Yes, absolutely correct. Either TFA is confused, or there is some very peculiar Microsoft-math at work here.

If the US Dollar is weak -- which it absolutely is these days! -- then products exported from the US to other markets should be LESS expensive than they are in the US. If a copy of Windows costs $200 and $1 = â1, it should in theory cost â200 in Europe. If the dollar then fell to half a â, Windows should cost only â100. But that's a bit simplistic and will only be true if the worldwide prices are, in fact, derived directly from the US price. That may not be the case.

More than likely, what happened is that Microsoft has locked in the prices worldwide based either on historical exchange rates or on their local branches' opinion about what Windows "should" cost in each market. So someone in Microsoft UK decided more or less arbitrarily that Windows should cost £189.99 in that market. And since the dollar has dropped since that decision was made, UK customers are "paying more" in US$ terms -- but really, the UK price probably hasn't been changed. So it's a combination of TFA being overly sensationalist AND Microsoft being Microsoft.

Actually, I don't think this guy is on the same page as Murdoch at all. Murdoch's argument is, essentially: "I think the content I own is better than the free stuff by a large enough margin that people will pay money to get it." And this Sony CEO is saying "Nobody will pay for my stuff as long as they can get free stuff somewhere else."

If Murdoch can provide material that appeals to enough people, he may be able to sell it. It certainly doesn't offend me that he's trying. I personally think he'll have a hard time with it, because "news" is really just another word for "information" -- and the newspaper doesn't generally own the information it writes about, just the specific wording and layout of their particular rendition. IMO, he should forget about charging for content, and instead come up with a way to charge for the *distribution* of it. You know, an automatic, personalized news "push" based on your specific interests, sent to your Blackberry or iPhone in just the format you want -- without you having to know about things like RSS feeds and such. I think a substantial number of technophobic business folks would pay for that.

But this Sony CEO is laying all the blame of his failing media business on the bad habits and impatience of their customers -- when he SHOULD be doing like Stardock and say "Our customers are the guys who BUY our stuff, not the ones who steal it. So let's make products that appeal to the people who are likely to pay for it, and not worry so much about the pirates, because they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway."

Sony really needs to hurry up and finish getting rid of the "old guard" like this guy, and put more power in the hands of people who were born after, say 1960.