Why Your Printer Never Works
There are only 3 certainties in life: birth, death and your printer failing you when you need it the most. And taxes, too — but that is not what this article is about.
Much like the rest of us, printers often grapple with connection issues, and predictably, these issues tend to arise at the most inconvenient times possible. So much so, that if you own a printer or have ever needed to use one, you will undoubtedly recognize Google searches like the one below.
Once you encounter a printer issue, your instinct, like that of any tech connoisseur worth its salt, will be to turn it off and then on again. If this does not work, your next step will be to go on your knees and check if all the cables are well connected, while you beg to the printer Gods to let you print that really important document you need for the next day. When your prayers go unanswered, you know it is time for the last resort: to Google the problem and hopefully find that obscure YouTube video that will magically solve the issue.
What no troubleshooting guide will tell you, however, is that many of your printer issues are not due to your printer, but to something far more complex and interesting that involves cartels, light bulbs and something called ‘planned obsolescence’.
Wait, what? What is planned obsolescence, and what does it have to do with anything?
Planned obsolescence refers to a business strategy where the process of becoming obsolete, defined as unfashionable or no longer usable, is intentionally planned and incorporated into a product from its inception by the manufacturer.
Sometimes this is done through changes to the hardware of the device, a technique that, although not having been pioneered by Apple, finds a compelling example in how that company designs and re-designs their iPhones to keep users always coming back for more. These specific changes to the hardware might improve its performance — cameras can become more powerful, and cordless phones might make listening to music on your phone more convenient. Some changes, however, may serve no purpose other than compelling you to replace your perfectly functioning device with a new one — consider the fluctuating design of iPhone corners, alternating between rounded and squared.
Software can also play an active role in enforcing or encouraging the obsolescence of hardware. A prime illustration of this is found, precisely, in printers, particularly low-cost inkjet models. These printers often incorporate a chip within the ink cartridges, not only restricting the use of non-original cartridges but also integrating a counter that restricts their usage beyond a specified threshold (measured in terms of pages, time, etc.), even if the cartridge still contains usable ink or could be refilled.
This planned obsolescence has not gone unnoticed among printer users, who, despite shelling out large amounts of money for a printer and many thousands more for the ink cartridges, often run into avoidable issues that force them to buy a new device, even when their ‘old’ one was working just fine.
Because of this planned obsolescence, a lawsuit was filed in France in 2017 against four printer companies — Epson, HP, Canon, and Brother. The ensuing legal action marked the first test of what was at the time a three-year-old French consumer protection law, which imposed fines on manufacturers failing to disclose the expected lifespan of their appliances.
The case involved the consumer group “Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée” (HOP; “End Planned Obsolescence”), seizing the opportunity presented by the Hamon Law, enacted six years ago, which legalized class-action suits when brought forth by officially authorized national consumer protection associations.
According to this law, businesses can be sued for alleged non-compliance with legal or contractual obligations, encompassing the sale of goods, service provision, and actions related to anticompetitive practices. HOP, established in 2015 to combat planned manufacturing obsolescence, has chosen to be at the forefront of this legal challenge. Seeking (a measly) €10,000 in funding for its lawsuit against printer companies, their objective was to prolong the lifespan of products and advocate for alternative economic models centered on sustainability, product reuse, repair, and recycling.
But, planned obsolescence has a long history that extends far beyond printers. So where do the cartels enter the story?
If you have seen Narcos, you might think cartels are drug organizations. You would not be wrong, but cartels are also much more than that.
A cartel refers to an organization formed by a collective of producers of a specific good or service with the aim of controlling supply and influencing prices.
A cartel wields less control over an industry compared to a monopoly, where a single group or company dominates the entire market share of a particular product or service. While some cartels are established to influence the pricing of legally traded goods and services, others operate in illegal sectors, such as the drug trade.
In the United States, cartels are deemed unlawful under American antitrust laws, as they are thought to detrimentally impact consumers by leading to elevated prices and constrained supply. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) identifies and prosecutes cartels when there is evidence of activities such as price-fixing, output restrictions, market allocation, bid-rigging, or the submission of collusive tenders.
A cartel agreement has the potential to impede, limit, or artificially create competition, like:
- Price Fixing: Price cartels uphold a fixed or minimum pricing strategy, preventing members from selling products or services below the established floor price. Members may also be obligated to synchronize price increases and refrain from offering discount pricing.
- Market Share: Members of a cartel may divide customers or regions among themselves to maintain a balanced revenue flow. Selling outside assigned regions or sharing customers with other members might be prohibited. Additionally, members could face restrictions on their product offerings based on the regions or customers they serve.
- Terms of Delivery: Cartel members might enter into agreements specifying formal terms of delivery, covering aspects such as the mode of delivery, locations served, delivery times, as well as billing and interest payment conditions.
- Output and Production: Cartels may compel members to adhere to predetermined production levels, resulting in upward trends in prices for goods or services. This restriction on production can contribute to maintaining higher price levels within the market.
One notorious example of such cartels includes the Phoebus cartel (a group of major companies in the electric energy sector, including Germany’s Osram, the Netherlands’ Philips, and the United States’ General Motors), and their attempt to manipulate the lifespan of lightbulbs to increase the revenues of electric companies, in what became known as ‘The great lightbulb conspiracy’.
Although the cartel’s dominance in the lightbulb market extended only into the 1930s, its enduring impact was the deliberate engineering of a shorter lifespan for the incandescent light bulb. By early 1925, this practice was standardized at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped household bulb, a significant reduction from the previous 1,500 to 2,000 hours.
Many find it evident that the cartel’s motives were primarily driven by a pursuit of profits and increased sales, rather than a consideration of what was best for the consumer. However, cartel members justified their conspiracy by asserting that their light bulbs were of higher quality, more efficient, and emitted brighter light than competing bulbs, albeit at a considerably higher cost. The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Today, numerous countries have already transitioned away from incandescent lighting toward more efficient yet higher-priced LEDs. The legacy of the Phoebus cartel (and others like it) has, instead, become the concept of planned obsolescence itself, influencing modern discussions about the right to repair — a set of legislative efforts that are aimed at ensuring that consumers have the ability “to repair their own products instead of going back to the original manufacturer for service”.
Why should we all be advocates for the right to repair?
Three years later after HOP brought their lawsuit against Epson, they published a piece on their website titled ‘Will the complaint against Epson filed by HOP become obsolete?’ (La plainte contre Epson déposée par HOP va-t-elle devenir obsolète?). In this article, HOP went on to detail how the sluggish pace of the courts and the scandalous lack of response from the printer companies involved had only heightened the impatience of a growing number of consumers.
To this day, we do not know who wins in the case of People v. Printers.
The practices employed by these companies did not vanish despite public outrage, but the increasing awareness of the issue led to consumer protection agencies in other countries, such as Portugal, Brazil, and Italy, taking actions against other printer companies, like Hewlett-Packard (HP), for blocking users from using ink cartridges from other brands through software updates.
But, as consumers, we need to be looking beyond printers.
Grounded in their physical attributes, contemporary computing devices, including PCs, mobile phones, and printers, possess a potential lifespan of ten years or more. However, the actual usage span tends to be considerably shorter. According to a study by Entner (2011) examining handset replacement cycles, mobile phones in the United States, the country with the highest per capita income in the study, were typically replaced every 18.7 months. In contrast, the average usage duration for a handset in India was 322.1 months. European countries ranged from 24.5 months (United Kingdom) to 53.3 months (Italy).
This, as you can imagine, creates a whole lot of garbage (a.k.a., e-waste).
While there is no inherent physical necessity to acquire a new handset every 18 months in the United States, manufacturers actively seek ways to promote the next generation of handsets, particularly in a largely saturated market. The major challenge compelling upgrades in such scenarios is not necessarily the inability of devices to run newer app versions. Many phone users rely on a small number of built-in apps. The more significant concern is the lack of security fixes for older phones, leaving users vulnerable to malware, thus creating a sense of fear and uncertainty that may drive premature upgrades.
Similar challenges exist in the PC industry, where newer versions of operating systems theoretically compatible with older hardware often face practical barriers due to the absence of drivers for older components like graphics cards or network controllers.
The role of software in addressing these challenges depends on user expectations and technical proficiency. Generally, open-source operating systems can extend the lifespan of older devices as developer interest, rather than the economic motives of manufacturers, drives support for hardware platforms. While solutions like replacing old Windows installations with Linux or FreeBSD exist, compatibility and usability concerns limit their effectiveness for many users. In the case of Android-based systems, open-source projects like CyanogenMod, developed by volunteers, provide compatible upgrades for a range of handsets, overcoming manufacturer support limitations. However, such approaches have limitations due to closed-source drivers, which sometimes are incompatible with recent versions of the Linux kernel used in newer Android versions.
So, what can I do about it?
Well, that depends on who you are.
If you are a user of technology, the first thing you can do is to not throw out your functioning printer or iPhone in outrage for the deceptive practices outlined above that sustain planned obsolescence. The next time you do need to replace one of your devices, you should look into brands that prioritize repairability, like Fairphone. If that does not rock your boat, you should really look into this really helpful list that ranks phones in order of how easy they are to repair, and make that a critical factor in your next purchase.
If you are a researcher, a manufacturer or a developer, you should be aware of the scientific research around the issue of e-waste, and strive to make positive change where possible (which given the truly immense abyss that separates academia and industry might prove to be a quite herculean task). A recent research project has identified soft electronics utilizing innovative polymers present the most promising solution to the issue of e-waste. However, despite advancements in soft electronics, achieving the vision of 3R electronics (resilient, repairable, and recyclable) is contingent upon demonstrating new manufacturing techniques. These techniques must be founded on materials that possess resilience, repairability, and recyclability while also being competitive with current PCB manufacturing methods in terms of patterning resolution, multi-layer implementation, microchip integration, and autonomous manufacturing.
If you are the owner of a tech company, you should consider leaving your old ways behind. Reasons for doing this are bountiful, with the most important being the fact that it’s the right thing to do, both for the environment and for the consumer. But if those reasons are not sufficient, it is also important to highlight that planned obsolescence might soon become illegal, and that as awareness around the topic grow, the impacts of planned obsolescence might result in degrading economical returns motivated by the loss of consumer trust.
New EU laws, sanctioned at the close of June this year, now require phone manufacturers to produce phones with batteries that can be “easily removed and replaced” by a layperson. This legislation extends its impact to other industries, including stipulations for car battery manufacturers. The Right to Repair legislation is set to take effect in 2027 and will be preceded by “ecodesign” legislation, effective in 2025. The ecodesign legislation is crafted to ensure that phones and tablets are reusable, user-maintainable, and upgradeable; and similar law proposals are being crafted across the pond by the Biden administration.
As a society (because, of course, #WeLiveInASociety), what we can all do is start looking at sustainability as the complex and multi-layered concept that it is. We must understand that it is a relevant and important thread in almost anything we do — not just something achievable with a quick trip to the recycling bins. Part of the answer to the sustainability problem should be anchored around economic models and concepts that can introduce new models of economic consumption promoting durability and transversability. But for this to happen, it’s crucial to comprehend that what we will inevitably lose in that process (like the ego boost from getting a new phone or the satisfying feeling you get from peeling off a screen protector) is far less valuable than what we will undoubtedly gain from it.
