cross-posted from !boycottchina@sopuli.xyz: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45608582
(note that many printers do this; this is a cross-post of a call to boycott Canon and Xerox specifically)
Most (if not all) color printer makers are printing unique tracking dots on every printed page. But some of them are transparent about it and disclose it to consumers.¹
In any case, in the mid-1980s Xerox and Canon developed the anti-consumer feature decades before it became known to the public in 2004. So certainly we can blame them for surreptitiously assaulting our privacy.
It’s the surreptitious element of this that is the most infuriating. Transparently disclosing the feature to consumers is the socially responsible approach because at least informed consumers know they are signing up for:
- reduction of print quality
- higher cost of consumables (more yellow consumption)
- loss of privacy
- inability to print a black document when yellow ink/toner is empty
Xerox and Canon should be boycotted not just for the anti-consumer feature but for concealing it.
¹ citation needed… I don’t recall where I read that some printer makers are transparent about it. I would like to know which ones are transparent just from a standpoint of knowing where the integrity is.
This has to be a joke. It has been used for that purpose since typewriters during the cold war. What would be the point? Wasting yellow ink for fun? We know that they contain the identifiers of the printer.
To prove motivation that supports your bizarre claim. The printers are not made by the government. They are made by a profit-driven corporation. You described a government motivation for an action taken by a private enterprise. That makes no sense¹ – unless you can find a law that compels the tracking. In which case the law would be the motivation, not the tracking.
¹(edit: caveat: assuming a non-communist regime. Of course if the companies are gov owned and controlled, then your claim is feasible. Are you in China? Note that Xerox, Canon, and HP are not HQd in China)
For profit.
By extension: Profit = fun for the shareholders
How are you failing to grasp that the printer business is actually a distraction from the ink and toner business? The printer is just the mechanism by which they exploit the sale of consumables. They hope to fool consumers like yourself into thinking the transaction is about the printer, not the consumables. The marketing has worked wonders on you but some consumers (most?) see more clearly that it’s all about selling ink at 10+ times its cost.
update: printer ink costs as much as ~$12,000 per gallon, 6× more than human blood. So of course printer makers are happy scatter yellow ink all over every page of every black document that gets printed. It cheats consumers out of 100s of thousands of dollars, if not millions.
From another source: