Freedom Clip busts your Keurig's DRM coffee shackles
A free gadget turns your Keurig 2.0 into a equal-opportunity coffee machine that sees all single-serve cups as authorized K-Cups.
Single-serve coffee fanatics who had been reveling in the many third-party java choices for their beloved Keurig machines got a rude awakening when the company launched the Keurig 2.0 line in early 2014.
The new coffee makers are designed to accept only Keurig-licensed K-Cups while turning up their noses at other brands, refusing to release the sweet, sweet nectar of coffee into your waiting cup.
Keurig's move was in response to its K-Cup patent expiring at the end of 2012, but a lot of consumers weren't thrilled about the idea of losing their options. What happened next was hardly surprising. Creative coffee lovers set about finding ways to defeat the DRM. One popular hack involves prying part of the lid of an official K-Cup off and attaching it to a sensor inside the machine that looks for special DRM-enabling ink.
For people who don't want to fiddle with one of the existing workarounds, Rogers Family Company, a maker of rival single-serve cups, is offering the Freedom Clip, a small gadget that clips under the brewer lid and permanently fools the machine into accepting almost any coffee pod. The process is simpler than peeling, taping and fiddling your way to your own solution.
The Freedom Clip works just like most of the other hacks by tricking the Keurig's sensor into believing it sees the special ink the company uses on the top of its authorized pods. Fittingly, the clip is free, to anyone in the lower 48 states.
If you're committed to your Keurig 2.0 and no one can talk you into switching to a French press or a pour-over drip method, then you might enjoy the minor thrill you get from defeating the DRM inside your machine.
(Via Boing Boing)