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Comment by NoRelToEmber | Hacker News Reader

"Grey-market" means perfectly legal imports, just without the manufacturer's blessing. Even just calling them "grey" is a gross corporate invasion on ownership rights.

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If they can take advantage of global disparities to manufacture something, we should be able to take advantage of those disparities when buying.

> take advantage of global disparities to manufacture something

Like ashen-faced children, slaving in a sooty factory, under a leaden sky.

What is grey-market again?

Brilliantly stated insight, by the way.

I'm all for banning the import of products created through child labour, slavery, or thoroughly unhealthy working conditions. But they're not banning that. They're just protecting corporate profits.

No, no, no, that's not how it works. Globalisation is for throwing you in the street if you won't work for Vietnamese wages, not for letting you buy goods at Vietnamese prices.

To me, at least, "grey" indicates that the manufacturer support for updates or warranty is in a "grey" area, since a lot of that is localised to where it was originally purchased from.

And you’re super right that’s a good definition, but GP has a great point that if “black market” means it’s stolen merchandise, the very term grey market implies “kind of stolen” which is gross when it’s just “consumers using globalization in exactly the same way we do, in a way that slightly reduces our total margin dollars from the theoretical maximum”

"black market” means it’s stolen merchandise"

Black market is also drugs, guns, ... any trade not official allowed. And stolen goods often get sold legal via ebay, craigslist etc.

Even that should be illegal. People move. All the times.

It's kind of disgusting seeing people even entertain the notion that this is right. It's corporations bullying people and controlling things they have no right controlling.

Agree, thus the scare-quotes.

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