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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

Use privacy.com and give them a temporary credit card. Close the card when you want to cancel.

Is this ethical? You're not using the software anymore, so you're not getting something for nothing. Rather, you're avoiding paying something for nothing.

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He's breaking his agreement with Adobe but it wasn't ethical for Adobe to obscure the fact he was agreeing to a cancellation fee in the first place.

I would say it's unethical as long as the seller doesn't consent to it. But legal. I see it as similar to pirating it, though piracy is illegal as well.

Are the seller's terms unethical? Perhaps. I don't think that justifies being unethical in response, though.

Arguably the PayPal trick is more ethical because they decide it's not worth chasing the cancellation fee.

Ethical is not a word you can use to describe any aspect when having an interaction with a company. A company is not a living person following common social morals.

Trying to generalized actions are unethical or ethical or more or less ethical is completely subjective based on your understand and acceptance of the society rules you have been exposed to.

Company work with objective laws with judges deciding disputes.

I guess we'll have to disagree on the equivalency of this and pirating.

With pirating, you're continuing to use it without paying.

This won't stop Adobe from sending collections after you

Has that ever happened?

For small amounts (hundreds of dollars), it's often not economical to do this. And if they do end up doing it then its even less economical for an agency to do anything other than automated collections activities (emails, robo-calls etc) which can safely be ignored.

But he received a discount on his monthly rate when he agreed to subscribe for a year at a time.

There is a power imbalance between him & a giant multinational corporation, and he's just rectified it.

Oh that's what this is about?

I don't remember subscribing for a year at a time. I almost always subscribe to things on a monthly basis, and the money certainly comes out of my account on a monthly basis

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