Discriminatory pricing is very much a vogue subject, and though DRM can be used to reinforce it, it's not really an essential part. Anywhere there is electronic sale, and per-user offers, it's do-able.
Examples: rumor has it that some sites will raise the price on something you've seen before (e.g. a flight), to give the impression it's selling out. And so on. It used to be that advertising was the major way in which we were manipulXXXXXX I mean, influenced, but there are many more tools now. On Jul 29, 2013, at 12:51 , Duncan Bayne <[email protected]> wrote: > One of the goals of the W3C is to make contect available to people > regardless of geographical location. > > Here's an example of how DRM allows content providers to do the exact > opposite: charge people signficantly more than others, based on the > country in which they reside. > > ===== > http://www.zdnet.com/the-australia-tax-is-real-geo-blocking-to-stop-7000018644/ > > "While the committee acknowledges that in some cases, geo-blocking is a > necessary business practice, it also notes that many IT vendors appear > to use geo-blocking as a means to raise prices by restricting consumers' > ability to access the global marketplace," the report said. > > "The committee considers this form of geo-blocking to be a significant > constraint on consumer choice." > ===== David Singer Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
