Well good for them. I wish them luck. HP is rather big and powerful and hp can do whatever it pleases with its intellectual property. EFF is like ******* in hurricane. As consumers, we don't need to buy those printers though..
I bet less than 10% of folks who own hp printers use 3rd party ink. So hp just wants this to go away before other people wise up.
EFF does not have any real power but they do have a lot of influence through lobbying Congress, the EU, and companies. If you are a company, you don't want to get on the wrong side of the EFF as they can bring a lot of bad attention your way from people who do have the power. In terms of the EFF and HP - there is some good precedence. Lexmark sued Static Control Components (SCC) who reverse engineered the chip in Lexmark ink cartridges to put in their own aftermarket cartridges. Lexmark won at first, but upon appeal, with EFF's help, SCC won.
All that corporatespeak nonsensical *********..what does it mean? Sounds like they forgot to apologize for increasing "security" that renders your choice of ink cartridges null and void. So much hot air - could have saved the Hindenburg. Maybe even made the Titanic stay afloat!
They say they should have done a better job of "communicating about the authentication procedure to their customers". Well, what did they do to begin with, and how are they now making customers aware that they are reversing the firmware update? None of my customers who were affected had any idea why their ink cartridges suddenly became "defective".