The morality of circumventing geographical restrictions only to buy cheaper ebooks

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm generally against artificial differences in prices around the world. I don't think it's immoral to import items from another country if it's cheaper to do so. Free trade is generally a good thing, leading to efficiencies in production benefitting everyone in the long run.

Having said that, personally I wouldn't usually do it because it's too much hassle.

These are exactly my thoughts as well. Free trade is generally considered one of the driving forces behind large increases in prosperity worldwide. Many corporations have greatly profited from free trade, as do consumers. This is one more example where a consumer, as well as Amazon I would think, profits of free trade.

The savings would have to be extensive though, to make it worth the hassle .

[danicca]

Originally Posted by Istvan diVega

It's mainly a problem for people who actually have a national Amazon store I think, or at least that seems to me to be the crux of the matter. There isn't a Norwegian one and I'm registered with the US, UK, French and German stores and have no trouble buying from any of them.

Do you use your regular credit card? There isn't amazon local store where I am, so I get stuck with 2$ surcharge which I'd really like to avoid.

[Istvan diVega]

Yup, my regular Norwegian VISA card, which is the only card I have.

[K. Molen]

I'd like to thank everyone who's posted in this thread. You've made a lot of good points, enough so that I am now willing to vote Yes in the poll and not feel ambivalent about shopping at Amazon India.

Originally Posted by danicca

Do you use your regular credit card? There isn't amazon local store where I am, so I get stuck with 2$ surcharge which I'd really like to avoid.

One way around this is to buy a gift card for yourself. Once it's added to your Amazon account, you'll be paying for books using the gift card balance, and then there's no surcharge. So instead of paying $2 every time you buy a book, you only pay it when you buy the gift card.

[danicca]

I don't think gift card will help. It's surcharge amazon incorporates in ebook prices, not one from my bank.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by rockymtnhigh

ironically, the example the OP uses does not work. Log-in to Amazon.in and it knows you are in the US, and tells you the kindle version is available from Amazon.com (I guess you could change all sorts of country settings, but not sure it would be worth it), and..

Not so ironically, you've missed the point made by so many others: there are hoops you have to jump through to "circumvent" georestrictions. And so many have said it's not worth their effort to do so, which implies that they may have a "morality threshold" — they might buy from a different country if it was easy, even if "immoral", but not if they have to actively circumvent the law.

I'd certainly say I have such a morality threshold: I've had an Amazon.com account since long before they sold books in Canada. Now, whenever I order a book (even freebies — which is virtually all I use Amazon for), it offers to transfer my account to amazon.ca, but since the prices on the .com site (with currency conversion and without sales tax) are generally cheaper, I have so far refused to transfer the account. But I justify it by telling myself that they know where I am and still sell to me….

I've never actively circumvented georestriction for any reason, and don't think I would do so to get cheaper books.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

That [region-free DVD] isn't violating georestrictions, as far as I know. Buying ebooks through some mechanism is.

I'm shocked that you're shocked by the immorality of circumventing georestriction to buy books but don't see a problem with using a region-free DVD player.

IANAL, but http://www.jltp.uiuc.edu/archives/sun.pdf says that the two are identical under the US DMCA:

Relying on a broad but plain language reading of § 1201(a) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), some copyright owners and commentators claim that any circumventing activity or any device enabling circumvention of the region coding system—such as multi-zone DVD players, which allow users to play DVDs regardless of their region codes—may constitute violations of copyright laws, especially the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.
In Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc., the
Federal Circuit declined to adopt such a reading of § 1201.

So "any circumventing activity" covers using amazon.in when you're in the US, and "device" covers region-free DVD players.

[K. Molen]

Originally Posted by danicca

I don't think gift card will help. It's surcharge amazon incorporates in ebook prices, not one from my bank.

You'd use it in conjunction with creating a local Amazon account. If you shop from a lot of different Amazon stores you may end up with several Amazon accounts, so it may not be worth the hassle to you, but it's a proven method to get around it.

[issybird]

Leaving aside those pesky morality and nuisance issues, as a matter of prudence, given Amazon's history of banning people without warning and without recourse, I wouldn't find it worth it to engage in a dicey practice that Amazon is fully capable of detecting.

[Rhialto]

How much do you have to lose? One assumes you did what 99% of MR posters do, and de-DRM any Kindle books you may have and back them up locally?

Originally Posted by issybird

Leaving aside those pesky morality and nuisance issues, as a matter of prudence, given Amazon's history of banning people without warning and without recourse, I wouldn't find it worth it to engage in a dicey practice that Amazon is fully capable of detecting.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Rhialto

How much do you have to lose? One assumes you did what 99% of MR posters do, and de-DRM any Kindle books you may have and back them up locally?

It wouldn't be the loss of the stuff I've got, it would be the inability to shop at Amazon proper and the Kindle store in the future. Not worth saving a few bucks here or there or getting the odd book not available here.

[caleb72]

The reason you can create multiple addresses in Amazon regardless of where your credit card is billed is that Amazon subscribes to the notion that if you happen to be travelling in the US, you should be entitled to purchase items from the US store etc...

You don't actually need separate accounts, just a different address to indicate you are currently in a different country.

I don't know how particular Amazon really are in trying to curtail abuse of this functionality as sales are essentially sales. But I guess there's no reason why they couldn't crack down on this sort of thing with clever algorithms.

As for the morality of the issue, I have a problem with ebooks sold in Australia being priced higher than ebooks in other areas if the book is not actually published in Australia. I don't have any issues in circumventing geo-restrictions in that particular scenario. However, I might think a little differently if the book is clearly published in Australia for the following reason. A book published in Australia is likely to use Australian English and it might not be practical for an author to expect the Australian publisher to produce the same book for all markets. Therefore, I imagine that selling international rights might be quite prevalent for Australian authors. This means that for the Australian publisher they are probably only ever looking at a fairly limited market in comparison with other countries.

I don't necessarily know the answer to these conundrums and I'm basically only sharing my own deductions which might not be 100% factual. I am happier to punish local publishers in one context, but not quite as much in others, which may well seem a little hypocritical. Ah - life!

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by auspex

I'm shocked that you're shocked by the immorality of circumventing georestriction to buy books but don't see a problem with using a region-free DVD player.

IANAL, but http://www.jltp.uiuc.edu/archives/sun.pdf says that the two are identical under the US DMCA:

IMO anything claimed in the DMCA is suspect. Many of it's provisions have been struck down. AFAIK this one hasn't but it hasn't been confirmed either.

[bla]

Someone should ask Amazon why the cost difference.. but them we already know that vendors will charge what they think they can get off with regardless of the cost of producing the article go ahead if you can get it cheaper

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by bla

Someone should ask Amazon why the cost difference.. but them we already know that vendors will charge what they think they can get off with regardless of the cost of producing the article go ahead if you can get it cheaper

Georestrictions are set by publishers and authors. MOST of the time prices are as well. If the publisher charges more to sell a book in the UK, AMazon's prices will be higher because they have less margin to play with.

The author/publisher owns the rights to various regions, not Amazon (unless they are the publisher.) We also set a base price. Amazon can choose to take a loss on that, but the higher the base price, the larger their loss would be.