Leader: Rip off Britain - this time it's digital

There will always be variations in how much goods and services cost, across continents, countries, regions - even cities and towns.

For a few decades now we have been used to physical goods being cheaper in some places. Often a country where a good is manufactured gets a better deal (though not always - ask the Japanese).

For that reason we have seen plenty of stories about 'rip off Britain' in the press in recent years. It holds for cars, clothing and other goods. To prove this theory, there is the occasional exception - for example, Body Shop products are often more expensive outside the UK, their home base.

When it comes to software, the ire of the average buyer has been raised. Why, one might ask, is a software package more expensive in the UK than in the US? More often than not, vendors would give a uniform reply: localisation. Even adding all those awkward u's to 'colour', 'neighbour' and so on has a cost, it seems.

We can just about swallow that one.

But when a song, in essence a piece of software that doesn't need 'localising' and for which there is no transport cost when sold digitally, costs more in one country (above and beyond exchange rate fluctuations) than another, consumers are justified in feeling upset.

So are watchdog organisations. Cue the Consumers' Association's move to refer Apple's iTunes to the Office of Fair Trading in the UK. They and thousands of others have worked out that 79p in the UK is more than 99 eurocents - which by the way is more than $0.99 in the US.

Should we blame Apple? In part but the company supposedly doesn't make any money from the software here, only from the related sales of its iPod players. It does, however, have a relationship with the record companies and they together take the stance that comparisons across countries don't matter, only 'value' within a particular market.

This publication disagrees with such a stance.

A company such as Apple has done very well with its iPod and iTunes service. It may think it should squeeze everything it can out of any market. But while differences for a digital product across small distances are just plain wrong (and how many of those tracks are by British artists, we wonder?) over-charging is also bad business.

Only today we hear that Stelios Haji-Ionnou's easyGroup will kick off its easyMusic service before the end of the year, as first reported on silicon.com here, with the help of long-time iTunes pricing critics Wippit. Expect others to exert pressure on what is still expensive music.

Apple should realise that healthy legal music at a decent price is ultimately good business for it. After all, it's not like the company hasn't previously blown a market it once bossed.