My HP printer is region-locked. When I moved from Europe to the US it refused to accept ink cartridges bought in the US.
it practically makes it illegal to even change the battery of a device you bought if there is not an user accessible and labeled port to change said battery.
So i am guessing that fiddling with the DRM software on the printer also is a crime under such idiot law.
I had to flash it to accept a toner bought elsewhere.
It caught me off guard, my previous laser printer (also Samsung) happily accepted other cartridges (I would have bought Samsung, but they were out of stock).
I haven't turned it into a business model nor personal public initiative, yet, but I think we are to the point of needing to name and shame. And then conduct, or withhold, our business accordingly.
It's a byzantine mess that shifts every week or so. If you can solve this problem, you can also solve the problem of having consistent reviews for products.
If someone makes a business of hitting me with his Buick, I don't keep their company when they come around in their Oldsmobile.
In many areas, Apple doesn't exist (even with a different name). Worse, sometimes they exist, but only for a brief time as the company strip-mines the goodwill that a given product has to extract more profits and then fall back to "industry rest-state".
Customer preference to control manufacturers' behavior is a model that rarely works.
Buying a new printer including cartridges would have been considerably cheaper.