Printer Ink Piracy?..I was wondering what others think of this article someone sent me from CNET http://news.com.com/Can+cryptography+prevent+printer-ink+piracy/2100-1041_3-6193424.html My Thoughts: I think the idea is that you have to buy a "license" from the mfg to reproduce the cartridges legally, otherwise your violating the patent by reproducing the engineering/electonics inside the cartridge itself. Since ink cartridges contain 'intelligence' inside of them to make it work. This design is patent-able. This doesn't work with say camera film because he has no logic of its own accord. Even if a cartridge manufacturer correctly purchases the license, the printer mfg cannot set the license price so high to eleminate the competition as this would be against competition laws. Just like the phone company can't sell the lines to competitors so high as to cut them out of the loop. It's actually safer to buy a 3rd party cheap cartridge from a mfg that has licensed rights to copy the design because a reverse-engineerred (ie: pirated) cartridge can mess up your printer if they didn't get the design right. FYI: As far as I know HP publically releases it's patents / design specs for cartridges as soon as a newer model is patented. So any mfg can create cartridges for prior versions of printers...also as far as I know just about every laser printer is just a clone of an earlier version of HP. Not sure if this is true for ink jet though.