As the chip shortage brings assembly lines worldwide to a crawl, Canon is the latest company to be hit with supply issues, forcing the Japanese company to teach users how to get around its ink cartridge DRM.
If you’re wondering what DRM is, it stands for Digital Rights Management. It’s most well known in the video game and music industries ensuring that users aren’t stealing content. If you’ve ever wondered why you need to be online to play a video game you’ve downloaded, it’s because the video game system is using a form of DRM to make sure you’re the only person playing that digital copy of the title.
Canon utilizes its form of DRM to make sure printer owners are more likely to use Canon ink in their devices. However, to do this, the ink cartridges require an authentication chip. Since the shortage, Canon has had to stop adding this chip to its ink cartridges, resulting in its printers no longer verifying if the ink is authentic or how much is even left in the pod.
This means that when some users pop one of these Canon ink cartridges into their printer, the machine tells them that the ink is fraudulent. Luckily though, Canon has shared a way around this issue: close whatever windows might pop open and continue printing.
In some cases, you might have to take the ink cartridge out and put it back in, says Canon. Further, if the printer says you’re out of ink, you should also be able to still use it.
Image Source: Shutterstock
Source: Slashgear
