Australians Urged To Spoof IP Addresses For Better Prices 206
angry tapir writes "Choice, a prominent Australian consumer advocacy group, has urged Australians to obfuscate their IP address to avoid geo-blocking and use US forwarding addresses to beat high IT prices. Australia is currently in the middle of parliamentary inquiry into the country's disproportionately high prices for technology. Choice also suggested setting up US iTunes accounts and using surrogate US addresses for forwarding packages from American stores. Choice has noted previously that Australians pay 52 per cent more for digital music downloads on iTunes compared to US users."
Legacy of Regional Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Regional differences in pricing stem from pre-globalisation economics. With no overlap between regional markets, prices would be set on a per-market basis and never the twain did meet. In a post-globalisation Internet-levelled playing field, regional price differences make no little sense for purely-digital products, except where national sales-related taxes differ. The only reason to maintain these regional price variations to artificially inflate profit margins at the expense of the consumer.
In theory, the libertarian free-marker doctrine should cause this price difference to level out fairly quickly once the market starts to take advantage of (and offense to) these cross-border variations. Let's see if that theory works in practice...
Anyone want to bet on legislation increasing to prevent cross-region sales instead?
Re:Good riddance to geo-blocking (Score:5, Informative)
BluRay drive for the computer. anyDVD and handbrake. It strips out the region locking and the useless DRM to allow you to create a file that can play on a media center or right there on your laptop/desktop
Rip out their DRM.
Canada has the same issu:e (Score:3, Informative)
Books in Canada are marked with two prices; one for a sale in Canada and one for a sale in the US. Despite the fact that the Canadian dollar is worth about the same (sometimes more sometimes less depending on the day) as a US dollar, the cost difference is usually significant. There's no real reason for it. The difference is a hangover from when the difference between the two currencies was large. Retailers see this as a profit boost.
Many other products are generally more expensive in Canada vs the US - cars in particular. Border towns in Canada see a huge flux of people cross-border shopping as a result.
Now and then someone complains, the retailers whine about OH NOES, IT'S DIFFERENT IN CANADA - LESS PEOPLE - SHOULD COST MORE. Yeah - always fun comparing the huge price discrepancies between Amazon.ca and Amazon.com for the same product.
AC
Very important (Score:5, Informative)
Choice is really highly respected in Australia. This makes this an extremely mainstream issue, not just of geek interest.
Re:It's not just games (Score:5, Informative)
How much jet fuel does it take to ship a Technet subscription?
Microsoft charges $599 in the US compared to $1048 in AU.
http://i.imgur.com/qQNn4.png [imgur.com]
Re:It's not just games (Score:4, Informative)
Now we just need to allow more used cars to be imported....
Oh my, South Africans _love_ to complain about how cars manufactured in SA (esp. Toyota) can possibly sell for less in Aus. than in SA. If you think you get a bad deal on cars, imagine how we feel. We have huge taxes on imported cars (a US$30k car gets ~70% import duty) to prevent outside competition with domestic manufacturers, so they charge what they want... because imported (by distributors) brands are even more expensive.
The companies lining their pockets are gonna keep it that way.
Re:Tor and using a specific exit node (and SSL!) (Score:5, Informative)
So how do you explain a country where the dollar has been at par with the US dollar (or within a few cents) for almost 10 years now, and yet all prices are close to 50% higher (not Australia, Canada) e.books cost more, mp3s cost more, physical products cost more.
There's only one justification, and it is greed.