You have no idea what you are talking about.

Bandwidth costs might be upwards of 0.05c on the price tag. Last time i checked 0.05 doesnt equal 20-50% margins of upwards to $20-40 on a product… $2000 in the case of adobe.

Next time you chime in about bandwidth costs you might want to actually understand content delivery networks and the price of data. Half of the time, the content delivery network isnt even located in australia and then the cost of doing business is transferred through the traceroute to the local ISP.

Even if they are in australia, Go check costs on Australian CDNs, its NOT very high.

(From somebody who owns a few 1TB CDN plans)

Point 2) What has the cost of doing retail got anything to do with digital sales? Oh thats right nothing.

Not sure why you are trolling, and if its ignorance or you work for one of these idiot vendors.

For digital content, dont under estimate the additional cost of international internet bandwidth to Australia. It is very expensive compared to the cost of local traffic for the US or European customers where the servers are based. That combined with rights holders increased costs in this country means we will always pay more for digital until we have AU/US parity for living standards and minimum wage. And I dont think you want to go there…

Cost of sale for retail items is also a lot higher here (wages/rent/power/marketing etc) and when you factor in the 1% market volume from Australia its a wonder any companies do business here.

Dont get me wrong, I think there is clearly some price gouging going on, but its not an open/shut case.

$89AU for a latest PC game with an Aussie IP Address
$59US for a latest PC game with a US IP Address.

More than a $30AU difference.

We’re demanding that certain companies allow us to buy their product at the price they deem appropriate for the rest of their customers, who download the product from the same servers we do, get support from the same web forums we do, and get the runaround from the same indian call centres we do.

Why should we pay a 50-150% markup for that?

So they’re either liars, or rip off merchants in my book.

“Whatever the people will pay” seems to be go for so many things sold here.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the items sold in the US weren’t manufactured here, but in China, or Korea for the US market; if they are actually made here, then it’s worth remembering that the US market (for example) makes our market look like a small hippy commune verses New York’s economy.

There are orders of magnitude differences. That’ll likely affect production runs and pricing. So will comparative living standards, etc. It’s a bit more complicated than it might first appear.

Two key tenants of content, IP and rights holders. That’s the issue. Almost everything else that has disparate pricing his this as a key backstop.

Because where it ceases to exist, pricing tends to be comparative, due to competition forces within the market.

The problem has always been the sales model; the ticket price differences are a symptom, not a cause. The cause is the restriction of whom can by what, where. Husic sees pricing as a causal factor. It’s not. :)

iTunes pricing is dictated in strong part to rights holder interests. Software owners whom have geo-blocking are simply aping the motion picture and music industry’s modus operandi. If you can restrict content and or constrain supply, you can apply differing access and pricing models.

Husic can’t force Adobe to drop geoblocking any more than you or I can. It’s a decision made by content owners, which affords an increase in profits; unless it’s illegal, they are perfectly entitled to control their IP.

Does that whole thing suck? Sure. But you can’t fix the issue here, because the problem source isn’t here.

Which is why i’ve been bemused by the whole situation. Short of changing trade agreements, both here and off shore, all Husic can do is call to punish local representatives of international corporates; which doesn’t really fix anything.