Jul 13, 2026
HP: your printer rejects ink it doesn't approve of
HP printers run firmware called Dynamic Security that blocks cheaper third-party ink and toner and ties each cartridge to the first printer it's installed in.
Bambu Lab: a firmware update locked owners out of their own 3D printers
A Bambu Lab printer now needs permission to print, after a 2025 firmware update locked seven core functions behind Bambu's own system. They called it security, but the community cracked it within days, and then Bambu Lab told the developer who gave owners back control that a cease-and-desist letter had been prepared.
Published Jul 06, 2026
What happened
Bambu Lab pushed a firmware update in January 2025 that put its printers behind the company's own authorization system. Seven core functions, including starting a print, controlling motion and temperature, configuring the AMS, remote video, and updating firmware, now require Bambu's sign-off; for printers signed into Bambu's cloud, even local LAN printing has to authenticate through its proprietary Bambu Connect software.
Third-party tools were cut off: OrcaSlicer's developer was denied the API keys needed to keep working, and the BigTreeTech Panda Touch accessory had broken compatibility. Three days after the announcement, a researcher de-obfuscated Bambu Connect and extracted its X.509 certificate and private key. The company dismissed the backlash as "baseless allegations" and quietly edited its own announcement post after publishing it.
In April 2026, a developer built an open-source fork to give owners back the control they'd lost, and Bambu Lab demanded he take it down, telling him a cease-and-desist letter had been prepared. The maintainer, Paweł Jarczak, asked for specifics, got broad allegations back, and took the repository down himself. In May 2026, Louis Rossmann publicly pledged up to $10,000 toward his legal defense if Bambu Lab followed through on the threatened lawsuit. No public source shows that Bambu Lab invoked Section 1201 against this developer.
FULU's takeaway
When starting a 3D print requires the manufacturer's approval, you don't really own the machine, you're just licensed to use it on Bambu's terms.
Why this is a law problem
Most of these entries involve a digital lock guarding copyrighted software, and a lock like that sits under Section 1201 of the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Subsection 1201(a)(1) makes it unlawful to bypass a lock that controls access to a copyrighted work, even when no copyright is infringed. Subsections 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1) separately ban making or distributing the tools that do the bypassing.
Every three years the Librarian of Congress can exempt narrow classes of uses from the first ban. An exemption expires after three years and has to be re-argued, and the rulemaking has no authority over the tool bans, so a granted exemption still leaves no lawful supplier for the means to use it. FULU exists to reform or revoke this statute.
If you want this law changed, donations fund the work. FULU is a 501(c)(4). Donations to FULU are not tax-deductible, which is the tradeoff for being able to lobby without a limit.
Nothing on these pages says any company named here violated Section 1201. FULU is not a law firm, and this is not legal advice.
The original post
The slides below are the originals as posted. Where a slide and the text on this page disagree, go by the text; the text is the corrected, sourced record. Some slides also print an old wiki address that no longer works. The links on this page are current.
Originally published as an Instagram carousel on Jul 06, 2026: See Instagram post.
Sources
This entry condenses Bambu Lab on consumerrights.wiki.
- Bambu Lab, consumerrights.wiki (archived)
- Bambu Lab Authorization Control System, consumerrights.wiki (archived)
- Bambu Lab cease and desist against OrcaSlicer fork developer, consumerrights.wiki (archived)
- Bambu Connect's Authentication X.509 Certificate And Private Key Extracted, Hackaday, Jan 19, 2025 (archived)
- Louis Rossmann offers to pay the legal fees for a threatened OrcaSlicer developer, Tom's Hardware, May 10, 2026 (archived)
More entries
Jul 27, 2026
Nintendo reserved the right to kill your Switch 2
The Switch 2 User Agreement lets Nintendo render the console permanently unusable.
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