Ask HN: Ethics of Requesting a Demo from a Competitor

I'm considering building a web-based system to make finding domain-specific government publications easier. This is for a friend whose organization cannot afford the cost of a supposedly similar service. However, it likely could be monetized and possibly also improved upon based on the limited information available about the existing provider.

The question is, Is it unethical to register to get a demo of the competitor's offering? I personally feel uncomfortable with the idea, but I get a lot of advice from non-technical people that it's no big deal, and I should do it.

I'm certain people in the HN community have considered or experienced such a quandry.

To be clear, I believe I know what I need to build for my current target user, but I also think this would be a very useful service to other organizations who aren't typically well funded but are working for the public good. Likely I would get some useful additional ideas from seeing what the competition does. The people for whom my potentially improved product would benefit are people who are not current customers of the competition. Of course, if I did build a better mousetrap for a lower price, it could take business from the competition.