Upholding the first sale doctrine

I suspect we Australian citizens are going to put that to the test. We currently pay up to twice what you do in the US to download the same software from servers in the US. For more expensive products it is actually cheaper to fly to the US and buy it there. This includes gaming software from Valve.

Just so you know how bad it is, I'll quote from this URL http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/news/16114230/ :

> Australians pay on average 73 percent more on iTunes downloads than the United States, 69 percent more on computer products and a staggering 232 percent more on PC game downloads.

We are collectively so pissed off but this there was a Federal Government inquiry into it, where they summoned people from Microsoft, Adobe and so on for a "please explain". They were refreshingly honest. Except for Apple, their answer was "because we can". Apple was the one exception. As much as it pains me to say this, their hardware has a reasonable markup explained by taxes and Australia's enforced warranty provisions. iTunes was because pricing is determined by the Music industry, not Apple.

The end result of all this publicity? Have you every seen HOWTO's on proxies and laundering Australia Dollars do the look like US dollars in popular discussion forums? I hadn't, until now.