Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
It's perfectly ethical. Why shouldn't stakeholders in a book maximize their profits by using entirely legal methods of price discrimination? It's not even as if ebooks are a necessity.
I think the ethical aspect comes into play with those who exercise the workaround you mention (with the exception, of course, of Australia and any other jurisdiction where the workaround are legal). A book can be someone's livelihood; he's not obligated to sell it to you at the price you want to pay.
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Very few things are a necessity. For many Mobileread regulars books in some form come very close. But the fact is that we do not require them to live, though our lives would be much poorer without them. With respect what is legal and illegal often has very little to do with ethics, unless of course you take the view that to break any law is of itself unethical. Failing this, if a practice is itself unethical the fact that it may not be illegal in Australia or some other countries would seem to make no difference. There is no absolute right to maximise profits by price discrimination any more than there is an absolute right to circumvent such price discrimination. I would suggest that either may cross ethical boundaries depending on the particular circumstances.