Think of it this way: to provide a monthly subscription, they can either send a new cartridge once per month with 100 pages in it (with all the shipping, plastic, production, etc costs associated with that), or they can ship one six times bigger a single time. That’s much better for the environment.

If they couldn’t turn off cartridges when subscriptions stop, they’d have to send less-filled cartridges. Otherwise, there’d be huge incentive to sign up for one month, get your big cartridge, and cancel.

The printer is not bricked, the OP can purchase ink from an office supply store without using the Instant Ink program and it will work fine.

That's not entirely true, as they only want official HP ink, as per a post of a few days ago

This is also not entirely true, HP only wants official HP ink on printers that customers opted into HP+. If you don't opt your printer into HP+, you don't need official ink, and 3rd party cartridges work just fine.

For clarity: - inkjets: the customer chooses during setup if they want HP+ (they trade the ability to use 3rd party inks for +1 year warranty... lol); or keep it HP standard (no forced limitation on inks, 1 year warranty) - laserjets: if the customer buys an HP+, it comes "preactivated". I think HP sells non-HP+ models of the same printers, and customers are free to use whatever cartridges they want.

Very nuanced, and they make it complicated. Fan of the Instant Ink service (I'm grandfathered into the old free plans), but not a fan of the way HP+ is pitched.

office supply stores would usually have a good selection of HP ink in stock.

not saying that not allowing generic ink isn't bad, though.

It might not be as bad as it sounds.

It looks like HP handles recycling old cartridges. It might be better than the alternative -- people buying ink and disposing of the cartridge in a landfill, rather than the cartridge being re-used.