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Brother printers joins the Evil Empire, blocks third-party ink with stealth updates

Ellsworth Toohey
Mar 05, 2025
∙ Paid

Refillable cartridges for inkjet printer (Evgeny Tomeev/shutterstock.com)

Printer manufacturer Brother, once the last bastion of hope for people who don't have spare Krugerrands lying around to buy printer ink, has quietly joined the dark side of proprietary ink enforcement. Through forced firmware updates, the company is now blocking third-party cartrid…

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