Uhmnnn...
I suppose there is considerable light 'leakage' from this thing. You might try inserting a couple of sheets of black felt, somewhat larger than the scan area, to block most of that light. Or, if you have any solar powered devices, you might be able to keep them running by laying their photo cells on the scanner platform. I agree, of course, that the scanner makes a rather large and expensive 'night light.'
Of course, there is always duct tape. Careful placement around the perimeter of the lid would probably stop the light leakage and you could get a little double-duty out of the scanner as a leaf or flower press/drier/flattener.
I did find one non-Epson mention of this phenomenon: <
The lamp stays on all the time, is this normal?> "Answer" was, "Yes, as long as the scanner is on." Note, no specific brand/model/age/interface was even mentioned. "He who paints with a broad brush often gets splattered!"
Also mentioned was the usual life expectancy of the bulbs of 10,000 hours (not quite a year and two months...). However, I suspect that yours uses LEDs for light output and the MTBF would be considerably longer.
