Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party ink

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 and ink, despite customer blowback and lawsuits. Brother’s 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’t true.
↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica

I find this an incredibly interesting story. We all know the printer space is a cursed hellhole of the very worst worst types of enshittification, but Brother seemed like an island of relative calm in a sea of bullshit. In turn, people are so used to printers being shit, that any problem that comes up is automatically explained by malice, which is not entirely unreasonable. Borther insists, though, that it does not break printers using third-party toner or ink through firmware.

Brother does make it very clear that it is standard procedure to only perform troubleshooting on Brother printers using ‘genuine’ Brother ink and toner, which is not entirely unreasonable in my book. There’s no telling what kind of effects third part cartridges – which do contain electronics – have on the rest of the printer, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect Brother to be able to document all of those possible issues. As long as using third-party toner and ink cartridges doesn’t invalidate any warranties, and as long as Brother doesn’t intentionally break printers for using third-party toner and ink, I think Brother meets its obligations to consumers.

If you choose to use third-party ink and toner cartridges in Brother printers, I think it’s only reasonable you remove those during the troubleshooting process to ensure they’re not the cause of any problems you’re experiencing.