In addition to tracking the printer’s online or offline status, page count, and ink levels, your rented printer will look at the types of documents you’re printing (e.g., PDF, JPG, Word), the types of devices that initiated the print job, “peripheral devices,” and other “metrics” related to the service, the All-In Plan’s terms read. This is on top of the personal information HP collects upon initiating the plan, like your location and your company name (if you have one). By signing up for the service, the terms say, you “grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display [your] non-personal data for its business purposes.”
I feel like corps have gotten bored with “you will own nothing and you will be happy” and moved on to “you will be owned and you will be happy.” Like, damn, people are absolute livestock in a freaky fucked-up way. You “buy” something and it sits there extracting value from you. You “rent” something and it gets to enjoy the utility you provide, for a time.
Just seems like “ownership” is totally screwed-up wrong, y’know? One can’t have anything any more, it’s all corporate property they let us pay to install into our own lives for them. grumblegrumblegrumble!
But this is the whole point; for a publicly traded company the people who buy their products are not the customers for whom they create value. Shareholders and investors are the real customers. People who buy the products are precisely just a resource to extract value from for these companies.
seems like we should get at least 3/5ths of a vote on the matter