That’s a fucking defective product. It shouldn’t be legal to sell.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Unfortunately, all-in-one printers arbitrarily demanding ink to perform non-printing functions isn’t a new frustration.

Clearly, scanning or faxing without requiring an ink cartridge would improve users’ experience—and they’ve illustrated that through class-action lawsuits.

Tying the scan or fax capabilities of the All-In-One Printers to ink contained in the devices offers no benefit and only serves to disadvantage and harm consumers financially.

However, tying the scan or fax capabilities of the All-In-One Printers to ink contained in the devices does, however [sic], serve to benefit HP.

HP in 2021, for example, said its Instant Ink subscription business was worth $500 million, per CRN.

In its Q2 2023 financial report, HP named Instant Ink a key growth area.

I’m a bot and I’m open source!

With so much open source hardware out there, how come there isn’t an open source printer yet?