[mooism2]

It's legal to price discriminate based on age (discounted cinema tickets for children and pensioners), gender (free entry to certain nightclubs for women), occupation (teachers get educational discounts on some software, even when they only use it at home), not to mention the tricks aeroplane/train companies pull. So why not legal to price discriminate net access based on the device you're accessing it with?

[pbhjpbhj]

>occupation (teachers get educational discounts on some software, even when they only use it at home) //

Suppose they say "teachers" and you have a teaching license but aren't currently teaching. You present your teaching license and say "is this acceptable" and they say yes, you only need a teaching license to get the discount.

That seems pretty analogous to the current situation. You possess the token they request and that they subsequently use to give you a lower price. You've not committed fraud because you're legally allowed to use that UA string. It's up to the provider to decide if their requirement is "passes us this UA string" or "declares ownership of this device" (I don't consider those things identical by a long stretch).

Now if they say when you pass a particular UA string "do you confirm you're owner of $deviceType" or "this service is only for users of $deviceType" then I think things switch around in the direction of [rather minor] fraud.

[gmac]

Actually, not all of these are legal everywhere.

In the UK, price discrimination by gender (e.g. by nightclubs) is illegal: see http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/your-...

[luca-giovanni]

I guess it probably isn't but in any case it isn't a robust discrimination method as this guy has shown ;-)