Prison time? For bricking an $80 printer unless you use specific parts? I don't think so. Let's try to stay on planet earth here..
If even a few dozen printers were bricked by this it would represent more lost value than the threshold for grand larceny in many jurisdictions; do you propose we let people who steal, say, $1600 of goods walk away scot free? And don’t waste your breath on fines —- those will only be passed on to the captive consumers as the “cost of business.”
"corporations are people except for all that crime and punishment stuff."
"(5)
(A)knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(B)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(C)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss.[2]"
Meanwhile, it is a miscarriage of justice that prosecutors don’t seem to use CFAA against large corporations.
Even if there isn't surreptitious transfer of the hardware, they could certainly have a clause in there that authorizes them to do such things.
Do we want to be ruled by laws, or by contracts?
It looks like they updated their program terms to force you to buy their ink. Honestly I thought that was already the case since I had tried using cheaper ink and the printer rejected it.
Now people seem to think that the other party doesn't even have to be present. It's one-sided. No discussion or agreement need take place. No evidence need to be preserved that there was a discussion or agreement. It only protects one side of the deal, not both, and can be amended by one side with no recourse to the other. If you listen carefully, you catch wind of this idea all the time in daily life. Talking about gym memberships, cell phone plans, cable tv, etc.
The people talking about it are on the losing side, too. They don't seem hurt or angry or confused, they accept it as if it's the way things should be or have to be.
It's not entirely clear to me why this switched. It's not clear to me how no one ever seemed to be outraged over it.
I don't think it could be fixed. Sure, I can imagine legislation that might cut out the worst aspects of it (no, gyms can't demand that people sign year long contracts unless they also prove that they're using the existence of the contracts to justify the purchase of new equipment or the like). But without people at least grumbling about these things, there'd never be pressure for any legislation anyway. Let alone the likelihood that this is more of a matter for the courts than legislatures.
Given all this, I don't think that people are buying physical products anymore. How many exercise bikes or treadmills out there are cloud-connected and will stop working if the company goes out of business? Or if your "subscription" ends and you don't let it auto-renew?
The ship has sailed, I think, on the concept of personal property.
What If i never installed their software? Now what?
Also, what counts as protected?
That being said, HP seems to mostly rebadge Canon printers loaded with their firmware, so I am not sure why people are still buying them. HP is just a middle man these days.
And if it's a million $80 printers affected by this, it's an $80 million crime.
Prison is hard, on the other hand let the scale of damage and intention decide.. more human would be just stick to penalties. They just must be high enough to hurt really, not ridiculous amounts you can price in. Like do it once and maybe get away with it, but do it twice or thrice and you will quite certainly bankrupt the company.