My buddy Mike sent me a good article on technologies that printer and copier companies use to watermark every color print you make. While I’ve known for a while that such counterfeiting countermeasures were there, this PC World article is the first I’ve read which tells how to find the countermeasures (use a blue LED light and magnifying glass).
It also warns that there is no easy way of disabling the electronics which print the encoded serial numbers. Not that it won’t stop people from trying.
The companies have been very helpful to law enforcement, and that is a good thing. Counterfeiting is a serious crime. But some companies added the features at the request of foreign governments in order to sell their products in those countries. Thus, this criminal-catching measure could easily be used to track down dissidents in unfriendly countries such as China (or is China our friend now? I lose track).
Here are a few more links to sites describing printer watermarking.