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HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#301

Post by brewdad »

torstenvl wrote: post #203
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way HP gets away with this, because people just accept this kind of behaviour please name a situation in the past 50 years where a conpany went under or lost at least 10% of their revenue from'peiple not accepting' this behaviour

Netflix is down by a lot. Some of that may be due to temporary outlook during the COVID pandemic. However, it's still down by more than 10% from a pre-lockdown stock price of ~380.00 in February 2020.

What behavior are people punishing Netflix for exactly?

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#302

Post by rafark »

hedora wrote: post #300
gameman144 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think prison time is even what's needed here, I think these issues would resolve themselves if corporate fines were continually issued, rather than one-off lawsuits. For instance, a standing ruling that if your printer stops being able to print for no reason other than a contract breach, then the hardware is eligible for a refund. We don't need to put CEOs in prison for making consumer-hostile decisions, we j…

The fine would have to be akin to a corporate death penalty, so that the CEO would never work again. Ideally, it would also pierce the veil of limited liability, so they’d be stuck in court for the next few decades. For this case, computing back: 94M printers are sold per year. HP’s market cap is $29 billion. So, fine them $1000 per printer they sold that has any sort of anti-third-party ink mechanism, payable direct…

“So, fine them $1000 per printer they sold that has any sort of anti-third-party ink mechanism, payable direct to consumer. (This seems about right to me. It’s less than 10x the retail price of a printer.)”

Did I read this correct? Do consumer printers cost over $10k where you live?

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#303

Post by brewdad »

bluescrn wrote: post #231
mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

Prison is excessive. But how about some sort of environmental levy on any device prematurely 'bricked', or disposed of before reaching a certain lifespan. Including those bricked by server shutdowns, or by the inevitable failure of non-replaceable batteries. Perhaps even those designed to be somewhat fragile but not economically repairable - thinking of all the phones and tablets discarded due to cracked screens.

Isn’t an environmental levy just a fine? Maybe prison is excessive but there needs to be a way to punish bad actors personally on an individual level. It’s clear that current corporate level fines aren’t effective.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#304

Post by RedNifre »

rqtwteye wrote: post #182
mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

Make them pay the fines personally. They take credit and make big money when employees do the right thing, so let's make it a two way street. Once their net worth gets wiped, maybe they will get the message.

This does not work, they have insurance against this.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#305

Post by cydonian_monk »

wongarsu wrote: post #58
DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

Did you know Brother makes really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long, happy, life? And their drivers aren't user hostile? This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.

Or buy a laser printer. They cost a bit more upfront, but a single toner cartridge lasts ages (and won't dry out or get used up in cleaning cycles), the printers are generally much more robust and longer lasting, and because laser printing isn't as patent-encumbered there's more actual competition and less outright user-hostile behavior.

Even they're not exempt from being messed with. I had an HP color laser printer which, when purchased, would print on any paper size that would fit in the printer. (Specifically used it to print to US Legal Size.) A firmware update some years back disabled printing to anything larger than US Letter Sized.

I now own a Brother printer that is perfectly happy to print to larger paper.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#307

Post by LeonB »

mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

While I support the notion of a lengthy spell of contemplation inside the walls of a prison for all CEOs of printer companies — even prior to this cartridge issue — I cannot help but feel that anything short of summary execution is excusable for the engineer or engineers who were responsible for the logic and error messages pertaining to “PC Load Letter”.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#308

Post by emodendroket »

torstenvl wrote: post #183
emodendroket wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one would probably be making this practice illegal in the first place, which, as far as I can tell, it isn't. Putting the cart before the horse to worry about who's liable for doing something legal.

Not my practice area, and I don't know all the facts. But if they sold printers and later disable those printers, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable to treat that as a fraud or swindle in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341, or as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under 15 U.S.C. § 45. If this were anything other than tech - if, say, IKEA sold you a bed frame that disintegrated the moment you used a non-IKEA mattress…

Right, it doesn’t seem quite analogous if you can resolve the problem by getting the approved ink again. Which is the case here.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#309

Post by ezst »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #255
makeitdouble wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations. This is a really good situation for actual voting, like actual political action to have regulation, instead of pretend voting. HP probably doesn't give a damn about the HN crowd, it won't affect their business line in the little, so there's no signaling here. And assuming Brother gets enough of a loyal following, they can now (probably already ar…

Hard disagree. This is how Chrome won the browser wars - people ask their nerdy cousin which browser to use. The market of HN is small, but the market power is large. Also, I guarantee you people here make large corporate purchases for things like printers, networking equipment - stuff HP cares about.

How ironic, the very thing OP warned against happened to Chrome: being now a monopoly it pushes very uncool stuff and no amount of geeks can undo that.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#310

Post by dack »

rafark wrote: post #302
hedora wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fine would have to be akin to a corporate death penalty, so that the CEO would never work again. Ideally, it would also pierce the veil of limited liability, so they’d be stuck in court for the next few decades. For this case, computing back: 94M printers are sold per year. HP’s market cap is $29 billion. So, fine them $1000 per printer they sold that has any sort of anti-third-party ink mechanism, payable direct…

“So, fine them $1000 per printer they sold that has any sort of anti-third-party ink mechanism, payable direct to consumer. (This seems about right to me. It’s less than 10x the retail price of a printer.)” Did I read this correct? Do consumer printers cost over $10k where you live?

i think you have the proportion backwards

i think he is saying $1000 = 10 x (retail price of printer). which would mean the retail price of a printer is $100

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