about fucking time.

Hopefully this will get the ball rolling. It's been a joke for such a long time.

They should also explain why they fix the prices on their hardware e.g. Xbox 360, iPhone etc.

The NZ govenment should do the same here.

Adobe is the worst for that. The new CS6 international prices are atrocious like previous releases. They say that they price it to the "working costs" of the country's businesses. Utter bullshit.

I hate this shit so much. It's over a year since I sent a letter to the federal member who bought it up back then. Regional pricing is such BS. Get behind it people. Write emails and let the Politicians know how much we hate this shit.

^^ That, or they'll demand lower prices and apple/ms will respond by just not selling anything to us at all.

Microsoft for example, often have more than one license per person - Some people have a work pc, a work\home laptop and a home PC all with paid licenses. I'd dare say that there would be several million licenses sold in australia if not more (maybe even closer to a dozen million or more) for a MS product.

You could never justify to your shareholders for dumping a whole country, even one as small as ours. In the IT world, it's pretty hard to increase your sales when you already have penetrated so deeply so growth can only come from population expansion and economic growth. Going backwards would only hurt them.

Whilst it doesn't necessarily apply to 'digital download' purchases, it occurs to me that as a part of Australian Consumer law that there is a lot more to the puzzle for physical purchases.

Back when the dollar was nowhere near parity, US$999 -> A$1519 was probably a reasonable price when you factored in the exchange rate and reseller margin. Now that we're we're hovering around parity they've simply left the price where it was but now it's a big and blatant cash grab.

I can't see anything coming of the enquiry though. Is government going to start setting digital download prices themselves? The cure could be worse than the disease.

They wouldn't set prices, why would you even think that would be an option?

That's my point - the government telling private business what price they must sell their product in the marketplace for wouldn't work in practice. It's ridiculous, akin to all the huffing and puffing the government does about interest rates.

Federal Labor politicians are hoping the publicity generated by calling the companies to account for their pricing policies will result in prices dropping.

In other words, people will still need to complain loudly. The loud complaining hasn't worked up until now, so what makes politicians think it'll work after an enquiry?

If it gets people to realise that they can buy from alternative places/methods that don't gouge, then I'm all for it.

Too many people are simply not aware of the massive increase in prices they pay across a range of goods, not just electronic downloads.

If it gets people to realise that they can buy from alternative places/methods that don't gouge, then I'm all for it.

Too many people are simply not aware of the massive increase in prices they pay across a range of goods, not just electronic downloads.

The trouble is, given the option of giving my details to adobe to buy photoshop off them, or to buy it for half the price at alsbudgetsoftware.co.hk.fr.kr then I'm fucking certain I'm going to get it off adobe even if it is more expensive.

This is one example of where I subscribe to those kooky 'free market saves all' policies. It is not like Apple and Microsoft products are bread or healthcare. You can easily get by without them and if you are really desperate for it you can just pirate it. Raising awareness about it is great to let people know about other options but I can't help but think a whole bunch of money is going to be wasted on this for not a spectacular result.

I was mainly referring to music and game downloads and that sort of thing.

Business is a good point, though. Is it possible for businesses to operate on opensource software if they really tried or would it literally be impossible?