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The price of digital downloads in Australia

Apparently inspired by this report, Senator Conroy, the Orwellian named Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy,[1] has acted to announce a new inquiry to be undertaken by the House of Representatives’ Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications.

Reports here and here.

According to that second report, someone trailed a coat on the issue last week when ACCC Commissioner Ed Willett appeared before the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network.

Now, as a purchaser of digital files, I am hardly unbiased but it does seem hard to justify price differentials of 50% or more. Seems like there is economic reasoning that challenges the Gerry Harvey-esque explanations.

Only problem, almost 20 years ago, the Prices Surveillance Authority recommended (what became in effect) this provision and some record companies got into big trouble trying to circumvent their own corresponding provision, but it would seem nothing has changed. Gartner analyst, Brian Prentice, reported here might be on to something suggesting the problem is the territorial nature of copyright itself. A (copyright) world without borders. Imagine!

  1. He is afterall the man who wants to impose filtering on the internet.  ↩

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Copyright, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • RobbieClarken

    It is interesting that the price of apps in the iTunes store is roughly equal for Australians and Americans whereas songs, movies and TV shows are typically much more expensive for Australians. Apple has world-wide distribution rights for apps whereas has to negotiate with regional copyright holders for the other media. The same pattern can be seen for ebooks published by Amazon vs ebooks from traditional publishers.

    This suggests it is the publishers, not the retailers, that are responsible for the high prices in Australia.

  • http://ipwars.com iWarwick

    That is an interesting point, Robbie.

    Anecdotally, I have noticed that books available through both the Kindle Store and the iBook store are often (but not always) cheaper in the iBook store than at Amazon. Sometimes, of course, a particular title is not available on one or other (or both, for that matter).

  • Ian McCauley

    One particularly egregious example of the behaviour that Brian highlights in his article, that I have come across, is the supply of audiobooks from Audible.com. They quote fantastical numbers of items available in audio format – last I heard something like 25,000. But sign up with an Aussie credit card (the only means possible) and a lot of the content is not available. They wouldn’t tell me how much, but a very rough survey of 100 books they had on special showed that only aroung 25% of them were available here.

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