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Old 01-07-2015, 11:57 AM   #16
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Those companies have no employees in Australia?
They incur no costs whatsoever in doing business there?
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Old 01-07-2015, 03:47 PM   #17
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Those companies have no employees in Australia?
They incur no costs whatsoever in doing business there?
As far as I know, Kobo has no operation in Australia at all. It's all done from overseas.
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Old 01-07-2015, 03:55 PM   #18
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...And another example is access to digital content eg movies. Our gov't actively encourages us (by not discouraging it) to go ahead and get around foreign geo restrictions.

And Canada and NZ are also taking steps along those lines...
Not entirely correct Lynxy one, but mostly so except for the following .

The 2 ISPs (both, in fact, owned by the same company) in NZ that provide the Global Mode mentioned in the article have been under investigation over the last few months by the NZ Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Of course, this is not a copyright or contractual rights issue but a classification one; your comment about little sympathy for geo-restrictions is correct.

The Global Mode mentioned is unlike VPN in that it is the local ISP that obfuscates their customers' IP addresses to that of another country (the software was developed in NZ) on their customers' behalf and so it is considered that the local ISP may be complicit in illegally circumventing censorship and classification of films by the showing of non NZ classified content. As far as I know this has not been resolved yet, one way or the other.

This classification issue could affect ISPs providing Global Mode with respect to book and magazine download from overseas suppliers too, where the sale of a book is banned or be illegal to possess here, or classified R18; the former would be mainly child porn, extreme violence, etc., and the latter being some magazines. The ISP may be regarded as being complicit in their supply.

The developers of the Global Mode have stated that in their opinion Global Mode will only be of short term interest in NZ as to compete against it local and overseas companies will provide competitive streaming services (and this is looking like it may be so).

It is said that rights holders are upset by the Global Mode but as far as I know none have taken formal action against the ISPs (that might be because of local streaming services starting up and the apparent sudden increased willingness of overseas streamers to start streaming to NZ, but I don't know that).
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Old 01-07-2015, 03:58 PM   #19
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We've been down this road before.
Local prices depend on local business conditions: taxes, wages, rent, utilities, sales volume...
If they are being sold by aussie subsidiaries then the price will be a function of the cost of running that operation, which often is a function of the *size* of the market.
The price differences down here are more than can be explained by the additional costs of a local operation. Especially from companies that don't have a local operation.

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As Harry pointed out, a digital content operation will only be able to sell content from the publisher licensed for that region at local prices.
Not if the law is changed, or the courts rule, that local ebook stores can source products from overseas, thereby nullifying the geo-restrictions. There are a number of Kobo countries that sell both the US and British versions of ebooks. Australia may join this club, leading to cheaper ebook (and book) prices.

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If the local publisher charges Apple or Amazon or Kobo higher than US prices (which might be because *they* have higher costs) the retailers can't be expected to eat those higher costs just because a politician says so.
Local publishers will continue to charge more for local books, but books that are also being published elsewhere will be able to be imported and sold, at a much cheaper price.

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Not sure how high the overall business costs are in the antipodes but I doubt they are as low as in the US. If nothing else, the minimum wage down under is twice the US minimum. And I doubt that is an aberration.
Very few people in the publishing industry are making minimum wage.

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There is a lot more going on than just wanting to rip off customers for the hell of it. You may be looking at a chicken-and-egg scenario. The law of unintended consequences works in mysterious and often annoying ways but it can't be legislated away any more than the speed of light can.
Another game they play is raising the prices as the exchange rate falls, which is legitimate. But then they don't lower the prices when the exchange rate rises. Now that we are having a period of falling exchange rates, I'm expected the prices of 'global' products to rise again.
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Old 01-07-2015, 04:13 PM   #20
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if the law is changed, or the courts rule, that local ebook stores can source products from overseas, thereby nullifying the geo-restrictions.
This is the biggest issue for me. At present the parallel import laws dictate that print books can only be imported by retailers when local publishers have declined to publish. This protects the local publishing industry at the expense of local book retailers, since customers can buy directly from overseas retailers with no impediment. However ebooks cannot be imported at all, so if there is no local publishing contract for the ebook, it's not available. I read a lot of midlist SF/F which is simply not available in ebook in Australia.

(Yes, I'm trying to make the most of the access I have in the US.)
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Old 01-07-2015, 04:42 PM   #21
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This is the biggest issue for me. At present the parallel import laws dictate that print books can only be imported by retailers when local publishers have declined to publish. This protects the local publishing industry at the expense of local book retailers, since customers can buy directly from overseas retailers with no impediment. However ebooks cannot be imported at all, so if there is no local publishing contract for the ebook, it's not available. I read a lot of midlist SF/F which is simply not available in ebook in Australia.
While books can be parallel imported into NZ, both commercially and privately, as far as I can see it has not had much effect on the pricing of books in physical shops but has made a big difference for online purchases through local and overseas web sellers. Physical shops complain that the cost of books to them from the publishers can be higher than the retail price being offered by parallel importers (parallel imports have to be, of course, legitimate copies) so it would seem that it may be the publishers who are being inflexible.

It has, I think, meant though that books get released here much more quickly and more of them too, than used to be the case long ago when rights holders had strict control. It may also account for the fact that the likes of Kobo discount vouchers, for example, can be applied to a far greater range of publishers' books than in Australia??

Movies are the only thing here, as far as I know, that have a restriction on their commercial (private is not controlled) parallel importing in that they may not be commercially parallel imported until 9 months after the date of first release wherever in the world that first release was. That was imposed in the early 2000s, prior to that there was no restraint and so the change was a step backwards; but the net effect of parallel importing before and after that date is that movies get released here much more quickly than they used to be back in the dark ages of total control by rights holders.

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Old 01-07-2015, 04:54 PM   #22
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Very few people in the publishing industry are making minimum wage.
I wouldn't expect them to.
But it establishes a salary floor so, if say the janitorial staff starts at double to US minimum (due to the high cost of living, presumably) one would expect higher salaries for everybody else (short of top executives, of course).

I'm no tradpub booster but if Australia can actually pass a law nullifying copyright licenses that your publishers paid good money for, I will be majorly impressed.
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Old 01-07-2015, 05:42 PM   #23
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Those companies have no employees in Australia?
They incur no costs whatsoever in doing business there?
Insufficient argument for the High Court to consider it justified the geo blocking. And Sony has a bricks and mortar presence in the form of stores and offices in Aus.

Quote:
Sony PlayStations were designed so that games bought in some parts of the globe weren't playable on PlayStations sold in others, an absurd restriction that encouraged a Sydney engineer named Eddy Stevens to develop a $45 computer chip that turned any PlayStation into a device that could play any PlayStation game.

Sony took him all the way to the High Court, where it lost in a unanimous judgment that held it was legal for Australians to circumvent attempts to prevent them accessing products they had bought.
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Old 01-07-2015, 05:48 PM   #24
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No they won't. The Australian Parliament can make whatever laws it wants to, but it has no impact on the contract between an author and publisher in another country. No government can dictate what happens in another country, unless some kind of international treaty or law is being violated, which doesn't appear to be the case here.

When it comes to ebooks, geographical restrictions are, more often than not, the result of restrictions imposed on publishers by the author. Authors can often make more money by signing several single-country publishing contracts, than a single world-wide one (because they get a separate advance for each deal).
You're right - the Aus Gov't is not trying to dictate the terms arranged in other countries, but it does allow Australians to etravel to other countries and choose their purchase/s.

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If they can't legally enforce the artificial contractual constructs they are worthless and nobody will pay anything for them. The Australian Parliament doesn't have to be concerned about what companies have written in their contracts.
Exactly, Australians etravel at will.
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Old 01-07-2015, 05:58 PM   #25
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@anothercat, isn't it grand when the minnows fight back .....

(And NZ leads the way in a number of things. )
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Old 01-07-2015, 06:12 PM   #26
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@anothercat, isn't it grand when the minnows fight back .....

(And NZ leads the way in a number of things. )
Yeah... and especially nice to have Governments' own businesses providing the support of ShopMate and, here, YouShop organising it so that overseas suppliers that refuse to ship to us minnows down here get to ship anyway (YouShop, so far, does USA, China and Europe forwarding).
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:10 AM   #27
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The Harper Review report referred to is a draft report making recommendations on Competition Policy. It was released in September and is currently open for comments, with the final report due for release in March.

It did not recommend any legislative ban on geo-restrictions, recognising the practical difficulties, some of which have been pointed out by Harry in this thread. In Paragraph 16.2 it said:
Attempting to legislate against international price discrimination could result in significant
implementation and enforcement difficulties and risks negative unintended consequences.
Instead, the Panel supports moves to address international price discrimination through market
solutions that empower consumers. These include the removal of restrictions on parallel imports
and ensuring that consumers are able to take legal steps to circumvent attempts to prevent their
accessing cheaper legitimate goods.
Also in that paragraph:

The Panel notes the recommendations of the July 2013 report of the House of Representatives
Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications into IT pricing in Australia.288 That
Committee recommended the removal of restrictions on parallel imports, consistent with Draft
Recommendation 9 of this Draft Report. In addition, the Committee made a number of
recommendations (as set out in Box 16.4) that the Panel endorses in principle as a means of
encouraging a market-based, consumer driven solution to concerns about international price
discrimination, as well as a number of recommendations that could form part of the overarching
review of intellectual property proposed at Draft Recommendation 7.


And finally, and most importantly, the Box 16.4 referred to:

Box 16.4: Relevant recommendations of House of Representatives Standing Committee Report
on IT pricing in Australia289
Recommendations that the Panel supports in principle include:
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 5
The Australian Government amend the Copyright Act’s section 10(1) anti-circumvention provisions
to clarify and secure consumers’ rights to circumvent technological protection measures that
control geographic market segmentation.
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 6
The Australian Government investigate options to educate Australian consumers and businesses as
to:

the extent to which they may circumvent geoblocking mechanisms in order to access cheaper
legitimate goods;

the tools and techniques which they may use to do so; and

the way in which their rights under the Australian Consumer Law may be affected should they
choose to do so.
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 8
The Committee recommends the repeal of section 51(3) of the Competition and Consumer
Act 2010.
Recommendations that the Panel considers should form part of a review of IP laws:
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 7
The Committee recommends that the Australian Government, in conjunction with relevant
agencies, consider the creation of a ‘right of resale’ in relation to digitally distributed content, and
clarification of ‘fair use’ rights for consumers, businesses, and educational institutions, including
restrictions on vendors’ ability to ‘lock’ digital content into a particular ecosystem.
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 9
The Committee recommends that the Australian Government consider enacting a ban on
geoblocking as an option of last resort, should persistent market failure exist in spite of the
changes to the Competition and Consumer Act and the Copyright Act recommended in this report.
House of Representatives Committee Recommendation 10
That the Australian Government investigate the feasibility of amending the Competition and
Consumer Act so that contracts or terms of service which seek to enforce geoblocking are
considered void.


Notice the recommendation about creating resale rights? I believe this is largely impractical, at least for ebooks. My only observation is that fpr a wise industry or large company it may well be prudent to moderate your own practices before Government's do so.

The whole chapter is well worth a read. It also refers to the Canadian Government taking action to prevent its citizens being discriminated against on price.

The link to download a pdf of the draft report is http://competitionpolicyreview.gov.a...aft-report.pdf
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:19 AM   #28
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Thanks, darryl. That's a lot more moderate and sensible than some of the reports of it we've had reported here.
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:26 AM   #29
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Further to the above post, I should add that sub-section 51(3), which the House of Representatives Committee recommended the repeal, provides the Act is not contravened for various reasons related to Intellectual Property, including, for instance, provisions in license agreements.

My view on this whole matter is that dividing the world into segments and selling the rights individually was something that was possible and logical before ebooks and the internet. It is no longer either logical or even technologically feasible, though we are left with the legacy of the times when it was. That it works at all at the moment is due only to the technologically unsophisticated or apathetic. Like it or not, the reality is that for electronic goods and/or services we now have one world market, though it may take some time for the law and the industries concerned to recognise this.
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:32 AM   #30
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My view on this whole matter is that dividing the world into segments and selling the rights individually was something that was possible and logical before ebooks and the internet. It is no longer either logical or even technologically feasible, though we are left with the legacy of the times when it was. That it works at all at the moment is due only to the technologically unsophisticated or apathetic. Like it or not, the reality is that for electronic goods and/or services we now have one world market, though it may take some time for the law and the industries concerned to recognise this.
The problem is, darryl, that buying world-wide rights is often enormously expensive, and would make services prohibitively expensive for everyone. Consider a service like Amazon's "Prime Video" service (or whatever it's called) that provides video streaming for people in the US and UK (and perhaps some other places, too - I don't know). Amazon have bought the rights to stream specific TV programmes and films to people in the UK. If they had to buy the rights to stream world-wide it might cost - I don't know - 50x as much? Not only would this be enormously expensive for Amazon, but it would also almost certainly make the service prohibitively expensive for customers, too, because they'd be the ones who'd end up paying for it.

I completely agree with your sentiments in principle, but the practice is something else entirely.
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