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Originally Posted by HansTWN
To take your hilarious analogy a little further. So someone doesn't sell to you because you are gay, black, or Jewish, whatever. So what is the right course of action? Hit the man over the head and steal the item or sue the guy for discrimination?
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There's a legal course of action, and there's the right one, which are not necessarily the same. The copyright business model is only "legal" because most people rightly believe authors should be rewarded for their creative work, and copyright is the only way to do it the world has invented so far. But if this business model is screwed up by the publishers to the extent that I'm left with no legal way to obtain the book because I come from the "wrong" country, then I no longer feel obliged to respect this business model. The publishers discriminate against me, for their twisted business reasons, simply because they can - well, I'll just take what I want from them, because I can, too, and they've left me no other way. They can't trample on my rights and still demand respect for theirs. It's still illegal of course, but not "wrong" in my book - when someone hits me, I hit back. And the author would not get a penny from me in any case, his publishers simply won't take my money. So there's no point trying to make me feel guilty by calling it "theft" - call it what you like in fact, I don't care.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
There are plenty of restrictions, for cars, for electronics, you name it.
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No there are not, you're missing the point again. There are plenty of restrictions on WHERE you can sell, which people fail to recoginize as blatantly anticompetitive, a form of a cartel agreement in fact - but they are not actually deemed illegal at this point. Whereas geo restrictions on electronic books and media are the only example of restrictions on WHO YOU CAN SELL TO. And these are just plain discriminatory and anticonstitutional.
It's one thing to say you can't sell in AMERICA - though in our world of free trade I hope the authorities will soon recognize that this just stifles competition and hurts the consumers. It's an entirely different thing to say you can't sell to the AMERICANS. That's discrimination pure and simple, and it's outlawed in every country on the plant. Ford, for example, can choose not to sell its tiny Ka model in America. But it can't refuse to sell it to an American who walks into a Ford dealership in Europe, simply because he's an American. Whoever authorized that practice would face a jail term. As for publishers, they are free to pursue maximum gain, just as any other company. But when their business practices begin to run counter to fundamental ideas of justice and fairness, these practices need to be tossed out of the window, not brandished as a legitimate justification for continued discrimination.