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Printer The Courts

Canon Sued For $5 Million For Disabling Scanner When Printer Runs Out of Ink (techspot.com) 146

Posted by msmash from the new-lows dept.
couchslug writes: Canon, best nown for manufacturing camera equipment and printers for business and home users, is being sued for not allowing customers to use the scan or fax functions in multi-function devices if the ink runs out on numerous printer models. David Leacraft filed a class action lawsuit against Canon USA, alleging the company engaged in deceptive marketing and unjust enrichment practices.
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Canon Sued For $5 Million For Disabling Scanner When Printer Runs Out of Ink More

Canon Sued For $5 Million For Disabling Scanner When Printer Runs Out of Ink

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  • Printing - self-refill = massive ripoff (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @09:47AM (#61902743) Journal

    If you must print, you must have a printer that lets you refill your own ink, officially or unofficially, or you're just getting egregiously ripped off at a level the home user should not attempt to sustain.

    • Re:Printing - self-refill = massive ripoff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:05AM (#61902805) Homepage

      There are two rules of printing

      1. You choose an inkjet printer and it is used so frequently a laser would have been cheaper

      2. you choose an inkjet printer and it is used so infrequently that you waste all your ink cleaning the heads and a laser would have been cheaper.

      I spent under 200GBP and have a multi function duplex colour networked laser printer with full PostScript interpreter. It doesn't do photos well, but I can go online and have genuine photo prints delivered to my door next day. If I am more impatient I can get in the car and go to the store and get it same day. If you do lots of photo printing then a dyesub printer is a much better choice anyway.

      TL;DR if you buy anything that uses ink unless you have specialist requirements your are a mug.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zarhan ( 415465 )

        1. You choose an inkjet printer and it is used so frequently a laser would have been cheaper

        There's at least one exception to this rule. Namely Epson Claria printers. I bought a PX720WD around five years ago or so. In total, I've went through about two full (black) ink cartridges and one of each color. I print stuff around once a month or so.

        The whole point of the entire product line and inks was to compete with lasers with low-volume printing. The heads and nozzles have *never* gotten stuck with me. I have

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hatchet ( 528688 )
          Epson also has EcoTank series - refillable inkjets.

        • The heads and nozzles have *never* gotten stuck with me. I have cleaned the heads *once* during this entire time.

          I think this can depend on your environment. When I was living in a location where the RH averaged around 20%-40%, printer heads would dry out and clog if not used once every 2-4 weeks (Lexmark, Brother and Epson).

          Since relocating to a coastal location with a much higher RH I've only had to do it on the Brother printer which has sat unused for 2 years.

          Note on the Epson designed to "compete with lasers with low-volume printing". My Lexmark Pro900 sold with similar promises. I don't know what crap Lexmark

      • I can't really agree. I have an old Canon PIXMA and had another PIXMA before it, totalling about 14 years Both ran on knockoff cartridges that work well enough with zero blockage and about 1â/cardridge. While the canon sized cardridges are painfully small for any sustained printing, nozzle cleaning (manual and automatic) are far between. I do miss my laser printer, not enough to be worth replacing

      • I am disappointed at how long it took me to come to the same conclusion. Bought a Brother laser MFC at Sam’s Club last month after being ripped off by HP for far too long. Having color with the inkjet was nice but for less than 10 pages total printing per month the damn thing just kept causing problems. Came to peace with the fact that I can drive 15 minutes to a place where they can do color prints when I need them.

        I also have to say how much better the wife-approval-factor is with the Brother it

        • Bought a Brother laser MFC at Sam’s Club ... it just works and is easy to use compared to the HP.

          I have a friend with a Brother Color Laser All-in-One (can't remember the model) and he's very happy with it, though driver updates were/are a little cumbersome. I almost got the same, but it was too large for where I needed to put it. Instead, I got an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw from Amazon for $398 (on sale, summer 2017) and it's been great.

        • As for Canon, I think they need much more than $5 million in damages to bat an eye.

          To be fair, if this is $5Million PER CART SOLD then I think it is probably reasonable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by boskone ( 234014 )

        Same. I'm in year 10 or 15 of just telling my casual user friends that print 30 pages a year to just buy a cheap brother laser printer. None of them use color anyway.

      • There are two rules of printing

        1. You choose an inkjet printer and it is used so frequently a laser would have been cheaper

        2. you choose an inkjet printer and it is used so infrequently that you waste all your ink cleaning the heads and a laser would have been cheaper.

        Yeah, this. Unless you're printing direct on CDs or doing some of the other specialized stuff mentioned later in this thread...

        My current printer is an HP color laser that was given to me for recycling after sitting under a desk in a dank musty basement gathering dust for years. It had the original cartridges in it, dated 2009 according to the status printout. Turned it on, first page came out streaky, after that, perfect. Smelled like an old toaster for a few days. The color carts were low, just recen

      • I have bought a couple of inkjet multi-function devices simply because it's the cheapest way to buy a scanner with a document feeder.

      • Model number?

      • Indeed. Black and white is fine for my printing needs and my laser printer was bought on clearance for $40. I print maybe 25-30 pages per year and have never needed to change the toner cartridge.

        I did buy a Canon all-in-one inkjet JUST for the scanner - paid $18 for it because that was far cheaper than a standalone scanner. The ink has long dried out but apparently this isn't one of the models that disables the scanning function when there's no ink. Obviously I know that the scanner is subsidized by ink

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by raynet ( 51803 )

        You need to print photos, you cannot afford photo quality laser printer.

      • I wish I would have paid attention to those two rules years ago. I'd use my inkjet printers so infrequently, yet they each seemed almost by design to be cartridge hungry. I remember my last ink-based printer was an Epson and I needed to print off some tax forms. It complained that I needed to go out and buy another $80+ worth of cartridges before it would print, so I tossed it into the recycle pile and replaced it with a Canon mf236n black and white laser. I've had it for a bit more than three years now and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        *sigh*

        Too late for me to have learned this lesson.

        Anyone want to buy an oldish Canon inkjet printer? Cheap!

    • Re:Printing - self-refill = massive ripoff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:38AM (#61902893)

      If you must print, you must have a printer that lets you refill your own ink, officially or unofficially, or you're just getting egregiously ripped off at a level the home user should not attempt to sustain.

      This wouldn't even be an issue if manufacturers and sellers all the way up and down the supply chain weren't allowed to externalize the true costs of what they're making and selling.

      As it is, in addition to externalizing the costs of goods through de-facto subscriptions and planned obsolescence, they're also passing on the costs of environmental damage and non-renewable resources to the rest of the planet. Future generations will likely pay with their very lives for our current economy's excesses.

      If we drove a stake through the heart of externalization, the vast majority of these shitty practices would simply go away, because they would be as unsustainable in the local short term as they are in the global long term.

      • If we drove a stake through the heart of externalization, the vast majority of these shitty practices would simply go away, because they would be as unsustainable in the local short term as they are in the global long term.

        I agree with that. It applies to a lot of industries. For example, it is convenient and cheap to package fresh produce in plastic, but there is a cost in disposing of that plastic, which is not paid for in the price of the goods, but more than likely in taxation. Or if the plastic is not properly disposed of, the price is poisoning the oceans and its inhabitants. I have no idea what a dead seabird costs.

        In order to get industries to shoulder the true costs of their production. including waste disposal or re

      • "This wouldn't even be an issue if manufacturers and sellers all the way up and down the supply chain weren't allowed to externalize the true costs of what they're making and selling."

        Do you believe car manufacturers are guilty of this by making you keep buying gas and maintenance?

    • Scanning = no ink needed = massive ripoff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:48AM (#61902935) Homepage

      If you must print, you must have a printer that lets you refill your own ink, officially or unofficially, or you're just getting egregiously ripped off at a level the home user should not attempt to sustain.

      The point here is that you should be able to scan regardless of whether the ink is full or empty, since scanning doesn't require ink.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quall ( 1441799 )

      I agree, but that's not even the problem here. The issue is that the scanner and fax-sending features are also disabled, and they don't use ink. So why are they disabled?

      I completely agree though. I printed 10 pages on my Epson printer before it determined that I needed new ink cartridge. The printer wouldn't even attempt to print because it had lockout, which I assume was based on how old the ink is. I tossed it into the garbage after that.

      Cheaper to just print at office max for a few dollars since I rarel

  • Wiat... what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @09:54AM (#61902761) Homepage

    FFS -- How did this come about?

    Please, someone, tell me this is a silly coding error, and not an actual decision made by an actual (??) human...

    • Re:Wiat... what? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:06AM (#61902809) Homepage

      I could see this going either way. It could be a conscious decision for a money grab, or it could just be a case of not having the features encapsulated enough. A fault from any one may create a blocking condition in their software until the fault is cleared.

      Years ago, I got an all-in-one for free that was going to be thrown out because there was a problem with one of the print heads. I just wanted the paperport scanning functionality, but the print head fault completely blocked the device from doing anything, as the only way to get to the menus would have been to clear the fault. The cost of repair wasn't worth it, so more content to the electronic scrap heap.

    • Let's see if they issue any firmware updates. If it's a silly coding error, they would quickly correct it - at least for newer models that display the problem.

    • Re:Wiat... what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:28AM (#61902865) Journal
      Many manufacturers do this, and have for some time. If they wanted to fix it, they could have done. Since they haven't, I think it's safe to say this is deliberate.

      • Many manufacturers do this, and have for some time. If they wanted to fix it, they could have done.

        It's not a bug, it's a feature.

        Pissing off a few nerds on Slashdot is just a cost of doing business.

      • "If they wanted to fix it, they could have done."

        True, but that costs $$$. And if the fix broke something else, they'd be on the hook. It could still have not been deliberate but they don't want to spend the money to fix the problem.

      • I think it's safe to say this is deliberate.

        You know, I do not mean to gush, but you are a personal role model of mine, Captain Obvious. Like remember that time you predicated that the sun would rise in the east, and it did! It totally did! 10 days in a row no less!

        I guess you can say you have had me as a fan ever since.

        See, I kind of thought it was an innocent mistake, but if you think it is deliberate, then hey, I could be wrong.

        Know what is cool? If you pulled something like this on a big company, they

    • Re:Wiat... what? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:33AM (#61903089) Homepage Journal

      It's no different from all the other printers that refuse to print black and white because you are out of colour ink.

      My advice is get a Brother laser printer, B&W or colour as suits your needs. They are extremely robust workhorses, like HP used to be. They don't care about refilled or third party cartridges, don't stop you printing B&W because the colour one ran out.

      If you need photo quality it's probably cheaper to just order prints online or at the local print shop.

      • Re:Wiat... what? (Score:4, Informative)

        by hankwang ( 413283 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @12:40PM (#61903333) Homepage

        The scanner function of Brother network printers is borked if you use Linux. Brother has linux drivers, but they don't work for recent Linux distros (Ubuntu/Mint 2018 and newer), based on experience with three different models of laser printer (old and new models).

        I wrote a cgi script on a LAN server running an older Linux version so that I can scan via the network. Maybe they fixed it in the last year; i didn't check for updates.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by deKernel ( 65640 )

          I'm running openSUSE 15.2, and the scanner "just works" for me. I just point Skanlite to the IP and voila. I have the same experience with my son's laptop running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Might want to see if you are having firewall issues on your box.

    • Please, someone, tell me this is a silly coding error, and not an actual decision made by an actual (??) human...

      An actual decision made by an actual human. Xerox has this neat thing where setting up one of their table top MFDs, the 3335dni, requires you to input a fax number. There is no way to bypass this. It's part of the on screen set up process.

      There's another part of the set up process where the instructions say if you want to bypass it you have to hit a particular button. Except the butto
    • I had an Epson RX700 and it would not allow to do anything by itself (it was capable of scanning to memory card, but also of working as a photo order print station, put a memory card and it could print thumbnails on A4, with tick boxes numbered 1, 2 and 3, and some barcodes, then you could place your order on the scanner and select the process option, and it would print the selected photos on photo paper in high quality as ordered), but at least that one would still scan when connected to a PC.

      I then got

    • Please, someone, tell me this is a silly coding error, and not an actual decision made by an actual (??) human...

      I think there is some kind of Evil Boss Olympics, which us plebs don't hear about. Contenders are marked on several criteria.

      1) Inventing new ways to extract money from customers, without actually delivering anything useful.

      2) Shunting profits into offshore accounts, so the taxman can't get their cut.

      3) Bribing people in government to prevent legislation being enacted that might harm profits.

      Feel free to add to the list.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      It was a decision made, but actual human might be more a matter of opinion. No doubt a suit stuffed with meat was involved.

    • and not an actual decision made by an actual (??) human...

      Of course not. This decision came about from someone in management.

  • The actual product (Score:5, Funny)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @09:56AM (#61902763)

    No, no, no. See, the product you're buying (renting) is the ink. The other stuff (the scanning/faxing features and the printer itself) is a bonus that you get for buying (renting) ink on a regular basis. Everyone else moved to the subscription business model so Canon is just following their lead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      Everyone else moved to the subscription business model

      Yeah, that may be a little off topic -- but can we pass a law preventing that being the only option?
      I do not want to pay a monthly subscription for every software that I use.

      • It's a double-edge sword. I've been around long enough to remember when you bought a piece of software and owned it outright until either the computer or the OS became incompatible. I miss certain piece of software that I used to use and I have old computers on the shelf just to be able to run a specific piece of software. Having been in the business of writing software and selling it, you have to keep swimming to stay alive. Companies like Adobe wanted to even out their revenue stream instead of having

    • Seems to me printers as an "ink subscription" were actually part of the select few who started the whole "subscription computing" trend 30+ years ago. It took a while for others to realize the average consumer was stupid enough to fall for it across the board.

  • Company motto: "Let's make the customer's life unnecessarily difficult"

    seriously, they had committee meetings to go over how they can implement strong arm tactics to the very hands that feed it

    at what point is it extortion? like some movie trope "...pay up for some ink or the scanner gets it..."

    fax you, Canon

  • and you still need to print a lot, It's best to buy a laser printer.

    There are plenty of cheap new, or cheap used printers, some of which don't even use proprietary cartridges, and almost never waste "ink" by having to clean themselves every few weeks or months. I think I saw some used laser printers for like $20.

    I don't print much and I haven't even printed at the library (where I print anything I need) in about 5 years.

    I still use my ancient printer/scanner/copier from about 15 years ago so scan to a file.

    • Sadly, I do not think it will be long before laser printers are also "upgraded" with this features. I have an old later printer myself; the problem I found is that software as no longer updated or maintained. After I had to reinstall Windows 10, I had trouble finding the drivers and scanning software. I had to reinstall Win 10 because MS decided the latest update could not use MBR and must use GPT even though was not presented as an option years ago when installed Win10.

      • I know it's a bit late, but you can "upgrade" your disk to GPT with a special tool mbr2gpt. I used it a few months ago and it worked fine, though I first had to "fix" my mbr with some other tool. Anyway google solved all my issues with this upgrade.

      • Software?

        No joke, but does it work on Linux? Printers never seem to go out of date on Linux. These days if you're on WSL, you could probably run the driver there and expose it as a network printer to the Windows host, or stick a $30 raspberry pi on the network nearby and use that to share the printer on the network.

        Scanning I don't know. Last scanner I had was a shitty HP6600 printer which was an awful printer but actually decent sheet feed scanner. Worked fine with SANE too.

    • and you still need to print a lot, It's best to buy a laser printer.

      And if you don't need to print at all and are just planning to use the scanning capability, you should be able to just buy whatever's cheapest.

      But that turns out not to be the case, since the scanning capability is turned off if the ink isn't there.

    • If you use a printer for templates as I do than 8.5x11 is extremely limiting. I used a 13x19 inkjet and there is nothing available in laser printer world that is comparable.

    • no, laser printers now have ways to screw you over that many didn't eight or more years ago.

      They come with tiny "starter cartridges" that have small amount of toner.

      They won't let you print in black when color runs low, because of tracking dots the government mandated because all citizens are criminals.

      They may not allow non-approved toner cartridges, and software updates on old printers that were fine in past might suddenly stop working or report empty when they're not!

      In short, all the major manufacturers

  • Aiming Low (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:05AM (#61902803) Journal
    They're suing for only $5 million! This isn't the 1960's. A multinational corporation could find $5 million in the couch cushions of the C level suite!

    They should at least sue for enough money to get everyone that owns one of these printers free ink.

    • They're suing for only $5 million! This isn't the 1960's. A multinational corporation could find $5 million in the couch cushions of the C level suite! They should at least sue for enough money to get everyone that owns one of these printers free ink.

      Came here to say pretty much the same thing, except you didn't go far enough IMHO. I think it should have been "get everyone that owns one of these printers a free replacement printer of their choice from any manufacturer along with two years' worth of consumables. As I keep posting here, (and I sometimes get downmodded for it), we need to get imaginatively and outrageously serious when it comes to punishing these fuckers who abuse their power and position.

      • Re:Aiming Low (Score:4)

        by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:30AM (#61902871) Journal
        I was trying to hint at the fact printer ink is so outrageously expensive that $5 million wouldn't come close to buying every plaintiff a single cartridge.

        Yeah, I agree. The damage Canon is doing in the marketplace is orders of magnitude greater than $5 million, and there should be punitive damages [wikipedia.org] on top of that.

      • I'd rather not generate environmental waste of replacing all those printers. Can we just say that Canon has to personally visit every customer and take care of upgrading the firmware for them without them having to waste time doing it themselves (which they may or may not get around to doing)?

    • It must be a misprint. Should say $5 Billion. I weighed the sponge at the bottom of my Canon inkjet before I threw it away. It weighed 28 ounces. I don't know what it weighed before it soaked-up all that ink but it still works out to $1200 of wasted ink.

  • Greedy motherfuckers.

    Just sayin'

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The printheads need to be primed constantly to keep ink from drying in the nozzles which would require throwing out the whole printer as the repair is usually not economical. This is by design. The cartridges are just so comically small and outrageously expensive that it runs the ink out within a year even with non-use. Leaving a cartridge empty and continuing to print equally runs the risk of damaging the printhead. Nevermind that they have a waste ink disposal sponge that if it fills up the printer st

    • Re:Can we add HP to the list? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:42AM (#61902917) Homepage

      The real reason is hidden tracking dots that you cannot see with the naked eye are printed to track anything you do back to your printer/serial/warrantycard.

      So you cannot print in black and white when color is out because little secret faint yellow dots are printed like a barcode to track you and if those are out then the ability to track you is lost which means your ability to print is no longer permitted.

      Their tracking > your right to print.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Why would they care about the tracking dots if you aren't printing in color? Governments pressured the printer vendors to do that for color printers so that they can trace forged bank notes and similar. But black-and-white printers don't support that feature, and there's also no plausible reason why a color printer printing only in black-and-white would need to do that, either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      You purchased an inkjet printer but only wanted to do black and white printing. That is about the dumbest stupidest thing you can possibly do in the world of printing. If you only want to print in black and white then you should *ONLY* be considering a laser printer. There are literally no exceptions to this rule.

      There is a local sailing club to which I donated my LaserJet 5L over a decade ago still going fine. The thing is 25 years old now and does a few sheets a week. Note I did replace the rollers and pi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        You purchased an inkjet printer but only wanted to do black and white printing.

        GP did not say that. GP wanted to retain the ability to print in black and white even after the color ink runs out.
        It is not so different from wanting to scan something even after your ink ran out.

  • and advise anyone in earshot against them because of this. I also advise anyone against HP inkjet devices because of their seemingly mandatory subscription plans. I've had an Epson desktop scanner for years and a B&W Samsung laser - before HP bought them for a few years. I got stung by a Canon multifunction, as a matter of fact, that did exactly what this lawsuit is about - ink ran out and it wouldn't let me scan. And that's when I went out and spent more on the scanner than that printer cost, and t
    • I have told all my friends for years not to buy inkjets. There are still a few who "need" color only not to really use color. If someone really needs color, I advise them on color laser. Sure they cost twice as much but they save that money easily in ink costs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by wwphx ( 225607 )
        Some people definitely need color, but far fewer than actually think they do. They'd save so much money by not buying one and making the occasional run to Walgreens or the office store. I'm a serious photographer, received a 13x17 five ink Canon printer as part of a package deal about five years ago when I bought a full-frame DSLR. It's still sitting in its box. The fifth ink is a second shade of black: CMYK and a second K.
        • One of the worst things about ink is how quickly the cartridges go bad if they are not used. Your Canon printer might need an expensive new set of cartridges even though you never used it once.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @10:20AM (#61902843)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I blame Carly. Pre-Carly, HP stuff was built like a tank, lasted forever, and worked with everything.

      Now it's just a means to sell ink.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        I blame Carly. Pre-Carly, HP stuff was built like a tank, lasted forever, and worked with everything.

        Sounds like someone who never tried to print double-sided 11x17 content on the LaserJet 8100 series and similar. 100% jam rate unless you sent through a single pair of pages at a time and waited for it to finish ejecting the paper before sending the next pair. I saw this with multiple HP 81xx printers, with multiple duplexer units, etc. And even for normal printing, they jammed constantly. We didn't go a month without having a technician in there doing some repair to those things.

        And don't get me starte

  • I have always been contemplating some form of movement that would end up in the creation of open source software/hardware for devices like these.

    The Chinese could provision the hardware, we users download the software and completely tame these thieving companies as a result.

    There's more complex opensource software out there saving lots of people headaches. This is one area that still needs to be "conquered."

    • HP doesn't even offer their shitty software as a stand alone package, it has to come from the Windows store. They do offer a stand alone driver package but its intentionally made difficult to use. It extracts the driver files somewhere and doesn't run any setup or open a readme. Turns out the files go into \windows\temp\$random_string which you can then point windows towards. No way in hell is this printer going to connect to the internet.

      • HP doesn't even offer their shitty software as a stand alone package, it has to come from the Windows store.

        I'm not sure how this applies to printer drivers right now, but Microsoft's most recent driver development guidelines for Windows literally requires [microsoft.com] that the basic driver be a tiny .inf file, and that "any optional component packages that do not contain core driver functionality are separated from the base driver package" and "be distributed through the Microsoft Store." So I think that, even if this still isn't mandatory for literally all drivers, it's definitely going to become so with Windows 11 and be

  • Canon, best nown for manufacturing camera equipment and printers for business and home users...

    Not enough ink for the 'k' in 'known' sadly.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Good. Now can someone sue Verizon for breaking my tablet from watching videos over home wifi on streaming services and YouTube after I quit their account, well after the 2 year requirement?

    • You might be able to reimage it, I've heard of people doing so with Fire tablets and the like.
  • Reminds me of the old Xerox copier days when I paid more for the machine than a team of scribes would have cost lol. I really disagree with how the industry is going but it is doing much the same as everyone else.
  • The associated software for it has been telling me it's out of all four toners for the past two years. When the black actually did run out a year ago it only took the software a few months to tell me again it was empty. I only printed maybe 50 pages at the most. Every time I would print the black toner progress bar would decrease slightly. I'm sure the software is purposely incorrectly reporting toner usage to get me to buy more toner. I miss my LaserJet IV ... while not color it was the best printer I ever

  • $5 Million is nowhere near enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mnemotronic ( 586021 ) <mnemotronic@@@gmail...com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:38AM (#61903107) Homepage Journal
    It's not even a slap on the wrist. It's more like a friendly elbow jostle between complicit scoundrels. "Good one there eh? A fiver then. I've got the cash in the car plus your bonus for making it look like a penalty. Right as roses we are now mate?"

    • Indeed. It should be $5B for every model that does this.
      Thankfully, my CanoScan A4 scanner works fine with Linux and macOS. No special drivers are needed.

  • What happens to such law suits ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @12:36PM (#61903315) Journal
    The company offers a pittance, 5$ a head coupon or so. Lawyers calculate how much the entire class of victims they represent would get "compensation" if every last one of them actually get it. Take one third of that money. They also bill inflated charges from the settlement and take that cash too. The class of victims will be offered $1 or $2. No body will bother to collect.

    A simple change would fix the issue. Lawyers get 33% of the actual benefit that is actually collected by the class of victims, and that includes all their billable hours and all their fees. First it will cut trivial suits. Second there will be some interest to actually deliver the benefits to the victims.

    When Britain was shipping its convicts to Australia, it changed the payment from "per convict boarding the ship" to "per convict disembarking alive in Australia". The rate of convicts dying in transit fell by orders of magnitude.

  • ... unjust enrichment practices.

    There's a software version of this, such as a Android firmware update not working until it installs 16 instances of third-party pay-ware/cripple-ware (Spotify, MS Outlook, MS office, Youtube Music, Google Play Books, Google Duo [update] and 7 Samsung compete-with-Google applications). One can uninstall these (after leaving a negative review, of course) but it's monetizing users instead of charging the device manufacturers the full cost of 3 years of OS support.

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