Lots of manufacturers charge extra for various security options, on all sorts of hardware and software. We can go back and forth all day on the "ethics" of it,

Lots of manufacturers charge extra for various security options, on all sorts of hardware and software. We can go back and forth all day on the "ethics" of it, but it's pretty standard practice. And Sharp's add-on module might not be required if the copiers were treated like the computers that they are; it would be perfectly fine to just remove the hard drives when the units are being sold at their EOL, as I suspect most healthcare and government facilities do with their old PCs.