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Dot Dot Dot ... The Mark of the Beast

By Jonathan Handel, Esq.

Jonesing for a color laser printer? You might want to think twice. As the NYT reminds us (it's not a new story), color lasers (but not inkjets nor, presumably, b&w lasers), leave their mark with yellow tracking dots:

Some, but not all, [color] laser printers do leave a series of nearly imperceptible yellow dots on the printed page. These dots usually contain the encoded serial number of the printer and may also include the time and date that the document was printed.

The purpose of this privacy-inhibiting emendation to your output is to deter counterfeiters, who might otherwise find color laser printers a nifty printing press for knockoffs of our ever-weakening national currency. A laudable goal. However, even law-abiding speech sometimes wants to be not only free, but anonymous. User beware.

Full post as published by Digital Media Law on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).