Quote Originally Posted by Longshots View Post
I can assure you Rob that both Canon and Nikon Australia would love the copyright act to cover "grey" imports. Unfortunately, I've never been aware of that act being used or even potentially used in this situation.


Perhaps its your turn to show us which part of the Australian copyright act would substantiate your point
Aaahhh... Hoist by my own petard . I can't point to specific areas, although if software is copyrightable under the Australian Act - which I believe it is - the copyright holder can then impose the licence conditions.

I am sure Canon and Nikon *Australia* would, but they don't own the copyright to the software, and I doubt they have been given exclusive rights in Australia by the owners (ie "head office"). Canon and Nikon Japan could stop the grey market very easily - just cut off sales to the distributors who advertise grey market products - but it makes no difference to head office on a) the bottom line and b) the market image if the grey market exists or not, and so I don't think "head office" cares that the Australian subsidiaries are upset. Parallel sales channels are an interesting problem for companies, because the value of the different channels is really only assessible in intangibles (such as market penetration and brand protection). This is one of the issues Harvey Norman is struggling with, because an online shopfront will really p*** off his stores (that are often franchise operations).

Pat: Sony had campaigned strongly for the introduction of anti-circumvention legislation (which was introduced around 2000). The problem Sony has is that if you mod the playstation, you can use programs sourced from other suppliers, and reduce Sony licenced revenue (from its official suppliers.) They (Sony, Microsoft et al) wi'll do whatever they can to stop you modding the box. Also, boxes such as the playstation and Xbox are way underpriced for the computing power within (e.g. US army purchased 2200 for supercomputer), but are sold as loss-leaders to get the ongoing software revenue. There is a push in the US to try and squash the secondary market in games (as a breach of copyright), although others argue that the secondary market helps push the primary market (see here)

BTW, the US government's ACTA and TPP negotiations are likely to ensure that US copyright law gets propogated to other countries such as Australia - so actions over there should be of interest.