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.
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.”
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.
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.)
“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.”
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.
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.)
Disconnect the printer from your WiFi. If it’s an option, connect your computer to a printer only 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.
