Class Action Reform Bill

[neoee]

^^^ There's actually some merit to this case from what I've been reading. While this may not affect the average consumer some corporations are losing a ton of money on printing supplies. They do this to prevent consumers from refilling the cartridges but as most protection schemes it usually ends up hurting the honest consumers.


A comment posted on slashdot:

Yes they have date stamps on the cartridges. Where I work they have several HP 2000's that are affected by the expire date ink problem. I can't locate the info right now but we have it documented in our internal knowledge base. The expiry times are something like: 30 months after first install or 2 years after printed date on cartridge, whichever comes first. I can vouch for the validity of the claim that the friggin printer will just plain stop printing when ink expires. You can run the printer's self diagnostics and it will show the ink levels to be adequate and will print just fine. But go to send a print job to that printer, acts like it isn't turned on.

[toasty]

To play devil's advocate for a moment, does ink that sits for a certain period of time still "work" properly, i.e., does it glob up and jam the printer, does it lose its viscosity, run too thin and smudge, etc.? Ink could be perishable just like any food product or pharmaceutical, and there could be entirely valid reasons for it to "expire."

I'm not saying that the suit is absolutely without merit, but it doesn't get me excited at first blush.

[neoee]

There is always that possiblilty but because ink is solvent based the answer to your question is most likely no, in all scenerios.

Again this is just another corporation using a protection scheme. Much like Windows activation, it hasn't prevented anyone from pirating the OS but has hurt the honest consumer since their key was stolen.

[toasty]

Believe me, I'm the last person you would need to convince regarding corporate misdeeds and greed -- see my posts earlier in this thread, for instance. With that said, suffice it to say that I'm not rushing out to find a plaintiff and jump into the fray on this suit.

Intelligent minds can differ on such things, though. I'd be interested to know who filed it...

[Sinisterbeatz]

This is designed for two things

1) Cut off money flowing to the Democratic Party

2) Protect big buisness