New Jersey Gives Copiers a Bad Name

Deleting data from the hard drive
And you're to blame
New Jersey
You give copiers a bad name

Just a little rearranged lyrics from "You Gave Love a Bad Name" by New Jersey artist BonJovi. 

Just a few days ago the New Jersey Assembly voted in favor of Bill A1238 which basically states that the owner (business) or the lessor or the lessee of Digital Multifunctional Copy Machine "shall destroy, or arrange for the destruction of, all records (means any material recorded or preserved by any means) stored on a digital copy machine which was purchased by that business, and which is no longer to be retained by that business, by erasing or otherwise modifying those records to make the records unreadable, undecipherable, or nonreconstructive through generally available means". 

I believe A1238 still needs to be voted on by the NJ Senate in order to become law, the bill would take effect on the 60th day following the enactment.

Here we go, this new law does not cover any systems that were sold prior to the enactment and would only affect those systems that were sold or leased on or after the date of enactment.  New Jersey law makers have nothing else to do than to create a bill that was based on an expose from CBS news more than two years ago on multifunctional copiers that were already 5 years old?  In short that means these copiers were manufactured in 2005.  Since that expose from CBS news, all copier manufacturers have stepped up to the plate and offered new advanced security measures like overwriting the hard drive up to 9 times or event driven data destruction to destroy the data on the hard drives.

Do we really need a law for this?  Did NJ lawmakers not do their research on all of the new multifunctional copier offerings from copier manufacturers and see that they have addressed the issue?  Did they not think about protecting the data on the existing systems that are in the field? Did they forget about the tens of thousands of computer servers that are also owned or leased by businesses, and how a million or more pc's also.  Most of the computers and pc's are not resold and carted off to the land fill (sneak in at night, grab a few servers or pc's and you'll never know what you'll find).  Data is data whether the images are stored on a copier hard drive, a pc, server, removal drives, back up drives and cell phones.   BTW, shouldn't this law also pertain to laser printers that have a hard drive?


It's estimated on the Print4Pay Hotel forums that this law could cost NJ businesses a ton of money.  Manta reports that there are 839,000 businesses in NJ. Not every business has a multifunctional copier, but there are many that may have fleets of 100 plus.  One Print4Pay Hotel member suggested that this may cost each business that buys or leases a new copier $400 per system (for the final destruction, deletion, replacement of the hard drive and certificate). After researching many articles it seems that there are 1.5 million new placements of copiers in the US in 2010. That would mean the average per state is 30,000, since NJ is very busy place, I'm going to stay conservative and estimate that 20,000 new systems (since some of the 1.5 million placements may not have hard drives) were placed in the last year.  At $400 per placement I'm estimating that this law is going to cost NJ businesses somewhere in the area of $8 million dollars!

Multifunctional Copier dealers and direct operations may also face some difficulties when they accept a trade in multifunctional copier systems from another manufacturer after the enactment of the Bill.  Dealers and Direct Branches that are not authorized for a certain manufacturer may not have the support of knowledge for deleting the data, and or replacing the hard drive with a new one.  As of right now the replacement of the hard drive seems the most popular option for dealers. However most of the hard drives in multifunctional copiers also have an operating system on them, thus the Dealer or the Direct Branch will have to buy a new drive from a competitor and install the new drive in the old multifunctional copier in order to return the copier back to the leasing company.  The dealer would then return the old drive back to the customer for destruction, however this model may not comply with the new A1238 when it is passed and remember that this will only be for new installs. Dealers & Direct Branches most likely will need to adapt and be very careful when taking in other manufacturers devices or the customer may have to call in the old supplier to make sure the system complies with the new law.

All in all I could think of 10 or more items the State of New Jersey should be concerned about like more jobs, better roads, less traffic, less crime, less property taxes, lower toll roads, less pollution, less school taxes and less politicians.  Way to go NEW JERSEY!

-=Good Selling=-