# notes --- - [[razor-and-blades pricing model]] - [[{2.3a1a} enshittification of physical products]] # summary --- Printer manufacturers have a long history of taking advantage of their customers through their [[razor-and-blades pricing model]], particularly with cheap inkjet printers and [[{2.1b1a} artificial limitations create a user-hostile businesses|artificial limitations]] put on their ink cartridges. This has happened, over time, by doing things like selling half-full cartridges, creating calibration tests that use absurd amounts of ink, and minimizing competition in what Doctorow calls the “synergy of anti-user engineering and anti-competition lawyering”. An especially egregious example of this was when HP pushed a “security update” in March 2016; five months later, the update activated a feature that could “detect and reject all third-party ink cartridges”. This came after a security researcher found that, by hiding code in a malicious document, he could hack the OS of HP printers when the document was printed, effectively using the printer as a gateway to networks and private information. (Unclear whether this particular security concern was addressed by HP.) Now, Doctorow says, HP is challenging “the basis of private property itself” with its Instant Ink program, which requires a monthly subscription for ink based on pages printed; if you stop paying, your printer stops working, even if you signed up for HP’s “Free for Life” program, which is, of course, no longer free. The Instant Ink scheme is discussed in-depth in [[Warzel, Charlie - 2023 - My Printer is Extorting Me|Charlie Warzel’s ‘My Printer is Extorting Me’]]. Although I’ve phrased it as “[[{2.1b} we accumulate so much, but we own very little]]”, Doctorow says explicitly that we don’t own *anything* anymore. If you’re connected to the [[{2.1b1a1} we’re living on the internet of shit|internet of shit]], the manufacturer of those products will be inching closer and closer to being the only ones who own anything, leaving the rest of us to be simple licensors. # highlights --- > When your customers reject your products, you can always win their business back by depriving them of the choice to patronize a competitor. >For would-be robber-barons, "smart" gadgets are a moral hazard, an irresistible temptation to use those smarts to reconfigure the very nature of private property, such that only companies can truly own things, and the rest of us are mere licensors, whose use of the devices we purchase is bound by the ever-shifting terms and conditions set in distant boardrooms… the legal fiction that you don't own anything is used to force you to arrange your affairs to benefit corporate shareholders at your own expense.