Pericles,
The Government apparently does have the power to override agreements freely entered into whereby the buyer agrees to refrain from selling or requiring subsequent buyers to do so into designated markets. Whether it should have such power is a different matter.

Some want to end restraint on parallel imports maintianing that this accords with "trade liberalisation" but in reality it may be closer to expropriation of a property right. It may be argued, in the defence of those promoting the permitting of parallel imports, that the government is refusing to police the contract because it is too difficult to do so. This may also be the case why the seller, off her own volition, does not take aggressive action in the courts.

In fact, that would be the reason why we don't see more price discrimination than is evident. Minor price differences from market to market are however frequently observed. They are seen in the car industry, where the dealer has a limited capacity to bargain and will set his price based on the buyer’s eagerness (George Constanza counselled Seinfeld to, “Tell him your walking away from the deal!”).

Taking advantage of different customer segments’ responsiveness to price (that is price elasticity of demand) for the same product is rarely easy. As illustrated by the Lead Belly song “The Rock Island Line”, price discrimination can be undermined by practicable considerations. In that case, a train operator claimed to be carrying livestock rather than pig iron, thereby paying a reduced toll.

Pericles,
Whatever happened to Australian movies. I thought a number were quite innovative and unique.

I suppose we will have to be satisfied with Summer Bay (and feel thankfull for that).

The author seems to have missed the entire point of copyright. Copyright involves the right to COPY, not the right to set different prices for the same item in different places in the world. If I legally buy a copyright item in one country, I am entitled to move it to another, as that does NOT involve COPYING. For authors to claim the right to set different prices in different places goes far beyond copyright.

In addition, I am becoming convinced that copyright is turning into a huge racket. When it was first enacted, in the time of Queen Anne, the copyright period, like the patent period, was sixteen years. This is because the present value of payments over the next sixteen years is only 12% less than if the payments lasted forever, and thus sixteen years is the best compromise between the rights of society and of the author. Since then, the patent period has remained the same, but copyright has been gradually extended to the life of the author plus 95 years. Of course authors don't benefit from this, as they are dead, only large corporations do. One author once confided to me that he would like copyright to last forever, and that there should be copyright on Shakespeare, to be distributed amongst current authors. Hopefully the recent technical changes will rip the guts out of the current copyright racket, and will return authors to the garrets where they can starve in peace, as they always did.

The fact that the Swedish anti-copyright party won a seat in the european parliament is a very hopeful sign.