'My Printer Is Extorting Me', Complains Subscriber to HP's 'Instant Ink' Program - Slashdot

I discovered an error message on my computer indicating that my HP OfficeJet Pro had been remotely disabled by the company.

My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless by Hewlett-Packard, a tech corporation with a$28 billion market cap at the time of writing, because I had failed to make a monthly payment for a service intended to deliver new printer cartridges that I did not yet need....

Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, "Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels].

To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges."

"Nobody told me that if I canceled, then all those cartridges would stop working," complains another owner of an HP printer cited in the article.

But the article ultimately concludes that the printer's shakedown is "just one example of how digital subscriptions have permeated physical tech so thoroughly that they are blurring the lines of ownership.