Morally, it isn't my finest hour (it is technical breach of contract with Amazon, it makes a minor imposition on the eventual rightsholder of the Japanese version, possibly retards the ability of the content to licitly reach Japan, and possibly transgresses a secular law which enjoys a presumption of moral legitimacy), but it is a much less grave offense than theft.

What contract did you sign with Amazon?

I don't remember if Amazon have those before registering/buying though.

Artists: You invest a ton of hard work into making something you're proud of. Then you make $0.87 because everyone is pirating it (or at least, that's what your distributor tells you).

Distributors: Their primary value these days is in marketing. So far it's just the web cartoonists who seem to be making a living off their work, but the distributors being supplanted over time. They're hiring lobbyists and trying to keep their leverage by fighting stuff like Net Neutrality.

Users: I bought a game the other week. It wouldn't install and gave me some vague nonsense error message like "Install failed: try again." My best guess is that Starforce DRM was the reason. I'm out $20. I'm guessing it twigged on some remnant of a CD drive emulator I used to convert some ISO a long time ago and later uninstalled, but it won't tell me. I never got to play it. I could get a crack for it, but all the crap I took from trying to make it work made me hate the game. Long story short, I returned it. The non-techie store clerk elected to mark it as "defective." I didn't really feel like contradicting her.

Pirates: You can get anything you want for free. Unlike the users, your version won't have DRM. Worries about viruses and such are real, but overrated for people who are reasonably computer savvy. There's a reason more people transition from user to pirate.

Librarians: They're sitting on some wax cylinders from 1890 that won't go out of copyright until 2067 thanks to a 1972 law that simplified (and extended) audio copyrights. The Library of Congress report said that they generally have to ignore the law to preserve a lot of historic audio files.

Did I miss anyone?

With all due respect, I'd suggest you're just being lazy and looking to justify something that you seem to know is ethically dubious.

Book Depository has the book for $18US with free shipping to Lithuania http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780446563048/Delivering-...

http://www.abebooks.com/ top two results both offer shipping to Lithuania, less than $25 total cost.

As the other user pointed out, ebay sellers have the book with shipping to Lithuania, total cost ~$25US again.

I can think of three worthwhile points here, though:

* Outside the US, getting legitimate digital content is still much much harder and/or more expensive than getting pirated content. I live in Australia, so somewhere between US & Lithuania in convenience stakes, and we get the same "not available in your region" BS. I spent some time in NYC last year, and the ease & availability of digitally delivered content blew me away. Bring it on!

* There _are_ countries where piracy is the only sensible option. You own a Kindle, so I'm assuming you can afford a $20US hardback book. I used to live in Indonesia, where my housemates earned ~$60USD a month. Although they didn't have their own computers (or Kindles), some of our neighbours had computers (P2-era in 2004) and every piece of software was pirated. I don't even know where they would go to buy legit copies if they wanted them.

I think you can make a case for piracy in these circumstances. In fact, even Microsoft did - they gave the Indonesian government licenses for all of the Microsoft software on their computers, in exchange for them agreeing to pay for more licenses (at reduced rates) in the future.

Thankfully, Linux is (or was) growing in popularity in Indonesia as an alternative free (and ethical) option.

* Finally, I would say that this shows there exists a market for a site like http://booko.com.au/, targeted to ex-USSR countries. Hint hint. :)

Thanks for the links.

Offtopic: we had the same situation in 90s. Getting better now, but most people still pirate software. Photoshop costs more than average monthly salary. Before taxes. Do I need to say more? :)

Whereas the truth is simply that the legitimate options took more effort to find & execute than piracy did. Which is universally true, even often for those who live in the US (the gap is just narrower there.)

I'd say that if you can't obtain it at all then downloading it may well be a legitimate option if there's another way that you could recompense the author or pay it back. For example, you could find a US library address, buy the book and have it sent there instead, then download a copy safe in the knowledge that you have actually paid for it, with the karmic bonus of having donated it to a library.

download a copy safe in the knowledge that you have actually paid for it, with the karmic bonus of having donated it to a library.

It would seem like you are double-dipping here. You can decide personally that the one act ethically offsets the other, but I don't know if you can claim good about both things at once. :)

Our systems of morals assume a scarcity of goods which is increasingly not the case when the goods in question can be represented as bits of information. Sooner or later society will have to decide on a new set of moral rules to account for that, but for now things are fuzzy and a simple application of the traditional answers (goodwill and charity in this case) don't always give the best solution in a modern context.

(Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this solution - I just like playing devil's advocate.)

(insert standard "sample size of one" disclaimer here.)

Not to mention, by that logic, you should never donate books to a library, since it is effectively costing the author sales.

Precisely. Should authors and publishers be paid by everyone that wants to read their work, or should the books be available freely to all that want them? (And yes, they would get paid for the number of books the library owns, but the system is set up to minimize that amount and it should certainly be less than the number of people reading them.)

What is the moral difference between pirating a book and paying no money to the author, or borrowing a copy that had been donated to a library and paying no money to the author? The borrowed copy prevents another patron from borrowing at the same time, but this feels more like a physical limitation (and legal loophole) than a morally relevent distinction.

People try to place value on making sure that authors get paid, and on making books freely available to all (that live near a library?), while neglecting that these are mostly incompatible with each other.

Oh, and the "I later bought my own copies" argument is also commonly used in favor of piracy.

It's reasons like this that I don't claim any strong opinions on these issues myself. Things are complicated. There are too many factors at play - especially when you toss in greedy corporations and all that - to make clear distinctions between right and wrong that hold up from all angles.

But I appreciate your creative and thoughtful solution. If this were an interview question, your answer would tell me a lot about you.

But they may just ask you re-enter CC info OR validate it against your address as well.

Fun story: been living in the UK for a while, but using Lithuanian credit card to shop online. Most websites required UK billing address. And allowed to use my cc with billing address in different country...

On the other, I'm in Australia. We speak English, have a Free Trade Agreement, and are generally as available a market to the US as the US is. And yet, we pay FAR more then our fair share, we don't get releases at the same time, and generally get shafted.

And, the only reason why is often one of profit. It's more profitable to charge us more, because we'll pay it. It's more profitable to delay launches here, because then they can have big-bang style launches.

Which, as you've no-doubt noticed, leads to piracy as the means of obtaining something. It's a dilemma I've not quite resolved, myself.

I don't live in the US either and saw this more times than I care to remember: "you can't buy this digital download because it's not available in your region. print and fill out this form, mail to your local distributor and you'll get it in a few weeks".

Want to watch Lost finale? Wait a couple months until it's been spoiled to death. The lastest album from your favorite band? A technical book, games, it's all the same. Sure, it's all purely convenience, unnecessary things, but it's digital bits that have people all around the world, with their credit card in their hand waiting to consume them.

I've seen people use proxies and whatnot to be able to give their money, say, to Apple to buy music in iTunes which is not available here. I think it's absurd to pay to get something that end up being infriging anyway.

Not to mention all the hoops customers have to jump through (quotas, DRM, exclusive content, DLC) that pirates don't have to worry.

I like the honest position Shane Carruth (who written, directed, produced the movie Primer pretty much by himself) about torrenting his movie:

http://primermovie.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1626#1626

(somewhere else he says he received several tips through paypal from people who downloaded but rejected them all due to legal issues)

All that said, I think there's a huge market for someone to provide a way for people around the world to purchase legal bits of pretty much anything, if they can work through the legal issues. Steam is already doing a good job at this in the gaming market, but there's still plenty of space there.

As for me, I don't feel bad about piracy. I am an anarcho-capitalist, so I don't have much respect for any law that transcend my property right. However, I also noted how piracy hurt my interests tremendously in the long run, no matter how attractive and unrisky it is to pirate.

Piracy support monopolists, not entrepreneurs who respect my property rights. As a result, I am gald when people target pirates instead of my business.

Second, copyright laws aren't a question of ethics. They are very artificial (nothing is being "stolen" or removed, copies are not the original property) laws that have originally been created to promote the distribution of original work. If it's being abused to do exactly the opposite, again, as far as I'm concerned any ethical considerations become null and void.

And don't get me started on deliberately crippling a legally acquired product with crap like DRM.

The outcome of all this is good: it takes away power from the unskilled artists (soulless list hit generators etc.) and moves it to the skilled ones. You know, the kind that make you wanna throw money at them even if you already have their stuff.

Now I don't think it's some huge deal, I'm just saying it's still stealing, either way you look at it.

It's called copyright infrigiment.

The OP was obviously using a broader definition, and I used his definitely to answer the question. He uses "piracy" and "stealing" in the same question, so I think his meaning is clear.

Given that I respect tptacek for being bright, level headed, and having a good mind for reverse engineering and analysis, I had hoped to get him into a friendly discussion addressing root causes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1798540

Human nature is acquisitive, but this manifests itself in two distinct ways; for a group or for an individual. In the former, there is a part of human nature wanting collaboration (for group), so we want to return favors and want to reward efforts. In the latter, there is a contrasting part of human nature more avariciously (selfish, greedy) inclined to benefit the individual, so there is also a desire to not return favors and not reward efforts.

Copyright laws are an attempt to enforce the former, and of course, copyright infringements are an attempt to enforce the latter. The former creates "monopoly" and the latter creates "theft" but both of these terms are rhetorically loaded, and worse, both of them are a detriment to markets.

The important question is, can we design a better system to both fairly reward efforts of collaboration and at the same time also benefit individuals?

It's a very tough question, but until people are willing to step back from their biases and heated opinions, we will not be able to figure out a better solution.

So, of course you have a choice. Read something else.

The universe doesn't owe you a constant stream of your preferred reading material in the cheapest and most convenient way possible. There are 50 used and new copies for sale on Amazon.com. You're telling me not a single one of them could be bribed into shipping internationally for you? There's not a single Lithuanian book shop that will do a special order? Lithuania has blocked BonVu.com?

I think what you mean to say is that you didn't feel like paying extra for a book or waiting for it to arrive. So really, you pirated out of convenience rather than necessity.

If there are systems set up that cut off knowledge from certain parts of the world, or even make it much harder to get it, I think that is injustice. I regard it as a basic human right to have access to the same information everyone else does. That's why we have public libraries.

In the U.S., we regard free speech as sacred, and I would argue that the reverse of free speech - the right to hear others - is equally as vital.

This idea that someone owns unique configuration of words and sounds is old and dying. You can own distribution platforms, own objects, and hire people who can make streams of words. But you can't own an idea.

That software you're working on is just a unique configuration of words and symbols. I think there's value in protecting that, and I don't see any difference in regards to written publications.

We already open source a lot of stuff, because that stuff alone isn't nearly enough to beat us.

For everyone working on something trivial, which is most people, you're right. I don't think it would really work for important complex algorithms, etc., i.e., Google is not going to open source their search algorithm.

It sounds like you're saying that Google, after coming up with their version of search, should've just opened it up to the world, because everyone has the "right" to know what they're up to. Do you think they'd be in the same position today if they'd done that?

   Perhaps you could try to find a book shop that will do a
   special order? I found 50 copies on Amazon.com. You could
   look into getting it shipped via bonvu.com if nobody will
   ship internationally.
   
   If all that fails and piracy really concerns you, remember
   you don't *have* to read the book.

Societies become rich by encouraging people to take as many such gains-without-loss actions as possible! (And quite a few actions where the gain of some outweighs the loss of others, too.)

Of course, having this utilitarian rationalization handy may mean you pretend you wouldn't have paid the higher cost, when in fact, you would have. And, someday the rightsholder may find a way to offer their product at a price you'd take -- perhaps through some form of price discrimination -- in which case, piracy causes a small loss to the rightsholder.

But piracy may still be net-welfare-enhancing, because their eventual-loss-at-some-future-price-point may be much smaller than your gain-in-the-meantime.

I wouldn't agonize over your situation, as long as you're trying to get legitimate copies. Perhaps you could pick up a legitimate copy when it does become available, or figure out a generalized way to pretend to be a US consumer of digital goods -- VPN, PO Box, CC card? -- whose cost can be amortized over many purchases. (Is that circumvention ethical? Well, that's another interesting question...)

This is a point that I've often pondered with respect to piracy. From society's point of view, the net gain from everyone having access to a digital good (given virtually zero duplication cost) could outweigh the benefit to society from the income being redistributed to the company that charges for duplication of said good?

But I know what you mean. We have way less choice when it comes to buying stuff in this part of Europe, that's why so many people tend to skip the buying part, cause they want it right now.

But my point is that publishers could move their asses and start selling worldwide instead of bragging about piracy.

I have a rather radical proposal, which might even not be feasible (about as feasible as trying to treat virtual non-scarce things as real and scarce):

Authors should get paid for writing, not for having written something.

Perhaps there are expat Americans or Brits who work in Lithuania, who could obtain a copy for you.