Lexmark's DMCA-Abuse Case Coming To An End

Adama writes "Lexmark is dead in the water with their hopes to use the DMCA to force their customers to buy their over-priced toner. Their request for another hearing has been denied. Ars has an especially great write-up on this." (See this earlier story for more background on Lexmark's lock-in attempt.)

Re:unfortunately....

[techno-vampire]

What happened to the old days when the customer was king and great customer service was the way to do business.

Outsourced to India, with everything else.

"Opensource" Ink formula

[bogaboga]

What we need is an "pensource" ink formula for both color and black & white categories. Then our kernel hackers can design a chip to exploit the strengths of the ink. Governments round the world can then churn out printers.

Then we will be free of these greedy companies. How far have we gone with the opensource BIOS?

Re:Common people: 1, Fritz Hollings: nill.

[serutan]

If you're gonna keep score, at least stay awake! This was one point. Fritz and his team are still ahead by several runs, and they have the bases pretty well loaded.

Re:I for one...

[jmanforever]

Redundant? Perhaps. Funny? no, not really, but hey - I'm just re-hashing the same crap I see on /. every day - some of which gets modded funny.

Besides, I'm an engineer - I have no natural sense of humor.

(I've also been working on an NT-4 server all day, which is enough to impair anyone's sense of humor.)

Lexmark is good for the environment

[sl4shd0rk]

"Lexmark had designed their printers to use a proprietary toner cartridge technology which had the result that only Lexmark branded toner cartridges would work in some of their printers. Lexmark's general tactic was to sell discounted toner cartridges with this technology under the assumption that consumers would have to return their cartridges to Lexmark to be refilled or recycled."

So you see, they were doing all this for the good of the environment, not to lock people into their products.............and if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale. email me.

tree farms

[TiggertheMad]

I think that is cruel and inhumane. Trees were not made to be cooped up in little farms, just waiting to die!

I for one, only use paper from free-range rainforests.

Wow

[neypo]

Thats pretty amazing. I have a Lexmark X85 all in one (fax, print, scan, photocopy) and its ok besides that fact the ink carts/ink refils already costs an arm and a leg.
It gives me the serious creeps like im being watched or something when I print a document and the robot voice kicks in "Printing has started" or "Failed to communicate with printer".... im waiting for it to say "Don't look behind you".

Re:Ripoff Pricing....

[bani]

the fucktard market. gotta love it.

Re:Remember when printers were really expensive?

[jnicholson]

Also bluediculous and yellowdiculous.

Clearly Lexmark didn't realize...

[brilliant-mistake]

that the DMCA is the RIAA/MPAA's law. If they want the government to protect their market share, they're going to have to buy their own law.

Re:Those things are HUGE!

[rs79]

"I actually went looking for a printer recently; I was leaning toward laser, even if black-and-white, until I saw the size of those things. There's no way I could have fit one of those into this Japanese cubicle-sized apartment . . ."

Dude, you were in the wrong store. What you were looking at was a "car". Laser printers are in aisle six.