Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit - AiO devices won't scan or fax without ink, and plaintiffs say IT giant illegally withheld that info from buyers

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 668 points –
Judge denies HP's request to dismiss printer lockdown suiit
theregister.com

Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit - AiO devices won't scan or fax without ink, and plaintiffs say IT giant illegally withheld that info from buyers::AiO devices won't scan or fax without ink, and plaintiffs say IT giant illegally withheld that info from buyers

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Am I the only one who thinks it's crazy that the only grounds they have are that HP didn't disclose that their All-In-Ones won't let you scan or fax without ink and not, you know, the fact that they do that in the first place? It should be illegal to disable critical functions of a device simply because an unrelated function is temporarily unavailable. There's no technical reason HP is doing this other than, "fuck you, buy more ink."

Unfortunately this is the difference between illegal and unethical, and I don't gather that HP cares much about ethics. Hopefully right-to-repair laws will cover these cases in the future too.

It's anti-consumer, but I guess that just falls under unethical for now

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I recently had a printer to configure (IT) that was HP, and it needed an internet connection and registration to print over USB (well, at all); guess what? Dead ethernet port. Now (even with a working USB) the printer is just landfill food waiting to reach our bloodstream in a few years time. I fucking hate love HP!

The last and only printer that I bought from HP worked well and didn’t pull any shenanigans, it was a Laserjet 5L.

Since then, feedback from colleagues and what I’ve seen from reviews and tech communities put me off buying HP again. Between their cloud printing, their inkjet cartridge verification and the USB ports covered in stickers and now this…

Yeah HP is a disaster.

They used to make good calculators too, including a financial model so good that I bought an Android emulator.

I still have a LaserJet 4000N in service (circa 1997 - same era as the 5L) and it's a workhorse that never dies. Once upon a time, HP did take pride in their products. Even then, though, their toner cartridges were abusively overpriced - they just hadn't yet figured out how to prevent 3rd party competition.

I mean, you can sell a shitty product, that's not a crime, the crime is the false advertising or if it is a danger to people

Imagine in the future, your car just stopped working entirely and lock you out because your heated-seats subscription expired.

Canon did this to me years ago. Maybe 15. I haven't given one cent to Canon since, and I was a big fan at the time with their cameras and such.

Fucking greedy assholes

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