[theinfamousj]

I have met some people who have pirated books because the book is banned by their government and they were not able to, at that time, afford international travel so as to smuggle in a physical copy. Some even for scholarly purposes. Obviously, I met these individuals once they were able to travel, at times with a minder, or after they had managed to come to my country as a refugee seeking asylum.

Naturally, this isn't a case where Amazon had a copy and they elected not to purchase. But it is a use case of piracy. And thanks to a certain internet toolkit which obfuscates one's internet traffic is one that is used in countries which decide that for political reasons certain penned ideas need to be prevented from reaching their populace.

Naturally, I live in the United States, so I cannot imagine the inability to access ideas, but I have read quite a lot of dystopian fiction so can empathize with a character who wishes so strongly to feel that their government-rejected ideas aren't abhorrent or anomalous.

(Cough Burma, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, cough.)

When governments make restrictions on markets, much less markets of ideas, it is no longer capitalism and the pithy and priveledged admonition to just save up no longer applies. I will once again reiterate how happy I am to have had the luck to be born somewhere that ideas are available, even if for a price.