
Keurig 2.0 DRM Bypass - Aco-
http://www.keurighack.com/
======
mwti
My Keurig's electronics died and I was able to recreate them with an Arudino:

[http://i.imgur.com/1wWxu37.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/1wWxu37.jpg)

With this I can customize the temperature and use PWM on the pump to adjust
pressure/flow. :D

If I had to use that 2.0 model I'd just lobotomize it right out of the box.

~~~
striking
If you hook up Ethernet to the Arduino, you might be able to get the first
implementation of
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324)!

~~~
anizan
Good old days of reading RFCs. Thanks for remembering this.

------
josteink
Discussing "licensing" in a thread about coffee. Fuck.

This is not what the future was supposed to be about. The future was supposed
to bring us infinite possibilities through the means of technology. It was
meant to be awesome.

It was not meant to be artificially limited through the means of technology
which could have been used to make our lives better instead.

Where did we go wrong?

~~~
zackmorris
A big ah hah moment for me was realizing that money is a representation of
inefficiency. So for example, if everyone had a means of growing their own
food, generating their own electricity, taking care of their own health, and
had unlimited access to information, we wouldn't need to buy things or pay for
services. A Mr. Fusion and a replicator would be all we needed.

That’s probably the real reason they don’t use money on Star Trek. Not so much
because they eliminated scarcity (which they obviously did, with numerous
planets to choose from) but because giving everyone the basic means to sustain
themselves was such a small fraction of the economy that it became
dehumanizing to force people to work so much when society could provide for
all within the percentage of a rounding error.

This concept’s relevance for coffee makers: what’s a coffee maker without
coffee? Anyone can brew coffee by pouring hot water through a sock (as it’s
done in much of the developing world) and I can say from experience that it’s
both more convenient and can even make a better cup. So the key is the coffee,
not the machine. It’s not really surprising that Keurig wants to cement itself
as a middleman, and since coffee is everywhere, it was probably inevitable
that they’d turn to a DRM solution.

Hydroponics, fabless photovoltaics and big data medicine are going to be what
take us into the future, not some kitchen gismo. In fact, the more I witness
“progress” in my lifetime, the more I see that the really revolutionary stuff
like the internet is generally free and shared by all. Otherwise it just makes
some guy rich. I want to be rich too, but I’ve spent half my life chasing a
goal that wouldn’t even be necessary if I was off the grid and could just get
left the heck alone.

~~~
derefr
> A big ah hah moment for me was realizing that money is a representation of
> inefficiency.

Ehhh. I guess that's basically true, but people would probably read the wrong
idea into it if you phrase it this way.

An economist would rather phrase it as "a dollar spent on something is a vote
for there to be one dollar more of something." But it can be flipped around to
your line of thinking as "a dollar spent is a representation of one dollar's
worth of dissatisfaction or unmet need that someone has." If everyone has
exactly what they want, then market velocity goes to zero. Money doesn't cease
to exist; it just ceases to be moved around. (Inflation is, partly, a
disincentive for ever letting this happen.)

Either way, even in a post-scarce utopia, capitalism would still survive; it
has useful emergent information-redistribution properties beyond its use in
plain survival. For example, an "everyone gets a basic income and spends it in
a market" system thoroughly beats a central-allocation system when it comes to
figuring out what crops need to be grown, what factories need to be built,
etc.

------
munificent
One way to look at the razors and blades business model that Keurig is doing
here is like so:

1\. The consumer purphases product A (here the coffee maker) on the normal
consumer market we're all familiar with.

2\. Doing so forces the consumer to purchase product B (here K-cups) on a
_different_ market.

Keurig's goal is to control the second market. By making having all the market
power, they can jack up prices to the consumer's detriment.

The reason you see companies like this invoking the DMCA or using DRM is
because they have no actual competitive advantage in that second market. They
are at a _disadvantage_ because they burned money selling product A at a loss
to get people into their market.

~~~
arthurcolle
I don't understand why it's a _different_ market. Do you mean that cartridges
are just intrinsically different from the actual machine using the cartridges?
This is identical to printers, so would you say the market for ink cartridges
is different than the market for printers? On a literal level I suppose this
is correct, but I wouldn't consider pens and pen ink to be different
markets... Maybe I haven't thought it through enough.

~~~
rahimnathwani
A market (as far as economics or competition law goes) is demarcated by
whether the items within it are substitutes, not by their intrinsic nature or
subject.

Examples:

\- Aluminium foil and cling film are both in the market for flexible food
wrapping materials

\- Aluminium foil and aluminium rulers are _not_ in the same market, as they
are not substitutes (alternatives)

In cases where it's not clear whether two items are in the same market (e.g.
tea bags and instant coffee powder could be considered substitutes)
competition regulators will use historical price data to estimate the XED
(cross-elasticity of demand) between two products. If XED is high (e.g. a
reduction in the price of tea bags significantly reduces demand for instant
coffee powder) then the two goods are substitutes, and are deemed to be in the
same market.

Now, apply this to your coffee pod/machine and pen/ink examples.

------
jack-r-abbit
This video took me on a little YouTube adventure which led me to this site[1]
giving away a little thing to clip onto your K2.0 machine for a nicer looking
bypass. I don't have a K2.0 machine so I can't verify that it works. But it
appears to be free so what have you got to lose?

[1] [https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-
Clip.html](https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html)

~~~
shutupalready
I applaud the fact that they don't seem worried about the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act that makes it illegal to create devices that bypass DRM. DMCA is
supposed to apply only to protecting copyrighted works, but prosecutors and
lawyers in general try to extend the laws in all sort of crafty ways, and
usually companies are too fearful to try anything proactive.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
That depends. Does Keurig even consider this to be DRM and protected under the
DMCA? Or is that just what _we_ call it because that is what we talk about on
HN.

~~~
comex
The relevant clauses in the DMCA read:

"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls
access to a work protected under this title."

"[..] is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing
protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a
right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof"

Just about any software DRM exists to protect some kind of copyright. In this
case, however, I don't think the Keurig authenticity check controls access to
any copyrighted work (not even a trivial one like a logo or small program), so
it wouldn't count.

~~~
morcheeba
Two major cases apply to this.

The closest version is this one: Chamberlain made garage door openers and
claimed that the rolling code that opened the door protected access to their
copyrighted "open the door" routine in their garage door opener... Since
Skylink's replacement remotes caused that code to execute, they were bypassing
the DRM. This was shot down.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chamberlain_Group,_Inc._v._...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chamberlain_Group,_Inc._v._Skylink_Technologies,_Inc).

There is also the lexmark one... They claimed that the numbers read out of
their cartridges were a copyrighted algorithm (in a secret language!) that
described how to measure the toner amount. Copying this code verbatim was
copyright infringement. The courts ruled that this wasn't copyrightable
because access controls weren't copyrightable (like you can't copyright a
key). Even if it was an algorithm that was creative, it didn't really act like
it. Lexmark was told to get lost.

Incidental note... Nintendo tried this with the gameboy and trademark law. It
wouldn't load a 3rd party cartridge unless it had the nintendo logo in the
ROM. Of course a 3rd party couldn't display that logo because that would be
trademark infringement. Courts told nintendo that they lost the right to claim
infringement when they required the use of that bitmap as an access control
device.

\--

So, no, I wouldn't worry about losing the DMCA here. Of course, getting sued
just to hassle you is another thing - Kuering could file a case they knew
they'd lose.

------
snarfy
Another solution is to not buy Keurig machines.

~~~
parennoob
Yeah, I'm gradually coming around to an RMS-y way of thinking – having to tape
small bits of an old K-cup onto my Keurig 2.0 is DRM bullshit that I have no
room for in my life. Fuck them.

Some people will use the new Keurig and its DRMed cups because it provides
them with enough value. I will completely bypass this nonsense and make a DRM-
free cup of dirt cheap coffee that stimulates my senses, as outlined in
another comment. I suggest that you do the same.

~~~
bashinator
Can I recommend an Aeropress? It's only a little more work than a Keurig
(about the same as a french press), and makes some of the best coffee I've
ever had. It's also $25, and has no moving parts or electrical components.

~~~
cpenner461
I love my Aeropress, but an arguably even simpler option is something like the
Hario V60
([http://www.amazon.com/Hario-V60/dp/B000P4D5HG/](http://www.amazon.com/Hario-V60/dp/B000P4D5HG/)).
$19, and no plastic if that matters to you. I think the filters probably cost
you a bit more than the Aeropress.

IMHO you should have several different coffee brewing methods at your disposal
:-)

~~~
shoover
Right. I've been using the Aeropress for about seven years. To this day I
still use it every week, if not every day. I think the plunger is starting to
go.

The point is it makes great coffee, and I've convinced many friends and family
to buy one, but now I caution people that while it probably makes the best
single serving coffee in a $25 package, it's not perfect. Basically there are
a lot of parts and you're working the whole time you're using it. One guy at
work accidentally punched the filter holder into the compost bin, lost
forever.

If you're making 2+ servings very often, get a 6- or 8-cup Chemex. Much fewer
parts. More: pour, stand around, repeat.

~~~
michael_h
If the rubber plunger is starting to feel "gummy" around the edge, you might
be able to get a replacement for free. They had a problem for a while and were
shipping out replacement parts no questions asked.

~~~
shoover
Thanks for the tip. The seal let some coffee through one time and I also had
some slime growing inside it. Gross. But it's several years old maybe expected
at some point.

~~~
bashinator
Just as a point of reference, I don't ever want to see the inside of a Keurig
that's been neglected for years in some office or other.

------
tcfunk
Alternatively, we could stop wasting so much packaging and take 5 minutes to
make a pot of coffee.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
But this way I have 5 more minutes to code.

~~~
klinquist
I add powdered caffeine to my morning Soylent.

(really.)

~~~
Semiapies
I'd recommend anyone trying this to be cautious with the amount you add.

~~~
brianpgordon
Primarily because caffeine is extremely bitter and adding too much will ruin
it. I tried to put like 500mg of caffeine powder in my cereal once and it was
utterly disgusting. I got about 4 spoonfuls in before I couldn't take it
anymore.

~~~
nyolfen
why wouldn't you just take caffeine pills man

~~~
brianpgordon
It's much, much cheaper if you buy the powder. But yeah, I ended up buying gel
capsules and making my own pills.

------
intopieces
For a single cup of coffee, I'm partial to the AeroPress. It takes a bit more
work, but the strange looks I get from my coworkers is worth it.

~~~
guelo
Call me paranoid but I refuse to drink hot liquids out of plastic containers
of any kind. A glass french press is the way to go.

~~~
14113
As someone who owns (and regularly uses) an aeropress, may I ask why? Simply
out of of curiosity, not out of disagreement.

~~~
nyolfen
long story short, transparent plastic containers tend to imbue their contents
with a chemical called bisphenol-a (aka bpa), which is a compound similar to
estrogen which may impact human physiology in a wide array of ways[0], or
chemicals that are structurally related that aren't well studied but could be
similarly damaging[1]. this applies to all transparent plastics and isn't
specific to aeropresses

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Health_effects)

[1] [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-
certic...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-
eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe)

~~~
cdingo
The Aeropress has been BPA free for years now.

[http://www.aeropress.ca/faq/](http://www.aeropress.ca/faq/)

~~~
perrylaj
That may be true, but unfortunately research is showing plasticizers of many
varieties (including those used in "BPA Free" plastics), are endocrine
disruptors.

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016648014...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016648014004225)

~~~
Someone1234
Here's another article about it (same content, but easier to digest):

[http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/04/bpa-free-does-not-
mean-...](http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/04/bpa-free-does-not-mean-safe-
most-plastics-leach-hormone-disrupting-chemicals/)

TL;DR: Just because plastic is BPA free, doesn't mean it is safe or even
better.

------
JoshTriplett
It's an amusing video, but note that that same barcode is also what provides
coffee/tea-specific brewing parameters to the machine. Using the same barcode
for all cups breaks that. (Using a barcode from one coffee on another seems
unlikely to seriously affect the results, though.)

~~~
colechristensen
If you care enough about the flavor differences, you'll do a whole lot better
by not using a kureg in the first place.

------
codemac
Well, due to content management, I can't click play on the video in the
website?

> This video contains content from SME.

[https://i.imgur.com/4wlnL22.png](https://i.imgur.com/4wlnL22.png)

This has happened multiple times to me, today, all from SME. So many things in
life require scissors, tape, and hacks to qualify for "decent" to me now.

~~~
jdpage
It has the Imperial March from Star Wars as the background music, which was
definitely a bad idea.

------
qsymmachus
DRM-free dirt cheap coffee:

1\. Bring water to boil in a pot

2\. Add 2 tbsp ground coffee per cup of water

3\. Kill the heat, cover for 5 mins

4\. Pour into cup through fine colander or cheese cloth

Seriously it's delicious and you already have the tools you need in your
kitchen.

~~~
fishtoaster
For the price of a good fine colander, you could buy a $15 Mr. Coffee and
automate much of this. People buying keurig machines aren't doing it because
they don't know how to make coffee or think it's better tasting- they're doing
it for the speed (30-60 seconds) and the convenience.

~~~
jdhawk
The second reason they've gained massive popularity is that people all want
different shit.

"But I want Hot Tea" "But I want vanilla frappa-bullshit" "But I want Hot
Cocoa" "Your coffee is too strong" "Your coffee is too weak"

It's the expensive convenient machine that shuts everyone the fuck up. What's
the price on that?

~~~
xenophonf
That's precisely why we own one. My wife and I not arguing every morning over
who made the coffee and how is well worth the price we pay in K-cups.

~~~
couchand
And the price to the environment, and the price to a relationship unable to
handle a minor disagreement? Perhaps you haven't considered all the factors at
play.

~~~
jdhawk
I'd like to see the breakdown on KCup usage in the home versus in the Office.

The majority of K's I've seen are in the office, where you're looking for
simple streamlined solutions to keep people from bitching about the
surrounding environment, and get back to work.

I think most people in a relationship can deal with the morning coffee
differences

------
jrockway
Classic replay attack.

------
nickbauman
I have owned two Nespresso machines. They were both great for about 8 months.
Then no matter how much I 'cleansed' them they made terrible tasting coffee.
You can never get the insides completely clean. I suspect the Keurig has a
similar problem. I'm now back to my ceramic filter cone (one-time $20 cost)
and the coffee has never tasted better.

~~~
sschueller
Did you use the Nespresso cleaning kit and then run the entire water tank
through the machine twice without capsules?

I have many Nespresso machines and never had a problem with degrading taste.
Usually something else breaks like the milk frother on the Lattissima.

~~~
nickbauman
Yes, I followed the instructions. If you put a coffee from your machine in
front of me and one from a traditional machine, I could identify yours by the
bad taste I'm certain of it.

------
ThePhysicist
That's a really nice hack, I fear though that the next generation of "broken
by design" consumer electronics devices will make use of much more
sophisticated DRM technologies to make sure you only use them as intended by
the manufacturer.

An example is the German startup Bonaverde
([http://www.bonaverde.com](http://www.bonaverde.com)), which manufactures a
coffee machine that not only grinds but also roasts your coffee beans. To make
sure that you use only their certified (and pricey) coffee beans they include
an RFID chip with each package that you have to scan in order to start the
brewing process. No tag, no coffee.

There is also a Gizmodo article that nicely sums up the Bonaverde story:

[http://gizmodo.com/kickstarter-project-finds-exciting-new-
wa...](http://gizmodo.com/kickstarter-project-finds-exciting-new-way-to-screw-
its-1663145598)

~~~
NullReference
Can't you just save an empty bag, and then fill it with any beans you want?

My general thoughts about companies trying to implement DRM is that there's
always some stupidly simple hack around it. Like this Keurig hack. I guarantee
that within a week or two of this coming out someone will just find another
way to hack around the DRM.

Better mousetraps just breed cleverer mice.

~~~
ThePhysicist
Not sure about this, but from reading the article the answer is probably no. I
hope of course that there will be a workaround, as you say even very
sophisticated DRM schemes eventually get cracked, it just makes me sad to see
that instead of building technology that empowers the end user, these
companies deliberately choose to cripple their products for the sake of higher
profit.

------
hw
Anyone else waiting for the Arist?
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/236195807/arist-
brews-c...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/236195807/arist-brews-coffee-
like-the-best-baristas-anytime)

I have a feeling if it's successful, it's going to give Keurig some headaches.

~~~
q3k
There's no way they'll be able to fit so many features at in a $300 product.

There's already a pretty competitive bean-to-cup coffee machine market, and
$300 price point usually gets you a machine that grinds, brews, dispenses and
sometimes froths - very poorly, and requires maintenance.

Heck, even a good, “real” espresso machine and grinder (like a Rancilio Silvia
and Bartza Vario, entry level coffee geek favourites) combo will set you back
around $1k.

It's a pipe dream.

~~~
adambard
This sounded real familiar, so I went and dug up the last one of these I heard
of.

The ZPM Nocturn was supposed to be a $400 espresso machine that used a fancy
thermoblock instead of a boiler to save costs (cheap espresso machines use
thermoblocks, but the kickstarter claimed that their design was better enough
to compete with a boiler).

This is straight from their kickstarter page: [1]

> There are basically two kinds of home espresso machines on the market today.
> The affordable models have no good mechanism of temperature or pressure
> control. These machines can’t pull consistent shots. So if you're serious
> about espresso, you’ll need one of the higher-end machines - they make great
> coffee, but they also start around $700.

> [...]

> Our machine will retail for around $400, but it's available to you guys on
> Kickstarter for only $200!

That was in 2012. Today, they still seem to be at the preorder stage, but
their machine is now $800. [2]

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-
control...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled-
espresso-machine)

[2]
[http://store.zpmespresso.com/collections/frontpage/products/...](http://store.zpmespresso.com/collections/frontpage/products/nocturn-
espresso-machine)

------
adityasankar
Not siding with Keurig, but just out of curiosity, how would you to create a
DRM scheme that can't be bypassed with this replay attack? Apparently [0] the
DRM works by shining a light on an ink marking and registering the wavelength
of the light reflected back.

I figure one simple scheme would be to 'burn' the key after it is read. i.e.
physically disable the DRM ink by heat/perforation/other ink, so that once
used, the signature ink cannot be reused. Curious what other HN-ers would come
up with. And hoping Keurig doesn't get any ideas from this. ;)

[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/30/5857030/keurig-digital-
rig...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/30/5857030/keurig-digital-rights-
management-coffee-pod-pirates)

~~~
underpantsgnome
I'll bite.

Cut power to the heat source/declaw the perforator/plug up the ink jet. I have
physical access, after all.

Keurig is in the position that they can attach a number to each one of their
coffee cups, and the machine will refuse to brew if the number doesn't prove
the cup is authentic. If they give all the cups the same number, as they
apparently have chosen here, than all anyone has to do is present that number
again, and voila, the coffeemaker will execute whatever cup they feed it.

Maybe they get smart and give each and every cup a different password. Of
course the machines have to recognize these passwords, so they have to start
with a known list of length N, where N is the total number coffee cups they
ever expect to sell for this line of machines. They put all these passwords
through their favorite one-way function, stuff the hashes in a newline-
delimited text file, and hope it fits in a few gigabytes. Now once the machine
encounters a matching password, it brews one cup, but "crosses off" that
password and won't brew for it again.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Instead of starting with each machine having the entire list of numbers,
wouldn't it just be easier to read each number it encounters, store it and
then check future numbers against the stored list? There are sooo many more
numbers my machine will never see. Why keep them all stored in all machines?
And if they are concerned about running out of numbers and repeating them,
there could be a timestamp attached to each locally stored number and have
them expire from the list after X months. The chances that a person would save
a bunch of K-cup tops to use to bypass the DRM 6 months later is pretty slim.

~~~
jfeser
AFAIK, the original reason for the DRM was to prevent other companies from
selling K-cups, so it would need a way to validate each cup, not just prevent
reuse.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Doh! I totally forgot about that part. LOL

------
shmerl
Does anyone use such junk after they introduced DRM? Such companies deserve
oblivion.

------
programminggeek
You know what's better than using a Keurig? Get an Aeropress. It's easy,
awesome, and tastes better than Keurig.

Also, Aeropress doesn't have all that not so eco friendly waste that Keurig's
K-Cups have.

There is no DRM on Aeropress.

------
mkremer90
They are officially labeling us as "attackers" on seclists now:

[http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Dec/37](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Dec/37)

~~~
JshWright
Who do you mean by 'they' and 'us' there?

That's pretty clearly satire...

------
logfromblammo
Approaching this from the perspective of someone who drinks perhaps 250 mL of
coffee per year, I am utterly mystified that the commodity coffee beverage
product can still support so many niche businesses.

In this very discussion, I have seen people describe the way they make their
own coffee, and it is almost identical to the way U.S.A.-C.S.A. civil war
soldiers made theirs in camp. And I have seen people describe their heavily-
modded robotic coffee makers, using consumables pre-processed in bulk by
industrial-scale machinery to provide a more consistent product.

And this makes me think that Keurig is not just pissing into the wind, but
directing their little stream against a waterfall. The coffee market is huge,
and more ancient by far than most other product markets. It is also thoroughly
commoditized. There is simply no way for any company to enjoy pricing power in
it without an improbably vast cartel or some strictly policed patents and
trademarks.

Why should the collective society of coffee-drinkers indulge Keurig's attempt
to achieve economic profits (positive returns when considering opportunity
cost) by allowing them to differentiate their sub-market to the point where
they enjoy pricing power in it? Is their coffee that much better than all
available alternatives? I have similar questions about Starbucks. How do they
manage to charge more than the basic commodity price?

It almost seems as though the coffee itself is not the whole product, but it
also includes the ritual and ceremony of preparing it. It also looks quite a
bit like the market for wines and beers, where the price that the market will
bear is determined mostly by the printing on the label.

Given those assumptions, my analysis is that Keurig is approaching their
problem from the worst possible angle. Inserting technical countermeasures
into the hardware will never work (as repeatedly demonstrated by pwn-your-own-
device hackers). They should instead pour that cash into advertising and
reward-based psychology. Institute some form of intermittent reward system for
using genuine, trademark-branded consumables.

You cannot ever employ enough clever engineers to defeat the legion of people
with physical possession of the item and a desire to make it do what its owner
desires, instead of obeying its pre-programmed manufacturer directives.
Annoying your customers simply does not add value to your product.

------
DigitalSea
I love how such a simple solution can bypass a DRM scheme that Keurig probably
invested considerable time and effort into producing. In some cases DRM is
warranted, but for a coffee machine, it is just plain ridiculous and
anticompetitive to have DRM to block out competitor coffee pods when history
has proven that printer manufacturers like HP have been trying and
consistently failing to do this for years now.

~~~
chinpokomon
So simple to bypass, I expect they didn't spend much effort or money at all.
They aren't trying to make an unbreakable system, they're trying to make a
deterrent. If they had made the detection method too complicated, it could
lead to false rejections and that would ultimately be more costly. They just
needed a method that they can prove in court that a third party is using to
defeat their DRM. This is the equivalent to ROT-13 encryption.

~~~
adamswann
I agree, but I don't know that it's even necessary for Keurig to go to court
to realize the value of the DRM scheme.

Their weak DRM certainly serves as a deterrent to the average consumer, but
even more so to the mainstream coffee distributors that have been selling
"knock off" cups up to this point.

Community Coffee, which is a major roaster/distributor in the deep south, just
caved and penned a licensing agreement with Keurig:

[http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/10981551-123/community-...](http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/10981551-123/community-
coffee-keurig-announce-licensing)

Prior to the (negative) publicity surrounding the 2.0 launch, I didn't pay
enough attention to notice that the Community Coffee K-cups I've bought
(exclusively and in bulk at Sam's Club) for the three or four years that I've
owned the machine weren't bonafide Keurig cups, but I think a typical consumer
(and retailers, too) would likely be put off if the pods came with
instructions for cutting the lid off an authentic Keurig cup and taping them
onto the machine.

I'm betting every region has their version of Community Coffee and that Keurig
will succeed in converting many of them into licensees. There might be
negative publicity that is seen by those of us who care about such things, but
on average, Keurig will come out ahead -- maybe without filing a lawsuit.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
It might be a turn off to ship your coffee with instructions on how to cut the
top off a 2.0 K-cup. But if your K-cups just needed an "adapter"[1] then many
consumers would probably not think twice about it. We use adapters all the
time to make one thing work with another.

[1] [https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-
Clip.html](https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html)

~~~
shutupalready
Wouldn't it be deliciously funny if the adapter was engineered such that all
third-party k-cups worked, but Keurig's own k-cups ceased working. It should
be possible; I thought of ways using electronics or a prism, but nothing
simple yet.

------
gburt
Now that I am aware they're trying to monopolize small plastic coffee packets,
there's no possible way I'd buy anything from them.

Build products _for_ consumers, not against them.

Although, on second thought, I guess I was never going to buy a Keurig in the
first place; producing a ton of trash in exchange for expensive mediocre
coffee was enough to convince me it was a bad idea?

------
giarc
This Canadian company believes the UV ink on the packaging is not protected
and they can simply produce their own cups with the same ink.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keurig-s-coffee-supremacy-
ch...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keurig-s-coffee-supremacy-challenged-
by-canadian-firm-1.2787075)

------
kardos
Reminds me of this well thought out copy protection from a decade ago:
[http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52...](http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52665)

~~~
wtallis
> _" I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?" one posting on
> alt.music.prince read. "Maybe they'll ban markers."_

Instead, they shipped rootkits on music CDs. In hindsight, banning markers
would have made too much sense.

------
acd
Actually this is the same business model as consoles. Sell the hardware at
very low to zero margin, make money on the capsules/games which sell at a
premium.

Fun that they hacked this DRM with plain tape

------
boynamedsue
He's wearing a brass rat! [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_class_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_class_ring)

------
bitwize
It's the coffee equivalent of the bypasses used for certain unlicensed NES and
SNES games: the game's cartridge had a bracket or port into which you would
plug a licensed game, and the unlicensed game had pass-throughs for the signal
lines to the system's DRM chip, allowing the unlicensed game to use the
licensed game's authority.

------
nightmedia
What is funny is that it would have taken Keurig just a bit more effort to
make the chip so that it has an unique signature. That way the machine will
store the numbers it had already processed, and this hack would only allow you
to cheat if you have more than one machine, but you'd still need to buy
originals half of the time.

------
jonalmeida
I have a strange need to watch Star Wars now..

Jokes aside, this is a neat hack but I wonder if it would be possible to
remove the DRM check from the electronics side itself. I don't have a Keurig
machine myself, so I wouldn't dare opening up one (after making a cup) to see
what you could hack at.

------
michaelbuddy
Keurig adding DRM was equivalent to a plea to be hacked. But I was thinking,
Keurig probably doesn't care about people who mod their machines as much as
they want to target counterfeiters.

------
lberk
I really wonder how much money Keurig has wasted trying to develop DRM for
their machines. Would have been better off putting that money into designing
better machines.

------
reginawong
I almost (not really) want to buy a Keurig machine JUST so I can hack it. Side
question: any of you use the term "K-Cups" instead of "Keurig cups"?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
K-cup® is their official name. I've never heard anyone use "Keurig cup"
before. Is that a thing where you are?

~~~
lepht
I worked at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (the owners of Keurig) around the
time they were first gaining traction, and remember them briefly being called
"Keurig cups" internally before the "K-cup" shorthand caught on.

------
frogpelt
I think this whole "hack the Keurig 2.0 DRM" has created more press for their
coffee maker than they would have otherwise had.

I expect them to sell more because of it.

------
sulami
Why exactly do we need (to bypass) DRM on a coffee machine?

~~~
MichaelGG
The video explained that clearly. New Keurig coffee machines, in order to
bolster their own coffee sales, refuse to operate on non-Keurig cups. By
bypassing it, consumers can buy equipment then put whatever they want in it,
returning control to the consumer.

~~~
click170
They don't just refuse to work with non-keurig k-cups, they refuse to work
with version 1 k-cups from the old system.

Sucks to be anyone who bought more than a box before their machine broke.

------
bdcravens
Did the same thing a few years ago with a Tassimo.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Same here. We accidentally bought a case of discs that's only compatible with
commercial machines. We noticed that the barcodes differed for the same kind
of coffee in the home machine, so we just cut the barcodes from the old
coffee, reinforce with some scotch tape, and temporarily attach it to each new
disc we put into the machine.

------
beefsack
I didn't even realise there was something like this on the market, I'll notch
it up as another reason I love my Aeropress.

------
shoover
That's a cool hack. It could be handy on the road as more hotels buy these
units.

------
starlineventure
Nice solution for corporate foolishness

------
reillyse
1) Keurig makes terrible coffee why would you ever want to use one? 2) that is
all.

------
0942v8653
Is this a joke? Seems like a lot of people are falling for it...

~~~
RexRollman
The real joke is using DRM to prevent competition. Printer companies have also
been doing this.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Printer companies have _tried_ doing this. IIRC, they lost in court.

~~~
bjt
What Lexmark lost in court was a case that _they_ brought claiming that the
DRM circumvention violated the DMCA. There's no law or case prohibiting
printer makers or coffee machine makers from implementing locks like this
though.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control_Components)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Ah, yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. So they can't prevent
circumvention by law, but they can make it as hard as technically possible.

But as Cory Doctorow points out, DRM can never succeed, because in order to
sell a working system to your customer, you have to give them the encrypted
content, and the decryption engine, and the key (otherwise, they can't use
it). But if your customer is your attacker (or your competitor), you just gave
your attacker the encrypted content, the decryption engine, and the key, so
now they have everything they need to build compatible cartridges...

~~~
bjt
I think Keurig's and Lexmark's definition of success might be different than
yours though. They don't need the DRM to be unbreakable. They just need to
protect their market enough that the benefits (to them) of the DRM exceed the
costs.

In the case of digital media, any weakness in the DRM means game over, because
file sharing is so easy. But when talking about physical goods like printer
ink and coffee capsules, it's a battle at the margins. They just need to
discourage enough competition that their business stays profitable.

------
curiously
When computer vision is used for such evil practices, I am at a loss for
words. The music was _PERFECT_.

I wonder what Keurig 3.0 DRM will look like. Would it have some sort of
chemical tagging ability which are only found in Keurig coffee? I'm surprised
there isn't any public backslash over such predatory practices.

What's next? A bed that farts because you didn't buy the same brand of
blankets and pillow? A toilet that won't flush because you didn't use their
brand of cleaner?

~~~
kefka
Their first problem was: They bought a Keurig.

The second problem was: They didn't sell or get rid of said Keurig.

The third problem was: They tried to polish a turd. It's still a turd, just a
bit now covered up.

------
hasenj
Why use a coffee machine anyway? I never got the point of them. The coffee
they make tastes bad anyway.

Just use a good old ibrik. It costs $3 to $10 depending on size and where you
buy it from. The more expensive ones will probably cost $30?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2DyulKd6vw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2DyulKd6vw)

------
bauer
Many bothans died to bring us this information.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's a frap!

