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haunter • today at 9:29 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

As for the “unauthorized” sign:

Book publishers used to print India/SEA-only editions of books only sold in those countries, significantly cheaper than in the US or Europe. Then a Thai guy realized that this would be a good business opportunity: buy cheaper books and then import them to the US. Wiley brought him to court, went to the SCOTUS, Wiley lost the case. So they ended up printing cheaper edition books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_So....

Mind you "price discrimination" like this still exist in the digital world where locality is easier to be enforced. For example Steam has extensive regional pricing across countries so the same game can be significantly cheaper in Russia, India, Brazil etc. compared to US or EU

An example: https://steamdb.info/app/413150/

https://partner.steamgames.com/pricing/explorer

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing/currencies

Replies

Joker_vD • today at 11:10 AM

    When Kirtsaeng moved to the US in 1997 to pursue an undergraduate degree in mathematics at
    Cornell University,[4] he discovered that textbooks (not just those published by Wiley, but
    of other publishers too) were considerably more expensive to buy in the United States than
    in his home country. Kirtsaeng asked his relatives from Thailand to buy such books at home
    and ship them to him to sell at a profit. He sold the imported books on eBay, making $1.2
    million in revenue, although the parties disputed the net profit amount.
A text book case (ha!) about one of the mechanisms that enable the free markets and trade to bring the prices of goods down.
regenschutz • today at 12:48 PM

Wow, I've only ever heard of regional pricing being described as an overwhelmingly positive concept. When phrased as "price discrimination", it invokes a completely different set of (negative) emotions in me.

It's weirdly uncomfortable knowing that phrasing has such a big impact on one's emotions. It really shows how vulnerable we are to manipulation.

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stavros • today at 12:23 PM

Wow, how did we go from "it's impossible to enforce region locking online because you can transmit information instantly across the world" to "locality more easily enforced in the digital world"?

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