Canon Ink DRM

Overview

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a practice used by many major printer manufacturers including HP, Dymo, Lexmark and Canon. The manufacturers include silicon chips as part of the ink cartridges that can identify a cartridge as coming directly from the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) as opposed to an aftermarket (usually much cheaper) alternative. When aftermarket cartridges are inserted, some printers will display a message suggesting the supposed dangers of using non-genuine ink and have in the past outright disabled functionality.

Incident

During the global chip shortage from 2020-2023, Canon faced difficulty obtaining chips used in their printer ink cartridges. This resulted in genuine Canon ink cartridges appearing as if they were aftermarket cartridges when inserted to some Canon printers. A support page on the Canon website was created instructing customers to ignore the warning/error messages that appeared as a result, stating this would cause "no negative effects on print quality".

Aftermath

The publishing of support material directly from Canon instructing customers to ignore the warning against aftermarket print cartridges drew attention on social media and from tech news outlets who considered the practice one that "consumers have long condemned as being anti-competitive" with Vice stating: "as consumers and digital rights activists have been pointing out for ages, Canon essentially admits that its own DRM is absolutely not necessary, writing that “there is no negative impact on print quality when using consumables without electronic components.”