EU Lawmakers Include Spotify and iTunes In Geoblocking Ban (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: European Union lawmakers voted on Tuesday to ban online retailers from treating consumers differently depending on where they live and expanded their proposed law to include music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple's iTunes. Ending so-called geoblocking is a priority for the European Commission as it tries to create a single market for digital services across the 28-nation bloc, but many industries argue that they tailor their prices to specific domestic markets. The proposal, which will apply to e-commerce websites such as Amazon, Zalando and eBay, as well as for services provided in a specific location like car rental, forbids online retailers from automatically re-routing customers to their domestic website without their consent. In a blow for the book publishing and music industries, European Parliament members voted to include copyright-protected content such as music, games, software and e-books in the law. That would mean music streaming services such as Spotify and iTunes would not be able to prevent, for example, a French customer buying a cheaper subscription in Croatia, if they have the required rights.

Comments

Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absent the ability to "adjust" for maximum profit in each region, now an average price is expensive for at least half the countries in the EU.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps the real market price will be found? The EU is working being a common market, where it started. Income and opportunities equally paid across the block.
Imagine Amazon selling a product in California at higher prices just because we manage our economy better than Alabama? People in Alabama should ascribe and work to a better life like a Californian.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how the market works, not at all.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you feel such countries are deserving of paying below cost for products?

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but this will help smaller local companies who can work with slimmer profit margin.
Also the language barrier will take of this thing. In the 28 countries we speak almost 28 different languages.

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Below cost? For digital goods?

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that a product has no cost, simply because it's distributed digitally?

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

On average, maybe. But shouldn't variable pricing like this be based on individual's ability to pay, e.g. based on their property value or income, rather than which country they live in?

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The EU is working being a common market, where it started.

That's lovely, and when the economic situation in all EU member states is similar, maybe they'll achieve it. In the meantime, it is far from clear that this is a good thing.

At least in the sort of context we're talking about here, the "real market price" you mentioned is what someone is prepared to pay for something, no more and no less. Forcing people from areas with very different economic situations to pay the same price just means a lot of things won't be accessible to people from those places that can't afford the same rates as their wealthier neighbours.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. Useless non-free entertainment should be too expensive. It takes away our time, energy and money, giving nothing back.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Cryacin]

At least in the sort of context we're talking about here, the "real market price" you mentioned is what someone is prepared to pay for something, no more and no less.

When the price of goods divorces entirely from the cost to produce them, the pricing model turns to "extraction". Just you wait until Amazon wins the pricing war...

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when. When i travel the world the pricing for music books etc waries wildly and some rich countries have way cheaper prices than many poor.

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

well maybe they will mandate streaming rates now too to be eu wide.

that would be great for some competition.

but really inner market means inner market. tailoring prices

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Barsteward]

not if the price is set at the lowest that can be found in the EU. if they set it to the highest then yes, and they'll lose most of that market.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[xenobyte]

The price differences are huge across Europe.

I remember when it was possible to send someone in a car from Denmark to Spain or Portugal to buy hundreds of insulin pens from retail pharmacies, drive back to Denmark, replace the packaging and include danish language documents and still sell them with a comfortable profit to half the retail price in Denmark.

Of course they made that (parallel import) illegal because it cut into the massive profits reaped in countries where the national health service pay most or all of the costs of the chronic medicine users (like the diabetics using the insulin pens).

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Plumpaquatsch]

Imagine Amazon selling a product in California at higher prices just because we manage our economy better than Alabama? People in Alabama should ascribe and work to a better life like a Californian.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/24/2048200/how-online-shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all - charging a constant price all the time, only different between different countries is so 2010, and complaining about it is so 1990.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[gsslay]

And how is this different from people who live two streets apart, one rich, the other poor? They are forced to pay the same price. How far apart they live is only relevant if the online retailer uses distance as a means of creating separate market prices. And when they do this, it is done for their benefit, to maximize their profits, not to be fair to poor people. Making this illegal removes the distortion from the market and the genuine, uniform, market price is established. No-one benefits or suffers because of where they are geographically. Which is how it should be online.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're talking about a monopoly situation. For works covered by copyright, that already exists in the sense that for any given work the rightsholders can decide to offer it only via certain channels.

However, unless those works are also essential, the customer still has the option not to buy them at all, and if the price is too high they will choose to spend their money elsewhere.

Moreover, while individual works may have a monopoly supplier, most creative works will be in competition with other works for providing information, entertainment, etc. Those competitive effects also moderate pricing, preventing the kind of "extraction" model you're talking about.

Around here, Amazon won the pricing war for most CD/DVD/Blu-ray content long ago, yet today it would still be cheaper for me to binge-watch a lot of TV shows through Netflix than through buying all the box sets. Amazon's prices for buying permanent copies of films or shows I really like on disc aren't much different to what they were a few years ago when you could still easily buy the same things in bricks and mortar stores.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sorry, but that just isn't how economics works.

Firstly, market segmentation is absolutely routine, including by purchaser power. There are countless ways to appeal to people who can afford to spend more, and businesses do this all the time. Have you ever seen a box for a "coupon code" when you ordered something online? That's market segmentation in action. Post coupons to everyone on the poorer street in your example, and now everyone isn't paying the same price.

Secondly, as someone who actually runs some online facilities at-cost, I can tell you that it is a real problem for people in less well-off nations if your price online is the same everywhere. You can't lower the headline price because if everyone was paying the lower price then you literally couldn't afford to keep these services running at that point. However, then the people where salaries and costs of living are generally lower can't keep up, so they lose out. The kind of adjustment we're talking about here is the online equivalent of posting coupons to all the homes in the poor part of town.

The genuine, uniform market price you're talking about doesn't exist in most real markets, because most real markets are not uniform.

Re:Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real market price is different in England vs Croatia.

Re: Good or bad for customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actualy this is not about prices. I pay for netflix 11.99â same as anyone in EU but iTunes movies, tv shows or music is not available.
And more over VAT in Croatia is 25% so 0.99$ app in Croatia is 1.24$ with tax.
Google Tv shows are also unavailable.
If I by something in amazon.de it can not be delivered in Croatia.
I got amazon prime subscription in amazon.de but I could not get anything due to geo restriction.
This is what this is all about, not prices.

Well that's fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

While they ignore all their other problems. Good luck with those demographics folks. I'm sure those who show up for the future version of Europe won't have the same concerns.

Maximize profits

[DidgetMaster]

The holy grail for anyone selling anything, is the ability to charge the customer, not based on the value of the product or service, but rather on the customer's ability to pay. In the old days, this was accomplished by creating barriers for the movement of goods and services. A drug company could charge someone in rural Mexico a completely different price for a pill than they could charge someone in New York City because is was very hard for the more affluent customer to realize that it was available elsewhere for cheaper. Some goes for DVDs, books, software, and just about everything else. Now with the internet, anyone can order just about anything from anywhere. Those artificial market barriers have been broken down. This threatens the profit margins of many companies.

Re:Maximize profits

[Baron_Yam]

I have to admit, the first time I ordered something direct from China I was a bit worried I'd never see a product and the bank would call me about fraudulent activity on my card.

No such worries now. When I'm getting the same product (literally) direct from the factory in China instead of having it go through a local retailer, I pay less than 1/3 the price. Not even Wal-Mart seems able to compete, given the last price comparison I did had them demanding 5x what an AliExpress vendor was selling a comparable product for.

Canada lost some wealth and China gained some, and in the meantime I get to live as if I were a bit wealthier than I am.

Lowering trade barriers globally allows the common consumer some of the same freedom the 1% have had to themselves until now - purchasing what they want from where they want and screw national borders.

In the long run, this will result in equalization of standard of living around the globe - so long as we have the same social support systems and the same expectations of our local governments. But with wealth will come education and power, at least to some degree, and we'll see social standards equalize as well. Since we're all human, I don't really have a problem with leveling the playing field, so long as it happens slowly enough it doesn't disrupt my life on noticeable timescales.

Re:Maximize profits

[slew]

Since we're all human, I don't really have a problem with leveling the playing field, so long as it happens slowly enough it doesn't disrupt my life on noticeable timescales.

History has shown that disruptions like this occur on noticeable timescales.

In North America in the 1980's, the Japanese car disruption happened on a very short timescale and directly displaced 185,000 automotive jobs between June 1981 and November 1982 (not counting the indirect jobs lost because of the economic multiplier effect) before things began to stabilize. A voluntary trade restraint was negotiated between Japan and the US and of course Japan started manufacturing of cars in North America which contributed to the stabilization of the employment situation and return to '70's level of automobile industry employment (and of course it's been in a much slower decline since then).

Of course maybe for a short while, your life will be isolated from this type of disruption, but you might consider your neighbor that loses their livelihood is as human as someone across the globe, so I would think they also deserve some small amount of consideration too, right? Maybe you might give a few seconds pause about that the next time you bypass the middle-man companies to buy direct from China using Ali-Express... At least Walmart keeps a few folks gainfully employed locally (and that is a very low bar)... Who knows, maybe that local person is the parent of a schoolmate of your kids (or your friend's kid, if you don't have any kids). Aren't they human too?

Re:Maximize profits

[Baron_Yam]

If I'm going to spend extra just to keep money in the country, I'd rather it be taxed from me and redistributed as welfare rather than charged as a premium on products handled by a make-work project.

With welfare you're not enriching the already-rich at the top of the corporate structure, so you're giving much more efficiently to the people who need it.

Re:Maximize profits

[Xenx]

The problem is, this goes against the capitalist nature of the country. A lot of people assume that welfare systems will be abused. They'd rather pay more knowing the money is going to working people, than people that hypothetically are abusing the welfare system.

Re:Maximize profits

[Baron_Yam]

>The problem is, this goes against the capitalist nature of the country.

Yours, probably. Mine, mostly. We're already moderately socialist.

> A lot of people assume that welfare systems will be abused.

Oh, that's not an assumption, it's damn near a law of Nature.

> They'd rather pay more knowing the money is going to working people, than people that hypothetically are abusing the welfare system.

Which is a foolish attitude. You know abuse will happen, you put in some checks and balances and aim for a low enough rate of abuse to be tolerable. Just like we manage to have a society without every other person being a police officer, and a few criminals having fairly long careers and an even smaller number essentially 'getting away with it' for their entire lifetimes.

Re:Maximize profits

[slew]

If I'm going to spend extra just to keep money in the country, I'd rather it be taxed from me and redistributed as welfare rather than charged as a premium on products handled by a make-work project.

With welfare you're not enriching the already-rich at the top of the corporate structure, so you're giving much more efficiently to the people who need it.

That's an argument for a high-tariff structure (aka protectionist) economy. Basically raise the price of products so you no longer have an incentive to buy imports unless they aren't available locally. If you are fine with that type of economy, that's another way to go... Seems like we are headed that direction as countries are abandoning free trade agreements recently...

Re:Maximize profits

[Anonymous Coward]

The news today about UK spending UKP 115 million more on chasing benefit fraud, than it prevented last year seems relevant.

Re:Maximize profits

[Xenx]

You don't have to sell me on that, just the rest of society.

Re: Maximize profits

[Anonymous Coward]

you dont abuse a basic income wellfare system. the whole point of it is to distribute money. of course it doesnt work if you tax only the poor though.

Re:Maximize profits

[AmiMoJo]

Cheap products from China has worked well in Japan. The "one price" shops (like dollar stores) are really good quality. The Japanese companies compete by innovating like crazy in every area. Better quality, new styles, better service, new features, new brands, new ideas. It's exciting.

That's what we need to do. Forget protectionism. Compete and win. Distance is still a factor, especially for service and ability to react to local market conditions like fashion.

Re:Maximize profits

[boa]

"In North America in the 1980's, the Japanese car disruption happened on a very short timescale and directly displaced 185,000 automotive jobs between June 1981 and November 1982 "

Source, please?

Re:Maximize profits

[Anonymous Coward]

So now it is my obligation to consume out of pity for some stranger that happens to live near me?

It's not like national businesses give me the same consideration. Then, they are always excused with the standard "it's their obligation to maximize profits".

Re: here in the USofA

[Anonymous Coward]

So why doesnt ITunes in USA charge less for a song in Detroit than LA? Let me think.. Because you are a single market?

Re:here in the USofA

[Anonymous Coward]

So mindful. California makes fuel. Exporting it someplace else adds costs. Sending it to Hawaii adds cost that California does not have. Beside USofA? You Sof Ah; retard.
The price of fuel in the Antarctic is high too. Transport and storage costs. Getting a few pounds of fuel in orbit to keep a satellite in place is quite pricey.
Music, putting it on a wire and downloading it in Croatia or Norway from the same server in France really doesn't add to the delivery cost; the end user pays for his data rate. So before you add your foolish comments stop, detail why it should cost more or less in one location. Then speak of it as the reason the prices should not be equal.

Eye for an eye

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can H1B cheaper employees we should be able to H1B cheaper products.

Country bans then become regional

[WoodstockJeff]

Some countries imposes legal limitations on content.

By forbidding geo-blocking, content that is legal in other EU countries would suddenly need to be blocked across the EU, to prevent, for example, Germans from seeing/hearing it, because it's illegal in Germany.

Sounds like a freedom-supporting plan to me! (NOT!)

Re: Country bans then become regional

[Anonymous Coward]

the bigger actual problem for apple and spotify is that content owners are different country to country and streaming costs per song differ as a result.

Re: Country bans then become regional

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly that content will be banned from "stores" that specifikt target germans.

A german however can order from a french store. And in that case the german customer is breaking the law and importing forbidden gods.

That problem has been found fixed and left, not that it will stopp idiots to lobby a fix for a no exsting problem

What does this do to content?

[damnbunni]

If digital retailers are not allowed to handle different regions differently:

Does this mean GOG.com and Steam will be allowed to sell video games with Nazis in them with Germany, or does it mean the German ban on Nazis in media is now effectively EU-wide?

Re:What does this do to content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are misunderstanding the issue a little. Germany has an anti-Nazi symbolism law. Something similar can be said about Aborigines in Australia not wanting to be filmed, it's a cultural sensitivity issue. Has nothing to do with affecting price. Good question though.

Re:What does this do to content?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It seems unlikely that EU law will prevent a vendor from selling something at all in selective member states if there is a good reason not to. We looked into this issue when the EU VAT mess was the big news a couple of years ago, fearful that some sort of anti-discrimination provisions would say otherwise. The experts made some straightforward arguments that, for example, declining to sell to customers elsewhere in the EU would be OK if the costs of operating the new tax scheme were prohibitive, because that would be a strictly commercial decision. Presumably complying with the law of the land would also be considered an acceptable basis for making such a decision.

Re:What does this do to content?

[AmiMoJo]

They have to obey local laws. What has to be the same is pricing. If someone uses their freedom of movement rights to move from one county to another they must be able to take their services with them too, so no region locking between different parts of the EEA.

In theory a French person could buy a game with Nazis in France and then move to Germany with it. I don't know enough about German law to say what would happen - I suspect nothing as it's selling which is illegal, not ownership.

Re:What does this do to content?

[Aqualung812]

They have to obey local laws. What has to be the same is pricing.

Then that is bullshit.

If you want people in your country to have certain content banned, then it is completely reasonable to charge differently in that country.
This should be a two-way street.

Re:What does this do to content?

[AmiMoJo]

It would be hard to evaluate in every case if the country's laws justified differential pricing. And anyway, aside from some fairly specific stuff like this in Germany, the point of the EU is to make the rules the same everywhere so that the cost is near zero.

I think the prohibition is on selling the content, not owning it, so just not selling it in Germany is an option. But Germany is a big market, 4th largest economy in the world, so it's likely worthwhile for them to make a censored version. That's the deal, these companies are not owed an income from Germany.

Re:What does this do to content?

[thegarbz]

Then that is bullshit.

Expand on it. There is a good reason some banned content isn't available. Local laws. What is the good reason a streaming service or digital media is priced differently for someone in Bulgaria than France by a company that doesn't have any costs in either market.

That sounds like bullshit to me.

Re: What does this do to content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actualy I do not know a county in EU that doesn't have a anty nazi laws. It is against a law to write, sell or have anything with nazi signs.

Good

[sexconker]

This is what happens when you to to exploit the "global economy". It bites back.

Why would anyone pay the sucker price when they can walk across the street and get the same exact thing for much less?
A game, movie, song, etc. isn't worth more based on where it's sold. I'm sick of paying full price for such things while people in Asia and Russia pay pennies on the dollar. (Though I'm glad I'm paying tons more like people in Australia and South America are.) If you can sell the game to millions in China/Russia/etc. for X, I'm going to seek to pay no more than X as well.

I mean, what's the worst that can happen to me? You region lock your shit? I'll just crack it or use a VPN. You jack up the prices in Russia/wherever? You're not going to jack them up past the US price, so it's still a net win for me.

The one-way global market

[Anonymous Coward]

but many industries argue that they tailor their prices to specific domestic markets

They can be free to make that argument when they start tailoring their job openings to those specific domestic markets instead of outsourcing to where-ever is cheapest and importing H1B labor to fill the local gaps that can't be outsourced.

Will this apply to

[Archfeld]

I wonder if this will apply to DVD's and region restrictions on movie releases ? What about book prices between the US and Canada/Australia ? I realize none of those are EU entities but it would be really cool to some sort of precedent set.

Re: here in the USofA

[Anonymous Coward]

price discrimination based on geo already admits that the product is sold at prices that are just made up and pulled from a hat in the first place - that the product could just as well be 5 bucks or 10 bucks and the seller would still have the product to sell. music is art anyways and the price of digitally distributed music has very fucking little to do with price of gas. gas has actual value and takes money to procure and you cant sell the same gas to 10000 people - in your example the gas in beverly hills would be 3x the price in arkansas just because the gas companies decided so by looking at income levels.

"but many industries argue"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the blurb:

> but many industries argue that they tailor their prices to specific domestic markets

Oh, yeah. I fully agree this is the problem. Many industries argue that they don't make enough profit. Yeah, yeah. Let's throw some money at them poor critters.

Ebay is a bit of an odd one.

[blackest_k]

I live in Ireland and my natural Ebay site is ebay.ie but I can also use ebay.co.uk and presumably other ebay sites as well. The price is the same regardless of site pretty much.
(You do get venders that sell a product for a price but in different currencies e.g $10 or euro 10) Australian Dollars is almost always cheapest.

Where there is a big difference is on which Ebay Site you pay for the items on. If I pay on ebay.co.uk then i get buyer protection and a right to return within 14 days while if I buy on ebay.ie I don't. Sometimes that matters.

Ever since I bought an old macbook which died 3 days after receiving it and getting told by ebay to take it up with paypal who sided with the seller I now use the ebay.co.uk checkout rather than the ebay.ie one (if i had done that with that mac which came from the uk I would have got my money back from the seller).

It also pays to shop around with amazon too, there is .co.uk .de .es .fr and often there is a price difference between sites for the same item from the same seller and if it's fulfilled by amazon tends to ship from the same warehouse! Generally it's a better move for me to buy from a euro using amazon site than the uk site since the amazon checkout will give me a lousy exchange rate buying in euro's for something priced in sterling. Spain tends to have the best prices, Germany the best stock levels. My German and Spanish language skills pretty much zero but google translate handles that problem.

The best place to ship from is Germany best priced shipping. Brexit has made a pretty big difference too. UK prices had got pretty poor over the last few years but the devaluing of Sterling now makes buying from the UK pretty competitive. It's kind of like they have an ongoing 20% off sale. Guess better enjoy that while I can because when the actual exit comes. They are likely to get expensive to buy from with Customs adding Duty and VAT...
   

Re:Ebay is a bit of an odd one.

[ogrizzo]

You can set amazon.de to speak English to you

Re:Ebay is a bit of an odd one.

[blackest_k]

thank you for that :) unfortunately doesnt seem to work for .fr handy for de though

One Apple price for Euros

[gnasher719]

In case nobody has noticed: For everything that Apple sells online, the developer choses a "pricing tier", and Apple then picks all the prices for about 150 different countries. However, the price isn't actually picked per country - it is picked _per currency_. So every country charging in Euros will charge the same number of Euros.

The exception in the EU is the United Kingdom, which is shared in UK pound (which slashdot cannot display properly). But lots of Brits have expressed their strong opinion that they are quite willing to pay more for everything once the UK leaves the EU. Fuck frogface Farage and mini-Trump Boris Johnson.

Re:Good to Know

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time for you upgrade to a multitasking system...

Music and film are essential in two senses

[tepples]

However, unless those works are also essential

They are "essential" in the same sense that a college textbook is "essential": a student in a music or film analysis class gets a 0 on his homework unless he buys a copy.

If you live in an area where all grocery stores play background music, music is also "essential" because a fraction of what you pay for food goes toward licensing background music, and food is essential.

Re:Music and film are essential in two senses

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm not sure we should be dictating commercial restrictions on the supply of all creative content to an entire continent based on the three people in that continent who are studying film or music analysis.

In any case, lots of people are commenting here as if forcing sales to the entire EU to be at the same price will bring the cheaper prices to the richer nations. It seems far more likely that it will bring the more expensive prices to the poorer nations. Your "background music" licence is exactly the kind of expendable luxury that could suffer under the more uniform regime.

Why is Croatian labor less valuable?

[tepples]

The real market price is different in England vs Croatia.

But why is this the case? Why is Croatian labor less valuable than English labor? Does the difference arise from ocean proximity or from proficiency in the language of the economically powerful United States?

Re:Why is Croatian labor less valuable?

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Why is Croatian labor less valuable than English labor?

Why is New Mexico labor less valuable than Silicon Valley labor?

Why is New York City property more valuable than rural Nebraska property?

Why is sex.com worth more than q4wsraioangi43948sw4g.com?

Location, location, location. Each of the locations listed above is more valuable because it is a better location, be it a port city, a tech hub, or a easy typed name.

Re:Why is Croatian labor less valuable?

[Plumpaquatsch]

The real market price is different in England vs Croatia.

But why is this the case? Why is Croatian labor less valuable than English labor? Does the difference arise from ocean proximity or from proficiency in the language of the economically powerful United States?

Why do you think income inequality should be fought by first forcing consumer prices to be the same instead of making income equal?

Re:Why is Croatian labor less valuable?

[tepples]

How does one city become a tech hub and another city become not a tech hub?

Re:Why is Croatian labor less valuable?

[tepples]

As far as I can tell, it's to encourage cost-push inflation. If the cost of living is closer to equal everywhere, employers will have to pay wages that are closer to equal.

Marginal cost of Internet distribution: $0.09/GB

[tepples]

Unless a work includes material licensed under terms that require payment of residuals per copy, all the work involved in production, editing, and mastering is a sunk cost that was covered by the work's crowdfunding campaign. The marginal cost of distributing a copy of a work is the cost of transmitting it over the Internet, for which AWS charges 0.09 USD per GB.

Well their cookie law means...

[Anonymous Coward]

i have to click more popups. This is not a terrible idea, nor is it really needed, I doubt it will go much better.

"forbids online retailers from redirecting"

[YoungManKlaus]

That statement is obviously bullshit. It just forbids them from offering a different service (and price) to customers in formerly different markets. You can still have local sites all you want, you just can't charge double just because someone is in Germany or France for instance.

iTunes is not available in Croatia

[Anonymous Coward]

Croatia is only EU country where iTunes is anavailable.
Also, Amazon or e-bay do not deliver in Croatia, and Abercrombie has 20% off available only in EU exept Croatia.
This is what this is all about. Not some franch guy getting cheaper stuff.

Re: here in the USofA

[Anonymous Coward]

Prices in USA are different in different states due to different VAT same as in EU.
All neto digital prices are same in EU but due to different VAT (in Croatia it is 25%) brutto prices are different.
iOS apps that cost 0.99$ in app store in Croatia cost 1.24$.
How much does it cost in your country?