What is &quot;profiteering&quot; and is it illegal? Anther question discusses discrimination and &quot;profiteering&quot;. What is profiteering in a legal context as distinct from normal for profit business in a capitalist market society?
UK In england-and-wales, Profiteering or &quot;Price Gouging&quot; don't appear at all in laws. However, there is the Competition Act of 1998, which bans abusive practices. Of particular interest is this provision : 18 Abuse of dominant position. (1)Subject to section 19, any conduct on the part of one or more undertakings which amounts to the abuse of a dominant position in a market is prohibited if it may affect trade within the United Kingdom. (2)Conduct may, in particular, constitute such an abuse if it consists in— (a)directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions; The unfair pricing part would most certainly be triggered by demanding the weight of a roll of toilet paper in sterling silver (227 grams with ~£0.55 per gram, so ~£125), but the law also requires market domination, which is defined as controlling the price of about 40% of the goods in an area. So unless you are dominate the toilet paper market in all of the county or hundreds of miles, you can almost demand whatever you want. US Profiteering can be one of two things in legal circles of the united-states: Price Gauging War Profiteering War Profiteering War Profiteering was part of the title of HR-400 War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007, defining the act as: Whoever, in any matter involving a contract with, or the provision of goods or services to, the United States or a provisional authority, in connection with a mission of the United States Government overseas, knowingly— (1) (A) executes or attempts to execute a scheme or artifice to defraud the United States or that authority; or (B) materially overvalues any good or service with the intent to defraud the United States or that authority; Examples from history would be deliberately creating sub-par products that break as soon as they hit combat. In any way, it is just against the US as the state, not any person. Price Gouging In many state laws, Price Gouging is fixed in some way or another. Price Gouging is the term of art used for the act to &quot;take advantage of spikes in demand by charging exorbitant prices for necessities&quot;. The term does not apply to normal increases of prices due to shifting economies or dissimilar prices for products. Commonly, many are also restricted to emergency situations such as natural disasters, war, or even covid-19. Generally, these laws punish people who increase prices in an unreasonable manner but they also don't prescribe what reasonable is. An example of Price Gouging is the salesman, who knowing a hurricane will hit Florida, buys up all generators in Detroit that cost below 2000 USD and gets a truck there to sell them the moment it has passed. Now he sells each generator for 20000 USD, while the normal market price outside of the hit area is just a 10th of that. In addition, have him sell 5-gallon cans of fuel for 500 USD. Both items - equipment to make electricity to fix the homes and fuel - are under Fla. Stat. §501.160 1(a) and the prices are clearly matching 1(b). So our Detroid salesman in Florida is violating the law on Price Gouging. Non-emergency laws? Only very few laws are not concerned with an emergency situation and thus more broad and general. The most likely broadest of them is Mich. Comp. Laws §445.903 (z). It reads: Charging the consumer a price that is grossly in excess of the price at which similar property or services are sold. Here, grossly in excess is the requirement, but also the similarity of the products. So, it does not take dissimilar products into account, especially not if the two items cost you very dissimilar to acquire them. To take a less emergency example, let's say we have a shop. We sell two types of toilet paper: one is 1-ply and costs 10 cents a roll. The other is imported german, extra soft 4-ply with Aloe-Vera and vanilla smell and we demand 5 USD per roll. The price difference is harsh (50 times!) but the two products are not similar, and we can prove that the import paper did cost us something like 4 USD to get to our shop in the first place. Now, one day we just put the 5 USD label from our import paper onto the cheap one for whatever reason. Only now we grossly overprice our cheap toilet paper and violate that provision: we charge 50 times what the item's fair price is. When goods don't appear dissimilar but are A baker might make a pie for 50 USD in basic fixed costs (tools, wages, electricity) to run the shop, and 25 cents per pie in ingredients if he bakes 100 of them. That's 75 USD for 100 pies in costs, or 75 cents a pie. He wants to sell them at 1 USD a piece, that's a 1/3rd markup and a somewhat normal price. The same baker can also bake gluten-free pies. The ingredients cost him 50 cents a pie and the same basic fixed costs to make a batch. But he also has to clean the shop top to bottom for 3 hours before to get any gluten flour out of it, costing him another 100 USD in wages. He also only has a demand for 10 pies, so those pies cost him 160 USD per batch or 16 USD per pie. To make a profit, he sells them at 21,33 USD, which is again a 1/3rd markup. At first glance, a gluten-free pie might appear a very similar product, but it isn't even similar under the Michigan law, because manufacturing costs are disproportional higher for the market. Even if he could sell 100 pies and then made a 100 pie batch, he'd still pay 200 USD for 100 pies, and the fair price for a single pie from a 100-item batch would be 2,66 USD. But from the 10-item batch, it's 21,33 USD. Because the two pies are so dissimilar in manufacturing prices, they can not be used as &quot;similar&quot; under Michigan law. You'd need to compare the price of another gluten-free pie that is baked in similarly small batches in a bakeshop that makes both normal and gluten-free products in the same workshop.
Theoretically speaking, this is not theft. You are correct in that theft requires specific intent: to permanently deprive someone from the use and enjoyment of one of their lawful possessions. In real life, it is a matter of evidence of course. Saying you were only borrowing can be proven otherwise based on your actions. I should also mention that if you "borrow" something an there were obligations attached to that borroeing (e.g. "you can borrow it but you mustnt use it like this, or you must return it in a week") then failing to abide by those obligations can be sufficient to show intention to deprive. Furthermore "borrowing something" and consuming its entire usefulness for yourself counts as the permanent deprivation of the use of the possession from the owner. E.g. "borrowing" concert tickets and returning them after a concert (see s.6 Theft Act 1968) R v Lloyd, Bhuee &amp; Ali [1985] QB 829 also tells us that the condition of something borrowed once returned may be indicative of whether there was an intention to permanently deprive someone of their rights to property.
Civil law instead of criminal law Not all things that we commonly refer to as "illegal" are actually crimes - many of them refer to violations of contracts or other obligations where the harmed party may (or may not) use the civil system to obtain some satisfaction, but the government and prosecutors will not do it for them. In general (with some exceptions, depends on jurisdiction and circumstances), most low scale copyright violations are treated as a civil matter - it allows the harmed party (i.e. the copyright owner) to sue you for damages in a civil court, if they wish and are able to do so. However, it generally is not a crime (again, with some exceptions - e.g. large scale distribution often is) so the government and police on their own cannot, should not and does not investigate and prosecute violations of software licence terms.
You've really got two questions here: 1) "Is it an invasion of privacy to know that I'm using an ad blocker?", and 2) "Is it discrimination to refuse service based on what software I'm running?". Taking them in order: Because of how HTTP/HTML works, there are essentially two ways for a server operator to know what software you are running. Your browser announces that it's running something. This usually takes the form of a modified User-Agent header. I'm not aware of any privacy laws that consider "Person A told me something" to be an invasion of Person A's privacy. They guess it based on the actions your browser takes. For example, if the website gets a request for a page, and the site's ad network does not get a matching request for an ad, the server deduces that the user is running an ad blocker. Since this is based on things that the server operator could reasonably be expected to be informed of, it isn't an invasion of privacy under any law I'm aware of. Is it discrimination? Yes. But not all discrimination is illegal. In general, only discrimination based on protected categories (race, sex, etc.) is prohibited, and I can't imagine a jurisdiction making "choice of browser add-ons" to be one of those categories, not least because it's something the person being discriminated against can easily change.
A company can charge each of its customers a different price if it wishes. Providing this discrimination is not on the basis of a prohibited reason (race, sex etc.) this is not illegal.
Is this legal? Generally yes, unless it unlawfully exceeds the scope of the license. Also, if it is, how can I check if it's permitted by the original store's EULA? Read the whole EULA, focusing on terms related to resale, assignment, and transferability.
When a platform has the right to kick you out as they deem fit, without any evidence why they did it, does that change if you have a paid? It depends on the purpose of payment and the terms &amp; conditions it triggers. Your description reflects that payment entitles the user to have no ads &quot;and stuff&quot; (?). Payment does not necessarily entitle the user to continued access, diligence from customer service, or other features. Without fully knowing the platform's terms &amp; conditions regarding payment it is impossible to identify what obligations (other than not displaying advertisements) your payment creates on the platform. The information you provide here is insufficient for assessing whether you have a viable claim such as fraud or breach of contract. On the other hand, the platform's apparent arbitrariness and lack of response might support a finding of unfair or deceptive practices if the platform does not honor or proportionally reimburse your payment. Many jurisdictions have legislation prohibiting practices which are unfair, deceptive, or unconscionable (example: MCL 445.903). Oftentimes statutory law establishes an agency in charge of addressing customers' complaints.
This is unlawful sex discrimination In fact, its incredibly close to the example given on this website: A nightclub allows women in for free but you have to pay because you’re a man. This is unlawful discrimination because of your sex. How do they get away with it? Did you complain or report them? No? That’s how.