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Keurig’s New Coffee Pod DRM Hacked, Copied?

keurig-20-560[1]DRM may be the bane of some ebook users but it looks like at least one other market may escape the hassle.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the Keurig single cup coffee machines, had been planning to incorporate DRM into their next generation coffee pods (think ink jet cartridges, only for coffee) but now it seems that their competitors have a different idea.

Two different makers of coffee pods have revealed that they’ve cracked the new Keurig DRM and could now offer compatible coffee pods.  TreeHouse Foods, makers of the popular Grove Square line of cappuccinos and hot chocolates, and Mother Parkers (they make brands like Tim HortonsMarley Coffee, and Martinson Coffee)have announced plans to produce coffee pods which are compatible with the Keurig DRM.

In short, TreeHouse Foods and Mother Parkers have short-circuited Green Mountain’s nefarious plans to repeat a trick used by many printer makers: force their customers to only buy expensive proprietary cartridges.

Or at least that’s what they say they’ve done.

Neither of the Keurig competitors have released their new pods, and from what I can tell the new Keurig pods are still only being beta-tested, so it’s not clear to me that they’ve actually pulled this off. (And given the money involved, they have good reason to stretch the truth.)

But i wouldn’t be surprised if they had. The CEO of Treehouse Foods had boasted months ago that he thought "it will be a matter of months, not years, before we replicate the technology for the cups or the pods".

It looks like he was right, and that’s a good thing for coffee drinkers everywhere. It’s bad enough that we have to put up with proprietary cartridges for our printers, but to also have that perfidious idea spread to another market?

OneCupoJoe

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Comments


Scott_Tx August 29, 2014 um 1:58 pm

if only people wouldnt buy them. but they will.


CJ August 31, 2014 um 12:49 pm

I believe Tassimo already had a bar code reader built into their T-cup single serve. Told the coffee maker what settings to use. I wonder if Keurig is planning something similar or just trying to thwart non-liscense manufacturers.


The Freedom Clip Bypasses Coffee Pod DRM, Saves Us From the Coffee Pod Invasion (video) ⋆ Ink, Bits, & Pixels February 1, 2015 um 5:16 pm

[…] long after Green Mountain released its Keurig 2.0 single serving coffee maker for the DRM to be hacked by Green Mountain's competitors and for consumers to come up with simple work-arounds, and now someone is offering a permanent […]


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