Apple, Microsoft and Adobe to appear before IT pricing inquiry committee to explain Australia Tax
By Jess Colwill on February 11, 2013 at 6:34 pm
You’re sick of the Australia Tax, I’m sick of the Australia Tax, we’re all sick of the Australia Tax. Now, we’re finally going to get some answers!
Major tech players Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have been served with a summons (I refuse to even type the word ‘summonsed’) to appear before the committee handling the IT price inquiry on March 22 in Canberra. Having refused to appear before the inquiry committee on request, they now face legal ramifications if they don’t send representatives to explain themselves in front of Parliament.
Ed Husic, Australia’s most vocal opponent of the IT pricing discrepancy is pleased to hear the groups will be held accountable but says the government shouldn’t have needed to step in.
“These firms should have cooperated and been prepared to be more open and transparent about their pricing approaches,” he said. “Adobe, Apple and Microsoft are just a few firms that have continually defied the public’s call for answers and refused to appear before the IT Pricing Inquiry.”
“While television and computer prices fell 14 per cent according the to the latest Consumer Price Index Figures, there’s still a long way to go – with some estimates suggesting that Australian prices are up to 60 per cent higher than the US.”
“Given the widespread use of IT across businesses and the community, the prices paid for hardware and software can have a major commercial and economic impact. Getting downward movement on IT prices and easing the bite of price discrimination should be an important micro-economic priority – so I’m looking forward to hearing from these firms about their pricing approaches.”
Source: Kotaku AU
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this is awesome. I hope the government goes ahead with legal actions and not chicken out.
It’s going to be a difficult battle to win. Technically there’s no reason why a company can’t choose to sell a product at a different price in a different region. The only thing that will contribute to stopping this is if the stupid masses stop buying them, and we all know how well that works.
Got a mate in Canberra working on exactly this issue as to why Aussies are getting ripped off. He also said that the Govt is looking at ways to tax digital online purchases but again this isn’t old news.
This retarded practice needs to die. I wrote a submission focusing on explaining why Windows shouldnt cost double the US price especially for digital downloads theres just no excuse to charge double for a digital product identical to the US copy. All submissions are here http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ic/itpricing/subs.html
I would link mine but I think it lists my surname, dont want ye facebook stalkers a stalkin’
My hopes are high.
My expectations are low.
I hope there is a live cast of their of this, would be awesome to hear what excuses they come up with.
That said I agree with Nirvesta, there is not much the government can do to stop this unless they can prove that these companies are acting in an anti competitive nature.
I just read Microsofts submission. I would copy paste their key points but the pdf appears to be an image so I cannot copy the text.
It’s about time SOMETHING happened.
pretty much. welcome to capitalism everyone.
I don’t actually want the government to get too involved. it’s great they are forcing these companies to justify it to the public. it will give the public a chance to judge what is being said, and decide whether they want to give these companies business. I’m really curious to see what they say. I doubt the real reason will be used, which leaves a few options. unfortunately for them I don’t see a reason that could make them look good.
the government is forcing light on the situation, I just hope they don’t get too legislation-happy.
It will be fun to see, but I can’t see it changing anything. With these 3 companies especially there just aren’t any real viable alternatives. I suppose the government could make life difficult for them until they even things out.
Nirvesta and skitzor are on the money; their products they decide what price, up to the consumer to decide if that’s a fair deal. but as said, will be fun to see where this goes.
was it an election promise ?
These guys can charge what they wish, I guess technically. One of the major points of contestation however brought up by Choice’s rather indepth submission into the inquiry was the whole issue of Geo IP or ‘Geotargeting’.
If they want to charge one region more for whatever reason (with excuses I’m actually looking forward to what they pull out of their ass), then ok – let me access the US store and pay in USD though… – preferably without the need to buggerise around with a VPN…
YES!
“You’re sick of the Australia Tax, I’m sick of the Australia Tax, we’re all sick of the Australia Tax. Now, we’re finally going to get some answers!”
That’s so cute, I’m sure we will get answers this time (sorry my sarcasm button isn’t working). No doubt prices will suddenly drop, the same way they did when the government asked oil companies why the fuel price was so high and the time they asked coles and woolies why groceries were so expensive.
They need to go for the game companies! I spend a lot more $ on games compared to the occasional purchase of OS’s and Office. (talking from a home consumer perspective here) It seems rather silly that to pay the same price as gamer Bob in another country I have to purchase my games from overseas and import them.
As for Apple…yes make them explain why an album, via iTunes, costs $9.99 over in the US yet the same album here is $16.99!! I’d guess that the record labels are also ripping us off as well…
You forget that games are the reason people go on massacres, don’t ever kid yourself for one second that a government will ever stick up for gamers. It’s a generational thing, it will be a long while before “video game” isn’t a dirty phrase in the halls of power.
Please let this work…
If anyone is bored feel free to read my 23 page submission http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ic/itpricing/subs/sub033.pdf
Sad to say but they’ll never follow through
Don’t expect anything is going to come out of it. Unless there’s some competitive factor introduced, prices will be what they can get away with.
I hope they do get somewhere and we can get some realistic prices for all electrical goods not just IT stuff. I am looking at getting some more camera gear and local prices (except grey imports) are still significantly higher than the US for example. Now I can understand that prices can be a slightly higher here as we are a smaller market and so we have lower volumes to spread any costs over but I would hope that prices could be within at least 10% of the price in the US or I fear we are more and more likely to just not buy locally and import more items be it legally or otherwise.
Does the government use any of their products? The government needs to lead the way by using other products, if possible. The only thing that will make these companies take notice is a loss of sales.
I would say the reason this has such high backing is most government departments are based around those products (windows/adobe etc).
Its been an uphill battle getting our department using opensource products in some corner cases. It’s highly unlikely that any government agency will be switching to libre office or ubuntu any time this decade.
The sad thing is this getting attention because its easier to set up an enquiry that may save some money on largish government contracts than it is for them to switch to open source.
Unfortunately Microsoft and the like realize this and government will back down first in this showdown.
3DS Max 2013 on the Autodesk Store
Australian gateway = $6055
http://store.autodesk.com.au/store/adsk/pd/productID.243416600?adsk_t=false
US/Canada gateway = $3675 (AU$3579)
http://store.autodesk.com/store/adskus/Content/pbPage.allProductsLanding
UK Gateway = £2900 (AU$4435)
http://store.autodesk.co.uk/store/adsk/en_GB/html/pbPage.All-Product-Listing_en_GB
Now I personally don’t work in animation and modelling but I know some folk who do that need to own the software legitimately. I can also think of some schools that have licenses to run this program on multiple machines and at 6k a pop for a personal license there’s a fair bet that school license probably costs a shed load too.
You can call me a pirate and you would be quite accurate but you can also call software companies marauders and plunderers as they are in effect attacking the land (re: Australia) by sea in search of booty (re: All of our dollars)
The government has to do something. This practice has been going on for far too long. I don’t know what legal options the government has but charging people based on the country they live in is ridiculous and outdated.
With out currency going toe-to-toe with the USD these days, there is simply no excuse for it.
Still it’s not like we are in a different language. I would understand if we were, but really the high pricing isn’t needed.
Its not just only games and IT hardware it is alot of other things as well like eBooks and real books. Just look at the price of paperbacks the average price $20 the same book in the US $9, some might say it the cost of importing the book no its not as 90% of books are printed locally. And eBooks the US price is half what we pay, we are being fucked over from all directions, have an Australian or New Zealand IP and pay double the price have any other IP and pay the same as or close to the US price.
I think that this is the problem, the last time Australia had pricing paratiy with the US was when the Australian dollar was $0.50 USD and games were twice the USD amount but when the Australian dollar started to get stronger and 90% of sales were in the store fronts the Australian arms of these companies started to see an increase in proffits, but when the savvy Australian buyer saw that they could buy online and get the same things cheeper the same companies started to see a loss of proffit as we started to buy online so they started to inflate the electronic price as well
its about god damn time
Speaking of book sales you can buy them from the UK for about half the cost and get them delivered for free. In a similar fashion to the service ozgameshop offers where everything is listed in Aussie dollars. I’ve found it cheaper to get a paperback from the UK then an eBook from an Aussie site. How is that possible
what site do you use
bookdepository.co.uk
No need to think to hard about it, it’s wrong. Stop it.
I refuse to pay inflated prices for games etc. Theres plenty of options to buy stuff from overseas.
Yeah guys, they aren’t doing this for us “the buyer”, they are doing it for the retailers. If they don’t do something then the retail industry is going to be in for hard times.
Woah, Holy Shit.
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/adobe_cuts_australian_prices_after_BgBXyFaCrXRGNIrS1M2fNN
:O
stoibs,
Unfortunately, only decreasing their Cloud software pricing to attract users to something they are having a hard time selling. All the rest of their software carries the special Australian tax.
http://afr.com/p/technology/tech_giants_will_have_to_cut_prices_daDpoGUkeNPlmAKglJC5NL
All a load of crap, they blatantly know they’re ripping us off. I cannot understand how they can still justify price discrepancies when it comes to digital sales.