Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Both aspects have been raised and "economic gain" has been invoked. But I don't care; I'm willing to rephrase the comment with that restriction.
The stakeholders in the book, including the author, have the legal right to exploit copyright of digital books however they choose, even if it's withholding it from certain markets. Perhaps it's even with a view to maximizing revenue from the book at that; different markets may have calendar-related sweet spots, but the reason doesn't matter. At what point does this right, based on copyright, cease to exist? When someone wants to read it?
It's a slippery slope, indeed. Like DiapDealer and as I've said upthread, I'm not the internet morality police, but I don't like it when people present their chicanery as the moral option. There's the easy option: don't do it. Respect the legal rights of the author and other stakeholders and move on.
I find the parsing of the moral options quite odd, at times. "Traveling" to Canada or the US from a Life + 70 country to obtain for free the work of an author who's been dead for 69 years? "Oh, no, I couldn't do that!" "Traveling" to another country when it's trampling on the legal rights to his work of an living author who's trying to maximize his earnings now, whether you're saving money or just because you wanna? "Where's my credit card?" Does paying anything, even a few cents, make that moral? What about books that are free in one market and not another? And there's the conundrum where a book that's public domain in Canada, say, and it's for sale at Kobo, so someone "travels" there to buy it, when they could get it at Faded Page for free?
 It's like the convolutions they had to go through to justify the sun traveling around the earth. There's an easier solution - if you're talking morality.
But, again, I'm not the morality police. But you're not convincing me, either. |
It's really not as clean cut or moral as you seem to think. First off, geo restriction in this sense is purely a contract affair between the author and the publisher. I fail to see how that contract places a moral obligation on someone who is two levels removed (customer buys from Amazon, who buys from publisher who has a contract with an author) from that contract. The other thing is that buying an ebook is no different than buying a paper book. My parents can and have walked into a bookshop in London and bought me books that were not available in the US. No one jumps up and down and shouts geo-restriction. Instead the book seller, was more that happy to recommend and sell them books that I might like.
The region flag on DVD players was an attempt to enforce geo-restrictions on DVD's. It's still there, but pretty much every DVD player out there has a method for allowing the owner to watch DVD's from any region. I simply don't see why I have a moral obligation to enforce someone else's business model. Do you object to people buying merchandise from Costco rather than from a more expensive shop? If not, how is that different?