The Australian Government has announced today that it will not be changing the limitations in the Copyright Act on the parallel importation of books.
According to the Press Release:
Australian book printing and publishing is under strong competitive pressure from international online booksellers such as Amazon and The Book Depository and the Government has formed the view that that this pressure is likely to intensify.
In addition, the technology of electronic books (e-books) like Kindle Books will continue to improve with further innovations and price reductions expected.
The Government has not accepted the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to remove the parallel importation restrictions on books.
You could write a book on the rules governing parallel importation of books so I won’t attempt to summarise them here.
The Productivity Commission’s report. I still don’t think there has been any answer to the question whether the prices of music CDs or computer software fell after open markets were introduced for those products.
