Keurig competitors crack company's DRM code

The fact that a coffee maker has DRM at all is depressing.

Perhaps Keurig should print their logo onto the cups with said special ink, and the machine should identify the logo with an image matching algorithm. If I understand trademark law correctly, competitors wouldn't be able to reproduce the Keurig logo without the strong possibility of facing repercussions for trademark infringement. I mean in reality it wouldn't work well at all and just make consumers pissed, but I wonder what the legal situation would be if they could pull it off.

A cursory Google search shows that not only are companies making Keurig-compatible cups, but also Keurig-compatible coffee machines, so people who want them could get those instead. Funny that the end consequence of this may be that a whole ecosystem around this format ends up continuing to dominate despite the fact that all of the players are selling knock-offs and the originator of the idea has moved on... it's IBM PC-compatible all over again.

They should require you to create an account online which you must login too and enter a code found on the K-cup in order to get your coffee.<p>That will show those pesky people wanting to use your rather expensive machine with slightly less expensive however still a ripe off single serving coffee pods.

When your proprietary coffee delivery system costs $50&#x2F;pound and people still buy it, is DRM a surprise?

Article states it&#x27;s not true &quot;digital&quot; rights management. Seems more like an analog rights management (shine an infrared light on ink and register reflection). So presumably no one can be technically liable under the DMCA. However, if Keurig were to switch to a more &quot;digital&quot; form of rights management (perhaps actual RFID), could these third party coffee pod creators be found guilty of circumventing content protection technologies (DMCA violation)?

I was going to ask why they didn&#x27;t just patent the thing. This is the physical world after all. Turns out they did, but the most important one expired in 2012. <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2012/11/28/the-k-cup-patent-is-dead-long-live-the-k-cup/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;corporate-intelligence&#x2F;2012&#x2F;11&#x2F;28&#x2F;the-k...</a>

Next time Keurig should hire a cryptographer. GPG signed QR-codes or something similar (vulnerable to replay attack, but harder to circumvent).

The author&#x27;s confidence in common sense is touching:<p>&gt; It&#x27;s still too early to tell, but the fact that Keurig&#x27;s “DRM” can be cracked with such ease doesn&#x27;t seem to bode well for the company.<p>&gt; So that&#x27;s one reason Keurig might be in trouble: because it bet everything on imposing a technological barrier which turned out to be ridiculously easy to get around.<p>Err, so easily crackable DRM will not survive legal challenges? (I seem to remember a story, which my Google-fu is insufficient to recover, of someone embarrassing Jack Palance during an interview by showing him the complete DeCSS source ….)

Couldn&#x27;t someone just cut the top off or take the foil off a legit k cup and place it on top of a non legit one then run the machine? This would cost the non legit companies less... Not having to retool production. Just tell the consumer what to do or include a special cover.

I do not understand why is anyone buying machines with pods. Expensive machine, expensive coffee, and creating garbage for each cup.<p>Is it so hard to put teaspoon of coffee in cup and pour hot water?

Good, but doesn&#x27;t make Keurig a good coffee worth drinking ;)

I have no idea why anyone would put up with drm and pay such a ridiculous price for such terrible &quot;coffee.&quot;

Is it really that hard to get a coffee presser and some ground coffee?

Jailbreaking your iPhone is so 2010, now the cool kids are jailbreaking their Keurigs.

Their SSL is bad. It gets an F from SSL Labs due to an exploitable version of OpenSSL -- <a href="https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=consumeraffairs.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ssllabs.com&#x2F;ssltest&#x2F;analyze.html?d=consumeraffai...</a> -- and Firefox refuses to connect to it at all due to weak ciphers:<p>An error occurred during a connection to www.consumeraffairs.com. SSL peer selected a cipher suite disallowed for the selected protocol version. (Error code: ssl_error_cipher_disallowed_for_version)