EU vs Australia on digital merchandise

It's a bad day for every gamer in Australia.
http://www.pcgamer.com/australians-may-face-10-tax-fee-for-steam-transactions/

The Australian government may introduce a 10% GST tax on 'intangible' digital goods in next week's budget, meaning Steam prices could be on the rise. According to a report by Fairfax, the so called "Netflix tax" will affect imported digital goods including software, music and videos.

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Aren't games in Australia already too expensive? Corwin, sorry, but IMO it's high time your government gets changed.

Meanwhile in Europe:
http://torrentfreak.com/europe-will-abolish-geo-blocking-and-other-copyright-restrictions-150506/

The European Commission adopted a new Digital Single Market Strategy today, which aims to improve consumer access to digital services and goods. Among other things, Europe vows to end geo-blocking and lift other unwarranted copyright restrictions.

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It's a good time to live in Europe these days… You think Netflix, Hulu and others oiled this? Hell if I care if anyone pushed it forward as long as they make this work!

Err, no people, this post is not late aprilfools. It's for real.

Our gov't gets changed regularly, but that makes absolutely NO difference to stuff like this; it's all about getting more money and every gov't wants that. Those not in power will SCREAM about a new tax, but once they get in they never get rid of that tax; it wasn't their fault and we'll keep your money anyway. Is it any wonder down here we dislike politicians no matter what party they belong to!!

European customers have to pay VAT on their digital purchases, since January or so. In my case that's 19%.

Isn't this because these purchases are tax-free and you're supposed to report them to pay the proper taxes because 99.8% of people don't? Honestly it's unfair if governments are deprived of their taxes because of digital purchases from companies from other countries or states. Of course however it doesn't mean it's not going to be abused.

No, it happens automatically now. It's the seller's duty to collect the tax and pass it on to the authorities, along the whole chain starting with the manufacturer or importeur. Everybody pays upstream and collects downstream. Only the end user cannot collect. We have to pay VAT (or import sales tax, which a different name for the same thing) on everything.

EU end customer prices MUST include VAT.

Sadly things are not as peachy in Europe when it comes to GeoBlocking IP as it might first seem. The media lobby is strong, and the end result of all of this is that only "unjustifiable" GeoBlocking is no longer allowed. Companies are still allowed to block your country if there are marketing reasons for it, if they intend to use another publisher in your region at some point in the far future, or if you're expected to pay a different price for your goods. The new law is basically toothless, at most companies might actually have to explain their actions if enough people complain.

In other words what you're saying is that politicians live in stone age or simply do not understand virtual reality nor bother to learn something about technology.

There are no boundaries on internet. Network device's MAC address doesn't belong to any country. As long as there is a pressure to discriminate people on internet, VPN tunnels and IP masking plus shady business based on it will continue to exist. What music industry did with iTunes is the only possible solution, allow access to everyone for the same price regardless of the country, planet or galaxy they live in.
Or in other words, on elections it's the society that should pass a message to current politicians:
Go pro or go home.