If Uber can call their drivers "contractors" what's to prevent everyone using that loophole to ignore minimum wage law?
This is a great question, it comes up a lot more than one would normally think.
Most jurisdictions have established legal tests to determine if the relationship between two individuals is an employment relationship (contract of service) or a contractual relationship (contract for service). Common elements of the tests are:
1. Does the individual use his or her own equipment, or does the individual use equipment that is provided by the employer/contractee? If the individual uses his or her own equipment, then he or she is most likely a contractor.
2. Does the individual have a duty to obey or does the employee/contractor have greater autonomy over the tasks that he or she chooses to perform? If the individual can choose when to work and selects work from a provided list of work orders then he or she is likely a contractor. If the individual is obligated to perform whatever tasks are assigned to him or her as long as they are within the parameters of a job description, then he or she is most likely an employee.
3. Is there a framework for discipline? An employer can discipline an employee (within reason) according to company policy. A contractee cannot discipline a contractor; any grievances must be dealt with per the contract and disputes settled either by arbitration or in court. A contractee may of course ask a contractor to discipline his or her own employee.
4. When does the legal relationship terminate? A contract for service nominally ends whenever the contracted service has been completed. A contract of service ends whenever the relationship is severed by those involved. Companies that hire individuals on a "renewable contract basis" and do not provide them with specific work that constitutes service often find themselves on the undesirable side of a court decision.
There are many more elements involved and they do vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In general though, the court will examine both the de-joure relationship and the de-facto relationship. When they do not align, the court often will decide in the best interest of the individual.
I can't see how it would be possible to defeat ECC.
The attacker would have to construct a write that affects the desired bits in the row-to-be-hammered and has check bits that affect the row-to-be-hammered's check bits such that the altered row is validated. This is probably nigh impossible to do in all but a select few constrained cases.
No. It's the vendor that performs the commercialization and hence the infringement. Google doesn't offer patent indemnity to Android vendors like Microsoft does to Windows Phone vendors.
Fan fiction and other derivative works exist within a legal minefield.
Many rightsholders ignore fan fiction while others embrace it as long as the authors observe certain content guidelines (such as avoiding adult content).
Contracts do not shield parties from criminal liability resulting from recklessness (knowingly, and willingly placing someone at risk) or negligence (unknowingly, but unnecessarily placing someone at risk).
One might argue that installing a root certificate on customer computers, including the private key on that same computer, and using an easily guessed password to protect that key constitutes negligent behaviour by placing customers at risk cyber attacks. It may even be argued that such an act is reckless because anyone skilled enough in the cryptographic systems used should have been able to identify that risk from the surface of the moon.
What Lenovo did was so incredibly batshit stupid and irresponsible that it's hard to describe in better words.
Very, Very accurate. I recall hearing that the Iowa class battleships could place a full broadside (9 rounds) within a 150 metre radius at maximum range.
Why bother with a floating artillery garrison that can only attack targets within a dozen miles when we already have superiority with a Carrier Group consisting of a floating air base accompanied by floating missile platforms that can take out the major military targets of a small nation several hundred miles away all by themselves?
Cost effectiveness. Air sorties are expensive, cruise missiles are even more expensive. Slinging 16 inch 2,700 pound explosive filled shells at hardened defences is extremely effective both in terms of damage and cost, if one can safely navigate a battleship into range of course. USS Wisconsin and USS Missouri both royally fucked up Iraqi shore defences as well as Iraqi forces in Kuwait during the Gulf War.
While battleships are extremely cost effective at delivering ordnance, they are very expensive to keep operational, even during peace time.
Um, no. The defining characteristics of a battleship are its high calibre naval artillery and heavy armour, guided missile frigates have neither of those.
A Ticonderoga class cruise carries an assortment of about 140 missiles of various design and purpose. An Iowa class battleship carried over 1,200 16 inch shells alone.
No particular hate, they were never replaced after WWII. While no one is planning any new ones, modern destroyers are getting larger and larger with the Zumwalt class destroyer larger than many WWII cruisers. I suspect that a battleship-esque design will be proposed sometime in the next few decades to mount powerful railguns.
Anyway, there are several reasons why battleship fell out of favour.
1. Battleships were often used as a fleet-in-being. Battleships are highly impervious to surface fire, so a single battleship was often enough to deter any fleet that did not have an equivalently armoured and armed battleship of its own from attacking while simultaneously forcing that enemy to keep a nearby presence to deter the battleship from doing the same. As a result, many WWII Battleships spent their time sitting in port as nothing more than a highly glorified gatekeeper.
2. Nations that did not have extensive blue-water navies often used battleships on their own, with little to no support fleet. This made them easy targets for swarms of aircraft laden with bombs and torpedoes. The USA used this tactic extensively against Japan and sunk many of Japans heavy naval ships. The battleship Yamato (the heaviest battleship ever built) was sunk this way along with most of its accompanying fleet; the USA lost only 10 aircraft in the assault. Anti-airacraft systems advanced heavily after the war, so it's doubtful that similar tactics would work against a modern battle group.
3. Battleships are extremely expensive to maintain and operate during both peace time and war time. Extensive automation and improvements have lowered this amount dramatically over time, but it's still high.
4. Logistics are a bitch. Modern nuclear powered craft can carry enough supplies to last several months, and require refueling only once ever couple of decades, but hydrocarbon powered battleships required regular refuelling by either an oiler or at a friendly port. Bigger ships require more supplies and don't necessarily extend any additional influence
SPARC really excels at highly multithreaded and highly multi-process workloads. Its sequential throughput leaves a lot to be desired but it really shines on some enterprise applications.
As a devout user of VMWare Workstation I count it amongst the best purchases that I've ever made. I usually upgrade to each new version as soon as it's available.
Ok. Agreed. Ubi shouldn't owe them a 'refund'. But they are the party that owes restitution here.
"fraudulent charge" is a pretty strong charge to make. The keys were sold legally in Eastern Europe by buyers who then exported them legally elsewhere.
There's no indication that legally made grey-market purchases were revoked, only those that were made using fraudulent credit card transactions. Ubisoft doesn't owe anyone anything for those. The original discussion was on what constitutes grey-marketeering.
My city is very economically diverse. Less than a mile away are people making a fraction of what is typical in my neighborhood. Yet we both pay the same price for milk, cars, and movie rentals.
I hear your argument, but I'm not sure what makes the line between germany and poland a magical line the free market dare not cross.
Milk and cars have very high marginal costs. In fact, many grocery stores sell milk below cost. I used to work as a retail manager in my late teens and the store that I worked at lost about $1.50 on every bag of milk that we sold.
The line between the various divisions of your city is at best distinguished by city bylaws and zoning policy so there's no real reason for there to be a massive price difference across the border given that there's no real barrier to import. A national border on the other hand is subject to customs when importing physical goods. It gets really murky when digital goods are involved. Now, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to block the import of discounted physical goods such as textbooks but these have been mostly unsuccessful.
Semantics. I *purchased* a license. I don't pretend I have any special exceptional copyright ownership of the underlying intellectual property any more than when I purchase a copy of a book... but I did *purchase* a license. The store had a "buy" button, I pressed it. A one time transaction was completed. I know own a license. Its listed as one of my games. And I can click a link to my "purchase history".
There's a principle in law... if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck. (You see this principle applied in other areas too like when corporations dress up their employees as "independent contractors" and the law sees right through it.)
The comparison that you're looking for is the de-jure relationship versus the de-facto relationship. You're absolutely right about it being used to prevent employers from ducking their obligations under various employment laws. However, a shrinkwrap licence is still a licence. Courts are less likely to read deeply into it, but it's still enforceable to an extent. If the publisher claims in the licence that they have the right to refuse service if a product is used outside of its region then it's unlikely that a court will force them to provide that service. In the case of a physical copy, they're not going to come to your house and take that physical copy away; in the case of a digital copy, they usually won't erase it from your hard disk drive but they may refuse to authenticate your login credentials. Many modern video games are designed such that any tangible element is largely useless without a service element as well.
A lease agreement is a negotiated several page document that both parties sign multiple times over. Pretty sure that's not a better analogy for buying a video game.
Video games include a terms of service agreement that is dozens of pages in length, a bike rack does not. It may not be signed repeatedly, but it is still a contract and both parties are bound by it.
Yup. I agree they can do stuff like this. But you can take a region locked game console to North America and play games purchased in that region for it. They don't get to show up your house with a hammer and smash your console.
That's an incredibly naive view of business operations. Additional consumers are nice but if word gets around that a grey-market exists the vendor may end up seeing a decrease in net revenue even if they see an increase in customers. Any profit driven company will try to combat that. For example, the grey-market for post-secondary textbooks is huge and there have been some high profile lawsuits and challenges in recent years.
No Ubisoft should refund me my money; and seek restitution from the unauthorized seller.
No. A refund is a return payment made from a merchant to a customer. Refunds are not made to third parties that were never part of the original business transaction. The customer should seek restitution from the middleman that made the fraudulent charge.
Suppose I buy a bike rack from amazon.com and use one of the services available to redirect the shipment to Canada. Because the same rack is nearly 50% more in Canada. ( Yakima Holdup MSRP $580 CAD); available for $520 CAD on Amazon.ca. $305 is the best price I can find on Amazon.com. That's $378 CAD.
So if I decide to save $120+ by bringing it in from the states; its grey market product. Canadian authorized resellers hate this, but am I really supposed to pay 50% more, when I can legally purchase it for less? Corporations shift their expenses and profits around like crazy... but it's unethical if I play the same game?
Should Yakima really be allowed to show up at my house and take it away? And tell me to try to collect a refund from the seller in the USA? Or perhaps I should QQ to the shipment redirect/import service?
You're comparing the import of a good to a revocation of a service due breach of contract and/or fraud. Amazing. In other news, apples are still not oranges.
Why is it ok for Ubi?
In this case it seems to be fraud related. I'm not aware of any company outright disabling or revoking service for legal grey-market activities but if they really wanted to annoy grey market purchasers they could simply point to a clause in their terms of service allowing them to do so.
That bike rack that you mentioned above is purchased outright, whereas Ubisoft's games are licensed. A better analogy would be leasing a vehicle. Many leasing companies will not allow the lessee to take the vehicle out of the country without permission.
This is true. But the border between eastern europe and western europe is a line on a map. If your selling the same product on both sides of the line at radically different prices to maximize YOUR profits, how can you villainize the people on the two sides of the line from correcting what would anywhere else be an obvious market FAILURE.
Europe is very economically diverse. Germany has nearly 4x the per-capita GDP as Poland, which happens to be right next door. What's affordable to someone in Germany is not necessarily affordable to someone in Poland. If a company wants to offer the same service in both countries at regionally appropriate price points they can attach conditions to the use of that service. Region locked game consoles are a good example of this. Outright revoking access to the service is crude, which is why many publishers are switching to language-locked editions. A high-priced English-French-German-Spanish-Italian edition on one side, and a cheap Polish edition on the other. This can negatively affected ex-pats that don't speak the native language, but that's a very small group.
I hear your point; and I don't object to Ubi ~trying~ to price discriminate; but if they can't then they have to deal with that, they can't just start revoking sales and taking things away from people who bought the product on the wrong side of their special line. *I* certainly didn't make any agreement with Ubisoft about where or from whom I would purchase X.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you didn't agree to anything, and neither did Ubisoft which makes neither party beholden to the other and Ubisoft doesn't owe you shit in terms of either service or a refund; or you agreed to the ToS and accept the consequences of breaking them.
Grey market activities do not harm lower income markets. Vendor reactions to grey market activities might but the grey market itself does not affect them.
That's splitting hairs. The grey market activities harm the vendor which prompts the vendor to react in order to protect their primary revenue. Low income markets usually constitute a rather small portion of a large manufacturer's revenue, so they can live with out it. On the other hand, the low income markets will lose access to the vendor's goods and services.
And just start revoking the product from anyone who bought it that they think shouldn't have. No refunds of course. I'm surprised if that's actually legal.
They didn't purchase the product from Ubisoft, so why should Ubisoft give them a refund? They should seek a refund from the unauthorized retailer.
Slashdot Mirror
That is in fact actually what it refers to.
In North America, we call it the China Syndrome because China is opposite North America on the surface of the planet.
Uruguay is approximately opposite Japan.
If Uber can call their drivers "contractors" what's to prevent everyone using that loophole to ignore minimum wage law?
This is a great question, it comes up a lot more than one would normally think.
Most jurisdictions have established legal tests to determine if the relationship between two individuals is an employment relationship (contract of service) or a contractual relationship (contract for service). Common elements of the tests are:
1. Does the individual use his or her own equipment, or does the individual use equipment that is provided by the employer/contractee? If the individual uses his or her own equipment, then he or she is most likely a contractor.
2. Does the individual have a duty to obey or does the employee/contractor have greater autonomy over the tasks that he or she chooses to perform? If the individual can choose when to work and selects work from a provided list of work orders then he or she is likely a contractor. If the individual is obligated to perform whatever tasks are assigned to him or her as long as they are within the parameters of a job description, then he or she is most likely an employee.
3. Is there a framework for discipline? An employer can discipline an employee (within reason) according to company policy. A contractee cannot discipline a contractor; any grievances must be dealt with per the contract and disputes settled either by arbitration or in court. A contractee may of course ask a contractor to discipline his or her own employee.
4. When does the legal relationship terminate? A contract for service nominally ends whenever the contracted service has been completed. A contract of service ends whenever the relationship is severed by those involved. Companies that hire individuals on a "renewable contract basis" and do not provide them with specific work that constitutes service often find themselves on the undesirable side of a court decision.
There are many more elements involved and they do vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In general though, the court will examine both the de-joure relationship and the de-facto relationship. When they do not align, the court often will decide in the best interest of the individual.
Bah, formatting got screwed up again. Here's another attempt.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pthread.h>
typedef struct
{
void (*function)(int,int);
int argA;
int argB;
} threadargs_t;
pthread_t threadA, threadB;
void dosomething(int a, int b)
{
printf("this is something: %d %d\n",a,b);
}
void dosomethingelse(int a, int b)
{
printf("this is something else: %d %d\n",a,b);
}
void* thread_entry(void* args)
{
threadargs_t* threadargs = (threadargs_t*)args;
(*threadargs->function)(threadargs->argA,threadargs->argB);
free(threadargs);
return NULL;
}
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
int localA = 0, localB = 1, localC = 2, localD = 3;
threadargs_t* threadA_args = malloc(sizeof(threadargs_t));
threadargs_t* threadB_args = malloc(sizeof(threadargs_t));
threadA_args->function = &dosomething;
threadA_args->argA = localA;
threadA_args->argB = localB;
threadB_args->function = &dosomethingelse;
threadB_args->argA = localC;
threadB_args->argB = localD;
pthread_create(&threadA,0,&thread_entry,threadA_args);
pthread_create(&threadB,0,&thread_entry,threadB_args);
fgetc(stdin);
return 0;
}
#include
#include
#include
typedef struct
{
void (*function)(int,int);
int argA;
int argB;
} threadargs_t;
pthread_t threadA, threadB;
void dosomething(int a, int b)
{
printf("this is something: %d %d\n",a,b);
}
void dosomethingelse(int a, int b)
{
printf("this is something else: %d %d\n",a,b);
}
void* thread_entry(void* args)
{
threadargs_t* threadargs = (threadargs_t*)args;
(*threadargs->function)(threadargs->argA,threadargs->argB);
free(threadargs);
return NULL;
}
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
int localA = 0, localB = 1, localC = 2, localD = 3;
threadargs_t* threadA_args = malloc(sizeof(threadargs_t));
threadargs_t* threadB_args = malloc(sizeof(threadargs_t));
threadA_args->function =
threadA_args->argA = localA;
threadA_args->argB = localB;
threadB_args->function =
threadB_args->argA = localC;
threadB_args->argB = localD;
pthread_create(&threadA,0,&thread_entry,threadA_args);
pthread_create(&threadB,0,&thread_entry,threadB_args);
fgetc(stdin);
return 0;
}
I can't see how it would be possible to defeat ECC.
The attacker would have to construct a write that affects the desired bits in the row-to-be-hammered and has check bits that affect the row-to-be-hammered's check bits such that the altered row is validated. This is probably nigh impossible to do in all but a select few constrained cases.
No. It's the vendor that performs the commercialization and hence the infringement. Google doesn't offer patent indemnity to Android vendors like Microsoft does to Windows Phone vendors.
Fan fiction and other derivative works exist within a legal minefield.
Many rightsholders ignore fan fiction while others embrace it as long as the authors observe certain content guidelines (such as avoiding adult content).
Not necessarily.
Contracts do not shield parties from criminal liability resulting from recklessness (knowingly, and willingly placing someone at risk) or negligence (unknowingly, but unnecessarily placing someone at risk).
One might argue that installing a root certificate on customer computers, including the private key on that same computer, and using an easily guessed password to protect that key constitutes negligent behaviour by placing customers at risk cyber attacks. It may even be argued that such an act is reckless because anyone skilled enough in the cryptographic systems used should have been able to identify that risk from the surface of the moon.
What Lenovo did was so incredibly batshit stupid and irresponsible that it's hard to describe in better words.
Any sufficiently shocking display of stupidity is indistinguishable from malice
PC-BSD has its own installer. It's really quite nice and should be very familiar to anyone who is used to Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL/CentOS
Very, Very accurate. I recall hearing that the Iowa class battleships could place a full broadside (9 rounds) within a 150 metre radius at maximum range.
The 2,700 pound shell can punch through 6 meters of concrete, that's why
Why bother with a floating artillery garrison that can only attack targets within a dozen miles when we already have superiority with a Carrier Group consisting of a floating air base accompanied by floating missile platforms that can take out the major military targets of a small nation several hundred miles away all by themselves?
Cost effectiveness. Air sorties are expensive, cruise missiles are even more expensive. Slinging 16 inch 2,700 pound explosive filled shells at hardened defences is extremely effective both in terms of damage and cost, if one can safely navigate a battleship into range of course. USS Wisconsin and USS Missouri both royally fucked up Iraqi shore defences as well as Iraqi forces in Kuwait during the Gulf War.
While battleships are extremely cost effective at delivering ordnance, they are very expensive to keep operational, even during peace time.
Um, no. The defining characteristics of a battleship are its high calibre naval artillery and heavy armour, guided missile frigates have neither of those.
A Ticonderoga class cruise carries an assortment of about 140 missiles of various design and purpose. An Iowa class battleship carried over 1,200 16 inch shells alone.
No particular hate, they were never replaced after WWII. While no one is planning any new ones, modern destroyers are getting larger and larger with the Zumwalt class destroyer larger than many WWII cruisers. I suspect that a battleship-esque design will be proposed sometime in the next few decades to mount powerful railguns.
Anyway, there are several reasons why battleship fell out of favour.
1. Battleships were often used as a fleet-in-being. Battleships are highly impervious to surface fire, so a single battleship was often enough to deter any fleet that did not have an equivalently armoured and armed battleship of its own from attacking while simultaneously forcing that enemy to keep a nearby presence to deter the battleship from doing the same. As a result, many WWII Battleships spent their time sitting in port as nothing more than a highly glorified gatekeeper.
2. Nations that did not have extensive blue-water navies often used battleships on their own, with little to no support fleet. This made them easy targets for swarms of aircraft laden with bombs and torpedoes. The USA used this tactic extensively against Japan and sunk many of Japans heavy naval ships. The battleship Yamato (the heaviest battleship ever built) was sunk this way along with most of its accompanying fleet; the USA lost only 10 aircraft in the assault.
Anti-airacraft systems advanced heavily after the war, so it's doubtful that similar tactics would work against a modern battle group.
3. Battleships are extremely expensive to maintain and operate during both peace time and war time. Extensive automation and improvements have lowered this amount dramatically over time, but it's still high.
4. Logistics are a bitch. Modern nuclear powered craft can carry enough supplies to last several months, and require refueling only once ever couple of decades, but hydrocarbon powered battleships required regular refuelling by either an oiler or at a friendly port. Bigger ships require more supplies and don't necessarily extend any additional influence
SPARC really excels at highly multithreaded and highly multi-process workloads. Its sequential throughput leaves a lot to be desired but it really shines on some enterprise applications.
You're absolutely right about the pace of the books slowing down but honestly, I really liked the depth and detail.
He died on my birthday.
Worst birthday present ever :(
As a devout user of VMWare Workstation I count it amongst the best purchases that I've ever made. I usually upgrade to each new version as soon as it's available.
Ok. Agreed. Ubi shouldn't owe them a 'refund'. But they are the party that owes restitution here.
"fraudulent charge" is a pretty strong charge to make. The keys were sold legally in Eastern Europe by buyers who then exported them legally elsewhere.
There's no indication that legally made grey-market purchases were revoked, only those that were made using fraudulent credit card transactions. Ubisoft doesn't owe anyone anything for those. The original discussion was on what constitutes grey-marketeering.
My city is very economically diverse. Less than a mile away are people making a fraction of what is typical in my neighborhood. Yet we both pay the same price for milk, cars, and movie rentals.
I hear your argument, but I'm not sure what makes the line between germany and poland a magical line the free market dare not cross.
Milk and cars have very high marginal costs. In fact, many grocery stores sell milk below cost. I used to work as a retail manager in my late teens and the store that I worked at lost about $1.50 on every bag of milk that we sold.
The line between the various divisions of your city is at best distinguished by city bylaws and zoning policy so there's no real reason for there to be a massive price difference across the border given that there's no real barrier to import. A national border on the other hand is subject to customs when importing physical goods. It gets really murky when digital goods are involved. Now, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to block the import of discounted physical goods such as textbooks but these have been mostly unsuccessful.
Semantics. I *purchased* a license. I don't pretend I have any special exceptional copyright ownership of the underlying intellectual property any more than when I purchase a copy of a book... but I did *purchase* a license. The store had a "buy" button, I pressed it. A one time transaction was completed. I know own a license. Its listed as one of my games. And I can click a link to my "purchase history".
There's a principle in law... if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck. (You see this principle applied in other areas too like when corporations dress up their employees as "independent contractors" and the law sees right through it.)
The comparison that you're looking for is the de-jure relationship versus the de-facto relationship. You're absolutely right about it being used to prevent employers from ducking their obligations under various employment laws. However, a shrinkwrap licence is still a licence. Courts are less likely to read deeply into it, but it's still enforceable to an extent. If the publisher claims in the licence that they have the right to refuse service if a product is used outside of its region then it's unlikely that a court will force them to provide that service. In the case of a physical copy, they're not going to come to your house and take that physical copy away; in the case of a digital copy, they usually won't erase it from your hard disk drive but they may refuse to authenticate your login credentials. Many modern video games are designed such that any tangible element is largely useless without a service element as well.
A lease agreement is a negotiated several page document that both parties sign multiple times over. Pretty sure that's not a better analogy for buying a video game.
Video games include a terms of service agreement that is dozens of pages in length, a bike rack does not. It may not be signed repeatedly, but it is still a contract and both parties are bound by it.
Yup. I agree they can do stuff like this. But you can take a region locked game console to North America and play games purchased in that region for it. They don't get to show up your house with a hammer and smash your console.
Correct. They can how
That's an incredibly naive view of business operations. Additional consumers are nice but if word gets around that a grey-market exists the vendor may end up seeing a decrease in net revenue even if they see an increase in customers. Any profit driven company will try to combat that. For example, the grey-market for post-secondary textbooks is huge and there have been some high profile lawsuits and challenges in recent years.
There's no counter argument to what is either trolling or sheer stupidity.
Good god, did you drop out of high school or get kicked out?
No Ubisoft should refund me my money; and seek restitution from the unauthorized seller.
No. A refund is a return payment made from a merchant to a customer. Refunds are not made to third parties that were never part of the original business transaction. The customer should seek restitution from the middleman that made the fraudulent charge.
Suppose I buy a bike rack from amazon.com and use one of the services available to redirect the shipment to Canada. Because the same rack is nearly 50% more in Canada. ( Yakima Holdup MSRP $580 CAD); available for $520 CAD on Amazon.ca. $305 is the best price I can find on Amazon.com. That's $378 CAD.
So if I decide to save $120+ by bringing it in from the states; its grey market product. Canadian authorized resellers hate this, but am I really supposed to pay 50% more, when I can legally purchase it for less? Corporations shift their expenses and profits around like crazy... but it's unethical if I play the same game?
Should Yakima really be allowed to show up at my house and take it away? And tell me to try to collect a refund from the seller in the USA? Or perhaps I should QQ to the shipment redirect/import service?
You're comparing the import of a good to a revocation of a service due breach of contract and/or fraud. Amazing. In other news, apples are still not oranges.
Why is it ok for Ubi?
In this case it seems to be fraud related. I'm not aware of any company outright disabling or revoking service for legal grey-market activities but if they really wanted to annoy grey market purchasers they could simply point to a clause in their terms of service allowing them to do so.
That bike rack that you mentioned above is purchased outright, whereas Ubisoft's games are licensed. A better analogy would be leasing a vehicle. Many leasing companies will not allow the lessee to take the vehicle out of the country without permission.
This is true. But the border between eastern europe and western europe is a line on a map. If your selling the same product on both sides of the line at radically different prices to maximize YOUR profits, how can you villainize the people on the two sides of the line from correcting what would anywhere else be an obvious market FAILURE.
Europe is very economically diverse. Germany has nearly 4x the per-capita GDP as Poland, which happens to be right next door. What's affordable to someone in Germany is not necessarily affordable to someone in Poland.
If a company wants to offer the same service in both countries at regionally appropriate price points they can attach conditions to the use of that service. Region locked game consoles are a good example of this. Outright revoking access to the service is crude, which is why many publishers are switching to language-locked editions. A high-priced English-French-German-Spanish-Italian edition on one side, and a cheap Polish edition on the other. This can negatively affected ex-pats that don't speak the native language, but that's a very small group.
I hear your point; and I don't object to Ubi ~trying~ to price discriminate; but if they can't then they have to deal with that, they can't just start revoking sales and taking things away from people who bought the product on the wrong side of their special line. *I* certainly didn't make any agreement with Ubisoft about where or from whom I would purchase X.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you didn't agree to anything, and neither did Ubisoft which makes neither party beholden to the other and Ubisoft doesn't owe you shit in terms of either service or a refund; or you agreed to the ToS and accept the consequences of breaking them.
Grey market activities do not harm lower income markets. Vendor reactions to grey market activities might but the grey market itself does not affect them.
That's splitting hairs. The grey market activities harm the vendor which prompts the vendor to react in order to protect their primary revenue. Low income markets usually constitute a rather small portion of a large manufacturer's revenue, so they can live with out it. On the other hand, the low income markets will lose access to the vendor's goods and services.
And just start revoking the product from anyone who bought it that they think shouldn't have. No refunds of course. I'm surprised if that's actually legal.
They didn't purchase the product from Ubisoft, so why should Ubisoft give them a refund? They should seek a refund from the unauthorized retailer.