2010-08-19

Hidden Tariffs pt1 - Australia's video game

I'm amazed how people talk about "free-trade" and "globalization". First of all, these are not new concepts but were going on since the dawn of humanity and more recently, the Spice route, the Velvet route, etc. for the main reason for the raise of empires such as Constantinople, Venice etc.

To the best of my knowledge, only in the 20th century have we started to see a lot of tariffs, hidden or not, blocking free trade.

This leads to start a new series about hidden tariffs, and here's the very first item of this series.

Here's an interesting story found on Slashdot about an Australian tariff and censorship disguised as a pseudo-game classification:
"Having raised concerns about 'the classification of games playable on mobile telephones', the Australian government has now 'put the wheels in motion to address this.' Under current Australian legislation, video games sold in the country must pay between $470 and $2040 to have the game classified, and due to the lack of an 18+ rating in Australia, if it is not found to be suitable for a 15-year-old, it is banned outright. This is the fate met by several recent titles, such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3. Over 200,000 applications are available for the iPhone, many of them games, and developers have raised concerns about the prohibitive costs involved, with many announcing an intention to drop the Australian market altogether if the plan proceeds."

From what I have been reading about Australia for the past 3 years, it's one of the most anti-freedom democracy. They are monitoring and censoring the press, the internet, etc.

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