{"id":1237257,"date":"2025-03-05T14:51:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T19:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237257"},"modified":"2025-03-05T14:51:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T19:51:37","slug":"brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237257","title":{"rendered":"Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party ink"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Brother laser printers are popular recommendations for people seeking a printer with none of the nonsense. By nonsense, we mean printers<a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/01\/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses\/\"> suddenly bricking features<\/a>, like <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/08\/the-printers-that-require-ink-to-scan-and-fax\/\">scanning<\/a> or printing, if users install third-party cartridges. Some printer firms outright block third-party toner and ink, despite customer blowback and <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/01\/hp-sued-again-for-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-accused-of-monopoly\/\">lawsuits<\/a>. Brother\u2019s laser printers have historically worked fine with non-Brother accessories. A YouTube video posted this week, though, as well as older social media posts, claim that Brother has gone to the dark side and degraded laser printer functionality with third-party cartridges. Brother tells Ars that this isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n<p>On March 3, YouTuber Louis Rossman posted a video saying that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bpHX_9fHNqE\">Brother turns heel &amp; becomes anti-consumer printer company<\/a>.\u201d The video, spotted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomshardware.com\/peripherals\/printers\/brother-accused-of-locking-down-third-party-printer-ink-cartridges-via-firmware-updates-removing-older-firmware-versions-from-support-portals\">Tom\u2019s Hardware<\/a>, has 163,000 views as of this writing and seems to be based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/printers\/comments\/s9b2eg\/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now\/\">a Reddit post <\/a>from 2022. In that post, Reddit user 20Factorial said that firmware update W1.56 caused the automatic color registration feature to stop working on his Brother MFC-3750 when using third-party cartridges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith the colors not able to be aligned, the printer is effectively non-functional,\u201d 20Factorial said. The Redditor went on to say that when asked, a Brother customer service agent confirmed that \u201cthe printer is non-functional without genuine toner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/03\/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/03\/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brother laser printers are popular recommendations for people seeking a printer with none of the nonsense. By nonsense, we mean printers suddenly bricking features, like scanning or printing, if users install third-party cartridges. Some printer firms outright block third-party toner &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237257\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}