Do you think Sony had an ethical obligation to not sell to the Taliban? Does it have an ethical obligation to police what happens to its products?

There is no right or wrong answer, but I need assistance in an “opinion post” for my management discussion questions this week. It should include some ethics term, and theories. Book is referenced below.

Ethics Issues Question:

When the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, it banned watching television. The result of the ban was the creation of a substantial market for smuggling television sets into Afghanistan. For example, a Sony TV set smuggled into Pakistan would cost about $400. The legal cost, paying tariffs, would be $440. The same set smuggled into Afghanistan could bring twice as much. Sony gets the same amount, or $220, for every set sold, regardless of where it is sold and what happens to it in terms of its final destination. The Taliban decided to impose tariffs and taxes on TV sets even as it held to the ban because the ban resulted in the smuggling market from which they could extract substantial sums. Do you think Sony had an ethical obligation to not sell to the Taliban? Does it have an ethical obligation to police what happens to its products? What happens when a company profits from a government making money from its own ban?

Source: Daniel Pearl and Steve Stecklow, “Taliban Banned TV but Collected Profits on Smuggled Sonys,” Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2002, pp. A1, A8. (Note that the source for this ethical issue was an article co-authored by Daniel Pearl, the U.S. journalist who was kidnapped by terrorists who eventually killed him and shared graphic coverage of the execution.)

Jennings, Marianne M. (2014-01-01). Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment (Page 229). South-Western College Pub. Kindle Edition.