Apple's Haves and Have Nots, Around the World

Rambo Tribble writes "As this story in the Economist notes, Apple's policies regarding international sales are often confusing and outdated. Apparently, Apple either hasn't been aware of political and social changes in the world over the last 20 years, or doesn't wish to acknowledge them." Soulskill rightly notes that at least some of the complained-about policies boil down to Apple's adherence to local copyright and licensing laws.

Comments

wow

[masterwit]

Just a sincerely humble opinion from a user of slashdot, I mean no cynical biased remarks from what follows, now that I got that out of the way:

That's interesting, do you mean to say laws differ from country to country, WOW!

If anyone has some more intelligent takes or even substantial information other than the article that was linked, please inform me and I will gladly read :)

Re:wow

[angularbanjo]

slapForehead();

Surely you mean

Forehead *myForehead = [[Forehead alloc] init];
[myForehead isSlapped:YES with:@"Hand"];
[myForehead release];

Media Regional Sales Restrictions

[muindaur]

The only thing I managed to really garner from this article is this, it's about Apples country restrictions on music and movies.

If the economist did a bit more research independently they would see it's a rights management issue from the content generators. Music and film in both the US and UK tend to restrict certain things like to their respective countries on a belief it's the only way everyone gets their dues.

It's the reason the silly regional encoding exists for the encryption on almost every DVD; my Discovery Channel Living With Wolves DVD lacked any sort of encryption.
Partly the irrational fear that artists won't get their rightful dues, because of currency exchange rates. Piracy fears I think are the biggest concern on the media companies not letting stuff out of the country digitally.

Along with the fact they make probably loads licensing manufacturers in other countries to make them locally and get around tariffs.

Its because doing business in Europe costs more

[antifoidulus]

For those complaining that Apple screws over it's non-US customers, take a look at the apple store Japan. Despite the really strong yen most things in the Apple store in Japan cost about the same(esp. when you consider that the 5% tax is already included) as they do in the US store, while those in Europe tend to cost a lot more.

Obviously part a big part of the discrepancy is the sales tax, but doing business in Europe just plain costs more. Shipping from China(where most of Apples stuff is made) to Europe is obviously more expensive than shipping to Japan or the US(largely because there isn't really a direct sea route), but thats only part of the reason.

European consumers and employees tend to enjoy a lot more protections under the law then those in the US and Japan. For instance tt costs more to hire(and fire) the European workers that man the warehouses and shipping facilities, Apple is responsible for paying to properly dispose of all electronics it sells, European consumers can make Apple pay for a much wider range of repairs to products then can consumers in the US or Japan etc.

Not saying whether or not these protections are good or bad, but many Europeans don't seem to realize that they certainly aren't free. If you want these protections then you are going to have to be willing to pay for them, otherwise if you want them then stuff is going to cost more, end of story.

VAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably the author already knows that the UK listed prices are so high because VAT is included, since they're legally required to include VAT in the advertised price....right author?