Frightening, isn't it? Especially the courts upholding it. What a travesty of justice.

"They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, 'nice try'." --Lezard

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Now Playing:
Mesu Kasumai -- Croatian Love (3 Channel Metropolitan, 2003)

http://www.8bitpeoples.com/discography/8BP034

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But not on the sewer lids.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

-D-

According to them, in anything even remotely resembling our current economy, what would happen is that "printing" companies would rapidly and quickly get out of the business of producing and selling ink, much in the same way that publishing companies have basically 100% outsourced the actual ink-and-page production of books. (Almost no publisher today actually owns presses.)

The price of ink cartridges would drop extremely rapidly, and they'd become commodified, in the same way that printer paper is, with almost no brand loyalty except for a few specialist companies making special inks for special purposes. However, they'd also become creatively tamper-proof unless accompanying regulations prohibiting making said cartridges non-refillable were also implemented.

In the latter case, there'd be a market segment; you'd have very cheap disposable inkjet printer carts for those that don't give a shit or are lazy, and you'd have much more expensive, but cheap to refill, printer carts for those who care to go to that effort. Think "normal batteries and rechargable ones," kind of.

The price of the printers themselves would rise somewhat-to-significantly to offset the fact that the companies designing and producing them would no longer have ink as a profit center. A number of said companies would likely seek to be acquired by larger conglomerates in order to achieve financial security and stability, and would massively shed staff as they became much more specialized, focused entities. There'd be a refocusing on enterprise-level solutions, where you CAN lock people into your ecosystem and then milk them as a profit center, unless regulations made that impossible as well.

Economists are weird, but assuming they're not Chicago School nutjobs they can be pretty interesting when they talk about minutiae like this.

-Merc
Keep Rat

It's interesting to see how this is starting to shape out in the 3d printing world, where the value add for "buy filament from us that only works in this printer" is "it can tell our proprietary software what it is, and so change feed rates/temperatures/etc"

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

I have a continuous ink supply system (a.k.a. CISS) on my Epson WorkForce printer. Since the cartridges for it don't have the print heads built in, you can have a tanks off to the side of the printer feeding the cartridges with ink. Saves me a lot on printer costs.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Of course, the free market that makes many printer companies want to create proprietary, expensive cartridges is also the same free market that made Epson make the CISS system you refer to. It's all about doing the research and finding out what's not heavily advertised...and which company is trying to undercut the market by innovating, rather than maximizing profit in a predatory way.

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Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

That's an option, although in the 25th century, most consumers don't really want to fool around with refilling tanks and all that rigmarole. Of course, the really high-end ones have supply wormholes, so you just turn them on and print forever.

(Or, if you know the right curio dealers, you can get one of the Torilian ones, which have a magical connection to the Para-Elemental Plane of Ink. I might be lying about that. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

>>the really high-end ones have supply wormholes

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm sure the Barsaivan ones are fueled by a node of True Ink, the most pure form of the element, and therefore never run out either.

True Ink is also required to make Inkalcum, which is messier than Orachalcum, and therefore less popular.

This is 100% true, if you ask the certain enterprising t'skrang merchants.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

That reminds me of the story of Martzig the Mad Warrior-Mage who tried making a sword from Para-Elemental Ink. Boy, was his face red after the first test.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Speaking as someone with an EcoTank printer: The only increase in rigmarole is that you have to wait for the bottle to empty/tank to fill¹. In exchange you only handle one thing during a refill, (as there is no expended cartridge to dispose of).

The size of the tanks also means you don't have to refill them as often as you would have to change cartridges.

1: The bottles and tank have integrated valves so that you just plug in the bottle and wait, no pouring or anything and it stops when the tank is full. They are also keyed by colour so that you can't plug the wrong one in without intentionally taking a knife or something to the bottle.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".