Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Geo-restrictions is not a freedom to read issue. I know why it's there and it makes sense. But the problem comes when a book you want to read is not available as an eBook in your country but is available in a different country.
Take (for example) the Dirk Pitt series by Clive Cussler. Not all of the eBooks are available in the US. But the missing eBooks in the series are available in the UK. If you don't know how to purchase UK eBooks in the US, the only other choice is looking on the net for them.
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I find the notion of shopping "abroad" for ebooks to be ethically questionable, especially when it's done to save money. But I admit its appeal when it's an ebook that you can't purchase domestically - especially when the alternative is to purchase a used paper copy, in which case the author gets nothing at all.
Invoking freedom to read seems like overkill, to me. You could always buy the paper book even if you had to buy that abroad. You might not want a paper book, but that's a different issue. No one's stopping you from reading it or accessing it.
Being able to purchase a particular title as an ebook is pretty far down any hierarchy of needs.
I'm not the internet morality police. But I find most justifications for it pretty thin.