkjet printers are sold at such a rediculous loss, that anything that could be sold next to them without the offset price from ink would seem like a bad joke.
- Ask Richard Stallman ;)
  
  🪴

Is this happening to toner for their laser printers too?

This shit happened to me recently. Installed firmware update and immediately my 3rd party toner stops working. Try to find old firmware to roll back to and couldn't locate it anywhere. Found some for other models via Google drive links in Reddit posts, but nothing for my printer.
I replaced the toner with new 3rd party toner which worked. And now I'll never install another firmware update on the printer and should probably block it from the internet.
- Even with a backup, there are chance they put a "security feature" to prevent downgrade.

nononononononpnNONONONONONO WHYYYYY I JUST GOT A BROTHER BECAUSE OF HP DOING THE SAME THING WTF
- Keep it off the Internet and don't update the firmware

Are there more precise informations about affected firmware versions yet? Recently bought a refurbished laser printer and still have a brother toner, but my intent would be to buy aftermarket toners in future.

And once again the only available good tech is old 2nd hand.
- Yep. Just getting ready to replace the color laser printer I bought almost 10 years ago. I had been considering a new Brother before this but looks like I’m going the 2nd hand route again (last one was an open box HP from microcenter for $200 lol)
- I got a tiny HP laser from an old job. Must be 15+ years old, runs perfectly and toner is $20 for god knows how many pages.
  
  Looks like nobody can or is willing to do decent printers anymore. I'll run my Laserjet 1100 till it dies, then I'm done with printing.

Et tu Brute! :(

My general rule of thumb is that any software update has a 50% chance of making the software worse. So I don't update anything without a good reason. That includes not just device updates but things like phone apps.
- Keeping up-to-date with security updates is incredibly important.
  
  Every CVE I flip a coin.
  
  I’ve never had an issue with viruses, I’m not a big company nor do I download sketchy files. I feel like if there’s something serious enough to affect me (like the iPhone Unicode character exploit), I’d hear about it.
  
  But not so much for the printers...
- Yeah this is terrible from a security and usability point of view. Just stop using proprietary bs systems. Why do you think so many technical people use Linux and avoid IoT devices like the plague? So we don't have to deal with companies doing stuff we don't like without a choice.

I too watched Louis Rossman’s YouTube video to author.

Nice, Brother was the last one standing in my mind.
I'm glad I have an IoT vlan without internet access. Nothing is allowed to phone home here.
- 10 years later
  Printers now include embedded cellular modems as backup for OTA firmware updates, ink subscriptions and telemetry.
  
  Printer Faraday cage.
  
  Dude!

Fuck I just got rid of my 2008 BW laser brother and bought a new one that hasn't arrived. Thanks for the warning, at least I will be able to set my firewall before I even connect it to my network

This is a total shit move but I have tried many printers and I'm still choosing Brother everytime. Especially on some older generations with copy scan and print. None of the other big brands are worth a shit. They all fail or jam in some form or fashion.
- Give them time and they’ll suck too. Nothing is safe from enshitification, as they’ve just shown us.
  
  Oh I believe it but no doubt. But right now even with this totally shitty move and I mean totally shitty move. Brother atleast their older models still accept 3rd party cartridges. Everyone buy those! Fuck the new stuff.

Drag thought Brother were supposed to be the makers of user friendly printers. Are they enshittifying?
- At least they aren’t transphobic.

Oh brother, this guy stinks!

If it's not already under the umbrella of right to repair, do we now need right to refill?

I think its time we deprecate most forms of printing. Clearly corporations cannot be trusted to operate these kinds of companies.

It's going to get to the point where you might be better off going back to dot matrix if tank-based inkjet printers are somehow locked down via chemical DRM too.

Nooo, you were the only remaining printer company that wasn't a customer-hating dumpster fire of a company!

They were the last good guys :(
I guess it's time to buy the printer I've been postponing
- try looking for laser jet printers, only use toner cartridge. Ink-based printers are pretty much scams. we spent an untold amount on ink for epson, until the printer failed completely
  
  Sadly i need an ink printer. I already hace a laser one but sometimes i need to printer on papers that don't work on laser

if the update doesn’t allow the printer to calibrate with this aftermarket ink the cheaper carts become basically unusable
This isn't true. It just means you have to do the registration manually.
This is scummy behavior for sure, but it's also being exaggerated for clicks. You can read the sources linked in the wiki to see exactly what users are reporting.

I fear the day my 2014 hp LaserJet dies. There won't be a decent printer on the market....

Oh, Brother.