Update 2/16/22: This article first appeared with a typo and miscalculation listing printer ink as $250/oz to manufacture; the correct figure is $170/gal.We regret this error and thank the discerning readers who spotted it and pointed it out on Twitter.Thank you for your service and we salute you.
Are you well organized?Do you have a garage full of well-labeled litter boxes or a pantry full of neatly-labeled jars?Do you ship a lot and print labels?If so, you probably own and cherish your label maker.What’s not to like?
Well, if you’re a Dymo label maker owner, there’s a new scam that might convince you to switch brands — if it doesn’t completely scare you off the label, it is.
For a certain type of executive, the printer business is a source of endless temptation.After all, printers go through a lot of “consumables”.This means that not only can printer manufacturers sell you printers, they have the opportunity to sell you ink forever.
But in practice, printer companies are greedy.They are not content to be one of the many companies offering ink in a competitive market.Instead, they want to be your sole ink supplier, and omg, omg, they want to charge you a lot of money for it – up to $12,000 a gallon!
No one wants to pay $12,000/gal for ink that costs about $170/gal to manufacture, so printer companies put out endless bags of ideas that force you to buy their $12,000/gal product and make you buy it forever.
Today, printers have two consumables, ink and paper, but all manufacturers’ efforts are focused on ink.That’s because there is ink in the cartridges, and printer companies can add cheap chips to their cartridges.Printers can send these chips to a cryptographic challenge that requires a key held only by the manufacturer.Other manufacturers don’t have the keys, so they can’t make cartridges that the printer can recognize and accept.
This strategy is profitable, but it has its limitations: as soon as a supply chain problem occurs, meaning the printer manufacturer can no longer get chips, it collapses!
The pandemic has been tough for many companies, but it’s been a boom time for the delivery industry and the companies that provide it.The desktop label maker industry has boomed during the lockdown as hundreds of millions of people switched from in-person to online shopping – items delivered in boxes with barcode labels printed on desktop label printers .
Label printers are thermal printers, which means they don’t use ink: instead, “print heads” consist of tiny electronic components that heat special thermally reactive paper that turns black when heated.
Due to the lack of ink, the label printing market has been spared the various shenanigans that have plagued the inkjet world…until now.
Dymo is a household name: Founded in 1958 with its groundbreaking gadgets that stamped capital letters onto rows of adhesive tape, the company is now a division of Newell Brands, a huge , the bullish company hydra, whose other companies include Rubbermaid, Mr. Coffee, Oster, Crock-Pot, Yankee Candle, Coleman, Elmer’s, Liquid Paper, Parker, Paper Mate, Sharpie, Waterman, X-Acto, and more.
Although Dymo is part of this corporate empire, it has so far been unable to tap into the tricks of creating $12,000/gallon of printer ink.This is because the only consumable item a Dymo owner needs is a label, and a label is a standardized product that is produced and sold by many suppliers for use by many different brands of label manufacturers.
Some people might be willing to pay a little extra for Dymo’s own rolls of labels, but if they don’t, there are plenty of other options: not just cheaper labels, but labels designed for other uses, with different adhesives and finishes.
Those people will be disappointed.Dymo’s latest generation of desktop label printers use RFID chips to authenticate labels that Dymo customers place into the printer.This allows Dymo’s products to differentiate between Dymo’s official label and third-party supplies.That way, printers can force their owners to act in the interests of Dymo’s owners — even if it’s against the owners themselves.
There is no (good) reason for this.In their sales literature, Dymo extols the advantages of shredding label rolls: automatic sensing of label type and automatic counting of remaining labels – they boast that “[t]a thermal printer replaces the purchase of expensive ink or toner.”
But what they don’t say is that this printer forces you to buy Dymo’s own labels, which are significantly more expensive than many competitors’ labels (Dymo’s labels retail for about $10 to $15 per roll; alternatives, about $10 to $15 per roll $2 to $5) rolls).The reason they don’t say that is obvious: no one wants this.
If Dymo owners want to buy Dymo labels, they will.The only reason to add this anti-feature is to force Dymo owners who don’t want to buy Dymo labels to buy them anyway.All the advanced features Dymo touts for its RFID locking tags can be implemented without locking.
For years, Dymo owners thought their printers could use any label.While some third-party retailers have added warnings about this label lock-in, the biggest retailers aren’t following suit — instead, their customers are warning each other about bait and switch.
Judging by the reactions online, it’s clear that Dymo’s customers are pissed.Some have gathered in technical discussions about how the measure might be defeated, but so far, no vendor has stepped in to offer a jailbreak tool that lets you modify the label maker to your benefit, not Dymo’s shareholders.
There’s a good reason for that: U.S. copyright law gives Dymo a powerful tool to intimidate commercial competitors who help us escape the prison of labeling.Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act exposes these competitors to $500,000 in fines and five years in prison for selling tools to bypass “access controls” on copyrighted works, such as the firmware on Dymo printers.While it’s unclear whether a judge will rule in Dymo’s favor, few commercial operators are willing to take the plunge when the stakes are so high.That’s why we sued to overturn Section 1201.
Legal action is slow, and bad ideas can spread through the industry like a virus.So far, only Dymo has put DRM on paper.Its competitors, like Zebra and MFLabel, still make printers that let you decide which labels to buy.
These printers aren’t cheap — $110 to $120 — but they aren’t so expensive either that they make up most of the operating costs of owning one.Over the life of one of these printers, you’ll likely spend a lot more on labels than on the printer.
That means Dymo 550 and (Dymo 5XL) owners would be wise to dump them and buy a competing model from a competitor.Even if you pay the cost of a Dymo product, you’ll still save money in the long run.
Dymo is trying something unprecedented.DRM on paper is a terrible, abusive idea that we should all avoid.Dymo is betting that those tempted to buy its latest model will shrug and accept it.But we don’t have to.Dymo is highly competitive and vulnerable to bad publicity.This is one of those rare times when a terrible plan is brewing, and we have a chance to run it through our hearts before it resurfaces.
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Post time: Mar-07-2022
