Slashdot Mirror
Patents Are A Big Part Of Why We Can't Own Nice Things (eff.org)
An anonymous reader shares an EFF article: Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them. The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed its own precedent allowing patent holders to restrict how consumers can use the products they buy. That decision, and the precedent it relied on, departs from long established legal rules that safeguard consumers and enable innovation. When you buy something physical -- a toaster, a book, or a printer, for example -- you expect to be free to use it as you see fit: to adapt it to suit your needs, fix it when it breaks, re-use it, lend it, sell it, or give it away when you're done with it. Your freedom to do those things is a necessary aspect of your ownership of those objects. If you can't do them, because the seller or manufacturer has imposed restrictions or limitations on your use of the product, then you don't really own them. Traditionally, the law safeguards these freedoms by discouraging sellers from imposing certain conditions or restrictions on the sale of goods and property, and limiting the circumstances in which those restrictions may be imposed by contract. But some companies are relentless in their quest to circumvent and undermine these protections. They want to control what end users of their products can do with the stuff they ostensibly own, by attaching restrictions and conditions on purchasers, locking down their products, and locking you (along with competitors and researchers) out. If they can do that through patent law, rather than ordinary contract, it would mean they could evade legal limits on contracts, and that any one using a product in violation of those restrictions (whether a consumer or competitor) could face harsh penalties for patent infringement.
Patents are also why we can own nice things.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The more it governs non-commercial activity the more it will be ignored. We are two generations in raising kids that think copyright is a joke and patents are mere excuses to sue.
If the Supreme Court rules against the patent-holder, they will still be allowed to use contract law to get what they want.
So, instead of selling ink cartridges at a 20% discount to customers who agree to "no reuse" terms, they will rent the cartridges and sell the ink, essentially offering a "cartridge and ink supply only" service contract.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This should have never made it through Slashdot's initial screening. We've heard all the arguments for and against patents already.
No patent in the world can restrict me from doing what I see fit with the things that I own. At worst, when it comes to resale, it can only affect how I do it.
goodbye jiffy lube hello $60-$100 dealer oil change.
Just be lucky it's not a dealer with an $100 minute change for any service even just to get an estimate.
Look, if I offered to sell you a home, but after putting down a downpayment you read the contract and it turned out to be a hundred year lease, you would be damn upset.
But that's what the software people do. They are actually renting licenses with all sorts of secret provisions while the salesmen are using the word 'buy' or 'sell'.
Every time you 'buy a license', it is you RENTING a license. It may be a 'lifetime' license, but that is what it is.
The only people that actually 'buy' software or music are the people that buy the copyrights.
We need a simple law that clarifies this point. Out law the use of the words 'buy' or 'sell' when dealing with a license - including physical products that include a necessary license, such as those evil John Deere Tractors.
Then when some shmuck tries to sell a John Deere tractor, arrest them for fraud, as they are actually renting it to you for an unspecified amount of time. If they want to use the words 'buy' or sell', they have to include free-as-in-speech software on it. Otherwise, it is fraud, punishable by a fine.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
what about renting = the landlord pays for service and upkeep?
Will they be so willing to say you are just renting the software / car / device / etc?
If I don't own it then you can pay all associated recycling fees for the device, if it's left in places that are not appropriate you will be responsible for removal of it, if it's stolen you need to provide the replacement and you need to pay the insurance for it as well, since you own it, not me.
It doesn't get stolen from me, it gets stolen from you. Since I paid for the use of the product within a warranty period, you can ensure I have it for that time regardless what happens to it.
Sounds far fetched? So does the rest of the shit you guys are trying to do.
John Deere tractors are already there.
It's not like these laws would be regularly enforced. It seems like it's just one way more to have control over the population. If the government wants an individual in custody for whatever reason, this would simply open up a path to investigate that individual and justify an arrest, even if they are law-abiding in every other aspect of their life.
That's exactly what John Deere is doing, in essence, with their "ownership agreement".
Pfft, that's old news. Try taking a BMW anywhere but the dealer. The damn thing can detect a non-BMW *battery* and lock itself out :/
The vehicle has to be serviced at the dealer or the warranty is void. Saw that one myself just recently.
There. I said it. Ok, that wasn't very deep was it...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Software is a written work like any other - it should be protected via time-limited copyright and that's it. This would go a long way to clearing the courts of patent trolls.
This is direct consequence of "Intellectual Property" shenanigans: once they pushed their way in immaterial world, they are now coming back to real world for our things, and finally for us ("our asses"). Someone smart here on Slashdot once wrote that concepts of intellectual property and real property are inherently incompatible and existence of one excludes possibility of the other. I tend to agree, and to add that concept of intellectual property goes against wider concept of freedom as well. It already killed freedom of speech, for instance. IP is modern slavery, only depersonalized and distributed. Obviously it was never meant to become what it is today - it happened only because it succeeded too much, and burned through to the other side, becoming self-sustaining source of unchecked power.
The world is much more than software. I've worked at startups with easy to copy products that took years to prove out. Everything is easy once you know the trick of how to do it,
BINGO! That is it exactly.
An historian observes that a dead patent owner cannot grasp for power. Will their intitled inheritors roll-dem-bones again ? Prolly not! Masturbative cowards taken as a class ! Don' wanna die young and kicked into the gutter. Street shoot-out? Long overdue with dibs to the yeomanry. Aggressive consumer self-interest kinda discourages the entire tyrannous meme. Property is a privilege granted by the culture for its own benefit, not an individual power to be exploited as-seen-fit , backed by the Gub'mnt gun-barrel! Got that ? Need a postcard palsy ?
How would this affect liability. If an owner uses a product in a way not intended by the manufacturer is the manufacturer liable for the damages? I'm not talking about product defects but the use of products not intended by the manufacturer, i.e. using a lawnmower as a hedge trimmer. It seems like there should be some kind of protection for the manufacturer in these cases. I'm all for using the product as you see fit as long as you don't come after the manufacturer when it cuts your dick off.
Guess what part gets replaced next.
We need a simple law that clarifies this point. Out law the use of the words 'buy' or 'sell' when dealing with a license - including physical products that include a necessary license, such as those evil John Deere Tractors.
Then when some shmuck tries to sell a John Deere tractor, arrest them for fraud, as they are actually renting it to you for an unspecified amount of time. If they want to use the words 'buy' or sell', they have to include free-as-in-speech software on it. Otherwise, it is fraud, punishable by a fine.
We don't need an additional law for that, we just a need a judge and/or jury to decide that it counts as fraud.
difference is when you buy a house and screw something up it's on you to fix it yourself or pay someone. sometimes you might even get fined by your town or thrown in jail
with a lot of this stuff people buy and then break it with cheap supplies or bad parts and then run to the manufacturer demanding warranty service. i've used cheap off brand toner in the 90's and when i got rid of it my HP Laserjet printers suddenly stopped jamming every other day.
It's insane that people are unable to get treated because they have a choice of food or medicine. Ridiculous. Patents enable this corruption.
Would be nice to have a summary of what Lexmark were doing and how they're actually applying patent law to do so.
Mag-Moss: Learn it. Love it. Shove it down your lying dealer's throat.
While they are constantly trying to gut Mag-Moss and work around it with special tools that independents can't afford to stay up with, they still have zero legal power to void your warranty for having your car worked on by someone other than the dealer. They do, however, do an excellent job of convincing people that they can do it.
The other one they like to try is convincing you of is that your whole warranty is void because you made some modification (e.g. lowered suspension, replaced the radio, etc..).
I do with it as I d*mn well please. If not, I just won't buy it!
Ever heard of the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act? Per federal statute, if you provide a full warranty at all, you are not allowed to require servicing only at dealer facilities. If the warrantor disclaims coverage due to alleged improper parts or servicing, even self servicing, he must prove that the outside servicing actually caused damage.
That issue is already well covered by terms declaring that such use voids the warranty.
The remedy is in all our hands. Simply don't buy (or "buy") such products at all. The owners and managers of the corporations that sell them are in business for exactly one reason: to get as much of your money as quickly as possible, with an acceptably low risk of being imprisoned. (Technically known as "business").
If we all stopped buying Lexmark products we would soon be hearing less of this nonsense. And please don't tell me that all printer manufacturers (or even most of them) would join in solidarity with Lexmark. They are about as loyal to one another as a bunch of sharks.
"One thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly sow and her cub is getting between a businessman and a dollar bill".
- Edward Abbey ("A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”)
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
A patent holder, trademark, copyright, or other intellectual property should have to pay an annual tax on that property as if it's an asset. This tax would allow the holder to self-determine the value of the asset (as the tax would be based on it's self-determined value) and thus set the min/max fines for infringement. If a company or person allows the tax to lapse, then the work should enter the public domain. That would do two things 1) fully fund (at least) intellectual property courts, and 2) discourage long term holding of less valuable intellectual property.
Capitalism can become a kind of disease. Just like cancer, capitalism tries to expand its domain and take over everything that it touches. So here we have capitalism using patents to try to restrict the degree of ownership that a purchaser is allowed. The medical industry takes this sort of thing to new depths. The current Hep- C drug costs $80,000 in the US for the usual course of treatment. In India the identical drug costs $200... The fact that people in the US die for lack of that drug does not seem to bother the medical industry one bit. That is what patents and capitalism can do for you.
That's the only valid response to this whole subject. I buy something, it's MINE. Unless I'm reverse-engineering it to copy it and sell the copies, the manufacturer should stay the hell out of it. This applies to everyone across the board, including software (I'm looking at YOU, Miscreant-o-soft; get your dirty little fingers out of our computers, NOT YOURS!). How many of you are aware that farmers who own John Deere equipment are not allowed to service and repair them themselves, for instance? Auto manufacturers would love legal precedent like this, essentially putting a lock on the hood of your car or truck, and suing you if you so much as changed the oil without taking it to an 'authorzied service center' (extreme example, yes, but don't think they wouldn't welcome it). So far as selling something of mine to someone else: also nobodys' damned business. Do any of you really think the police want to have their time and limited resources wasted because they have to have a 'Craigslist Squad' to track down people selling used electronics? Bah. All of this is just another symptom of 'capitalism gone bad'. Just like an otherwise benign micro-organism in your gut, you feed it the wrong things or too much of the right things, it grows out of control and becomes a health problem. Things like in TFA are exactly like that: corporate America has been fed an improper diet for too long and is now becoming malignant. Time for for some legal and/or legislative antifungal.
This is pretty much what turned me off on IP law in general.
Copyright law and Patent Law are part of a bargain, a deal made where in the general public gives up some fundamantal rights, such as the right to copy things, (which you had the right to do before copyright law limited your rights to do so).
The theory is that in exchange for giving up these rights, on a temporary basis, the good that comes from it is that the public gets access to a much larger library of public domain over time. That is literally the bargain. You give up your pre-existing rights to do what you want with your media and recordings and whatever, in the hope that in the longer term, more such works exist since creators have protection.
This bargain was always supposed to be two sided. You give up your right to copy and a fair bit of tax money that goes into enforcement, and in exchange, after a brief period, the works become public domain.
Look how that worked out. As soon as the public was locked into this deal, powerful IP mills started immediately eating away at their side of the deal, extending copyright duration into infinity, consolodating power, making it incredibly one-sided. At this point I'm willing to say that the old IP deals need complete cancellation, that replacing it with literally nothing would be better for the public.
Look, if I offered to sell you a home, but after putting down a downpayment you read the contract and it turned out to be a hundred year lease, you would be damn upset
Haha, are you making a subtle joke here? Because in the vast majority of this nation, this is literally in the small print of house sales and is actually how it works. If you're surprised at this, then take another look at your small print. :)
from the /. summary:
When you buy something physical -- a toaster, a book, or a printer, for example -- you expect to be free to use it as you see fit: to adapt it to suit your needs, fix it when it breaks, re-use it, lend it, sell it, or give it away when you're done with it. Your freedom to do those things is a necessary aspect of your ownership of those objects.
Yet, whenever AirbnB is discussed here, a significant contingent espouses precisely the opposite principle, that the owner should not be free to use as he sees fit.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Go talk to a lawyer. They will tell you that a) That's not how the law works. b) It works on a buyer be ware basis, c) it would have to be a Supreme Court judge to make it stick and d) laugh in your face.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
When was the last time Ford, Smith&Wesson or even a maker of ammunition were sued when someone was killed by their products?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
You have a solid point. To add to what you say:
A) Patents are anti-capitalism. And so are similar IP issues, such as copyrights. Patents were created under mercantilism, and they were not for inventors, but for friends of the king. Later when capitalism came along, we needed some way to encourage invention in a free market society where competition was essential. They could have set up a simple 10% fee structure, but instead went for an unlimited patent system. Big mistake. But capitalism was strong enough to handle it in most of the early cases. But in time the patent holders expanded their power, particularly in life or death situations (pay what we demand if you want this life saving medicine - or die).
B) The world has changed significantly since those IP deals were created, speeding up. What used to take 10 years now takes 1. The real time that would be appropiate for those licenses is measured in more like 5 years, not 50. I.E. most of the honest profit is made in the first 5 years, after that it's dishonest prevention of innovation.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I've worked with lawyers enough already, thank you very much.
a) It depends on how the fraud laws are written. If the law says something like, "only the following specific things are fraud", then yes, it would require changing the law. If, however, the law is general, such as saying something like "any deception regarding the terms of a transaction", then that law can be applied to a case such as this one. To be honest, I don't care enough to look them up, and the specifics will vary by state anyway.
b) As far as I know, "buyer beware" is not a law. In fact, if that were the case, fraud wouldn't be illegal.
c) Maybe to make it a binding precedent across the entire country, but I doubt the Supreme Court would accept a case like this, so any lower court rulings would stand.
The manufacturers should be forced to repay the money as soon as we no longer have use of the product.
$100? Are you insane?
Volvo dealers charge about $400 for an oil change..
Patents also encourage the creation of that medicine in the first place. Don't forget that no company is going to invest billions in the research and development of a drug when the first buyer can simply pop the pill into a spectrum analyzer, figure out what's in it, and, because there's no patent protection, make their own without spending billions; which, of course, enables them to sell it for pennies, while the company that actually did the work must sell for dollars.
Does it suck that companies must charge a higher price to cover their R&D costs? Sure it does, but if their ability to recover those costs was not guaranteed, many fewer would bother. Do some companies abuse their monopoly position? Sure they do, but many also do not; it's not inherent in the position.
How does Roche ensure that they, at a minimum, recoup the billions they spend developing a new drug, absent a patent? One way would be to charge billions for the first pill; that way, when someone reverse engineers it to make their day-one generic, Roche has already recouped their costs and can afford to compete on price. Can you think of another way? And, if not, who do you think is going to pay billions for that first pill? I'd venture to guess, nobody; but your shortsightedness blinds you to reality.
All of that said, drug companies are scum and, really, the worst of the worst in this regard. Really, they're the only entities which worse represent the concept of the patent than patent trolls.
Shortening patent terms to a year or so, as is more in line with how long it takes to get a product to market today versus how long it took in 1790 when those terms were set, would alleviate that issue to a large degree.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Interesting ideas. My mind is being kinda rented though, by all the people trying to sell me stuff.
So this just whooshes right over my head.
The First Sale Doctrine was a legal ruling to prevent these kinds of restrictions to consumers of products under copyrights and/or trademarks. The basic concept is that once the product is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the product in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. Regarding trademarks, it immunizes resellers from infringement liability as long as the product has not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
But there is no legal precedent to patents. I think a good legal argument can be made that the First Sale Doctrine should apply to lawfully traded goods which are under patent.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Now you never fully own things. They are always co-owned by sellers/IP owners... You need to share your former rights with them. You must agree how will you share the thing you bought - if you want to use it, you can, if you want to fix it, only they can, if you don't need it then you must destroy it or return (you cannot resell many things like games and such)
You don't really own things anymore. Marx is half-happy because we are half-way there!
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
You cannot just go to a jiffy lube if you have a Range Rover, you must go to the dealer for the $150 oil change. Their engines don't even have a drain plug!
I'd patent 'the knife' and forbid everybody from wounding or killing somebody or themselves with it and I would sue everybody who cuts himself.
My Toyota dealer charges $30. Comes with a pretty thorough inspection and a car wash. As far as I can tell, they haven't ever ripped me off. Didn't tell me my battery needed to be replaced until it was 8 years old and failed their load test. Offered to have a guy weld a hole in my exhaust for $200 rather than replacing the entire thing for 5-10x that much.
Not sure if all Toyota dealers are like this, or if I'm just lucky to have found a great one.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
this discussion is about "patent licensing" creeping into sales of goods as a way for seller to retain control over sold products.
Yeah, but I think the word is 'lease'.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We need a simple law that clarifies this point. Out law the use of the words 'buy' or 'sell' when dealing with a license
I disagree. We need to revise copyright law and adopt more of a copyleft law system. Copyrights do exist for a very necessary reason. If you are willing to invest time and money in making and delivering a product that people want, by all means, you should have a certain right to make back that investment and profit on your product. Nonetheless, copyrights should have a certain timelimit that runs out within a generation unless significant innovation by the copyright holder can be shown to retain that copyright; and no remastering every couple of years does not count.
A society is strong when people are able to act freely in their innovation and creativity. Locking everything down assures that only a few are allowed to rise to the top, which is why they like it that way.
In the US, if you still subscribe to the Declaration of Independence, these patent law findings potentially infringe on the 'pursuit of happiness' to tinker and modify, so long as they aren't infringing on the personal rights of others. If these are indeed, "unalienable Rights," then even due process shouldn't be able to easily wipe them away.
I'm probably wrong from a legal perspective, but it sounds like the 'right' answer to me.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
If the law supports restricting my right to repair, modify, and re-purpose items which I have purchased with my own money, then SCREW THE LAW. If I bought it and paid for it, then, short of using it for the purposes of harm or fraud, I'll do whatever the fuck I please with it, and I'll move heaven and earth to repair it myself if I'm so inclined, regardless of any "agreements" to the contrary forced upon my by evil slime buckets such as John Deere. Piss on them, and piss on any lawmakers who support them. May they all rot in hell.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
You're getting affirmation of your understanding only from anti-IP types. (See use of "leasing.") Lexmark sells under two different schemes: 1) you pay more and can do whatever you like, or 2) you pay less and agree not to refill and to transfer the cartridge only to Lexmark. People are essentially buying two different products.
A company that acquires the used restricted cartridges, removing the single-use-limiting chip to refill and resell them, argues that it has the right to do so in spite of the restriction and being aware of the restriction. To my mind, this makes it more about sales than anything else. I suppose I can understand that there are people who want all sales unencumbered by anything, but I think that's just not how the world works. Why should the existence of a patent remove terms of sale? Would we say, sorry, I know I signed a financing agreement, but this is a patented article so I don't have to pay you?
Look, if I offered to sell you a home, but after putting down a downpayment you read the contract and it turned out to be a hundred year lease, you would be damn upset.
Dunno about America, but in the UK that's exactly what does happen, and nobody is particularly upset. I "bought" my house on a Leasehold basis; after 125 years, ownership reverts to the Freeholder (or, more likely, the lease is extended for a fee). The property was described as "For Sale", but with "Leasehold" prominently displayed on the advert. I was happy enough to go through with it, because although it won't increase in value as fast as a Freehold would, that difference was priced in to the initial "purchase" price. Nobody has any problem describing that as a "sale", and it's certainly not fraud; it's just a different type of contract. I guess technically what was sold was not the property, it was the lease contract to the property. But if both parties are fine with the arrangement, what's the problem?
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
The problem is, does screaming legalese and acts of Congress when you're standing there in the dealership to pick up your car (late for daycare pickup or something) and some low-wage flunky is telling you that you owe $1,787 because the repair isn't covered by the warranty really get you very far?
Sure, you might be *right* but they can say no, not give you your car back until you pay, and generally make your life miserable until you sue them and then they can drag that out until it costs you 10x what the invoice was.
I recently had some work done where the invoice exceeded a written estimate by 20% and explaining the fact that such an overage is illegal in this state really was not effective. They were literally more afraid of me screaming on social media or disputing the charge on my card than they were in breaking the law.
The legalese is great idea, but unless you can call the cops and get somebody arrested for violating consumer protection laws, the imbalance between a large business and the average consumer is so great that its almost like having no protection at all.
It should be on the mfr to indemnify downstream customers, license the patent portfolio, and properly draft the license to eliminate the possibility of enforcement against its customers for a product it is selling (with knowledge that it may infringe these patents).
Honda dealers in Tucson Arizona were like this too. Then I moved to California and, well, let's say that the dealers were rip-off artists. It varies by state, but yeah, some are pretty competitive.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
You inadvertently raise a good point, which is that patents are actually irrelevant to the OP's primary complaint - the ability to own things outright rather than being able to license them. That's a matter of contract law, not patents. A car dealer or manufacturer could impose such restrictions today on any car, whether or not the car is patented.
The issue in the Lexmark case is whether the patent holder's rights end when a product is licensed in this manner.
Track down lawyers, shot down with two bullets in the head, a stake in the heart, cut their head, burn the corpse and the head separately, and them bury them in a cave were the stone cannot be moved, lest they return in three days.
Problem solved, and a happier world.
All law is in danger. Respect for the law as something good was already gone by they time I came into this world. There are too many absurd laws (both on the books and enforced) for any thinking person to have much respect for the absolute rule of law in modern America.
One problem with making a new product is the patent searches. You have to try and locate any potential patents you may be infringing before a product reaches the market place to protect from future infringement issues. The catch of course is you may still be infringing something you missed, and hit up for damages. It is PIA process.
My concern is if patents can be extended to control end users then how is a purchaser to know they are at risk of this? A buyer of printer is not going to do a patent search on a printer as it too much work to to evaluate if patents may apply to their potential purchase and if it could be used in this way. Even if you were to do this you could still be at risk of missing something. I just can't see any way this could be reasonable. There is just too many ways this could be abused and companies like Lexmark and HP have already shown they see no limits to how they control consumables purchases.
the rent a car places do poor maintenance and bill the renter who is renting the car at the time it brakes down unless you buy that high cost damage coverage.
Welding the hole in your exhaust should have been about 30-60$
Patents have become the slimy anchor, that keeps innovations, progressions, and stifles us from doing anything good! (Originally, they were given for a number of years and then expired. This gave the company a chance to recoup the money invested in research, development and production of the product. Patents used to be a good thing.)
It's only that price because Jiffylube and others exist.
The state should buy the patent, this would encourage only legit patents to be accepted, no bullshit like gluing X to Y and calling it innovation. This would guarantee inventors get money, weither or not it's economic. If your patent is accepted you get your patent fees back. Then patent is freely available to citizens of the government that bought it.
Big patent players wouldn't like this, but it fulfills the intentions of patents, to insure free flow of ideas and people getting paid for them.
Not sure if all Toyota dealers are like this, or if I'm just lucky to have found a great one.
You may have found a great one, but it's also possible that it's a loss leader to entice you purchase your next car from them (and to word-of-mouth advertise for them). Their agreement with Toyota to be a dealer requires them to have mechanics, but those mechanics are not always doing useful work. If they can subsidise a sunk cost (at times that are convenient to them) and perhaps parlay it into a vehicle sale, that's a good business decision.
Altruistic or not, you're lucky to have them.
People would still invent things anyway.
If you bother to read the actual story it's about ink cartridges for printers. Lexmark says If you refill our cartridges with non approved ink we can't guarantee the printer will work. This sounds pretty reasonable to me. The way the printer business works is they sell you printer at a loss and make up the margin on the cartridges. So a smart consumer will price the cartridges and the ink before they buy the printer, end of story, your righteous indignation not required.
Murphy was an optimist