Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   Isn't discrimination against customers based on their country of origin
>>> illegal in most places? I think some people call that "racism" (even though
>>> it's not the technically correct term).
> 
>> Now *that* would be an interesting lawsuit in the USA.  Especially since in 
>> most cases it's illegal to discriminate based on "country of origin" (i.e., 
>> ethnicity).
> 
>   Yeah, certainly if there was some physical shop which refused to sell
> anything to anyone coming from eg. the middle-East or Africa, that would
> certainly cause a huge commotion and a bunch of lawsuits. But seemingly
> online stores are exempt from this law, for some reason? Exactly what is
> this based on?

	I think the analogy (in general) is invalid.

	Likely, if you're an American visiting Japan, and try to buy something
from a store, they'll sell it regardless of citizenship.

	Online purchases (probably) have slightly different legal implications.
Sales tax being one of them.

	There may be an issue of export control. In the physical case, it's not
the shop owner's job to ask whether you'll be taking it abroad. If you
then return to the US with it, you may violate Japanese/international
laws, but the shop owner won't have.

	In the online world, the retailer may be considered to actually have
delivered the product abroad. Then he becomes liable.

	Anyone over here ever bought any of those much cheaper "international"
textbooks? The ones from India explicitly say something like "Cannot be
sold outside of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka". I
believe I've seen some Korean books with similar large print. Now I
could physically go and buy the book there and bring it with me. Don't
know if I'll be breaking a law (I'm not selling...).

	I happen to have bought all of mine domestically in the US. Likely
someone bought them from India/Korea, brought them to the US, and resold
them - which may be illegal for him to do so.

	In case anyone is wondering - those books are not pirated or anything.
They're licensed by the original publishers to those countries (cheaper
quality paper, etc). They're much cheaper over there (easily 15x
cheaper). Likely the license terms are that they not be sold abroad -
particularly back to the US. The reasoning makes sense.

-- 
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.


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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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