The Consumers Association in the UK have decided to refer the Apple iTunes service to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for anti competitive practices.

'Consumers' Association's main areas of concern are that the practice of residency based price discrimination frustrates consumer benefits possible under the single market and that the iTunes system allows market abuse, going against the principles of the single market.

When CA asked Apple to justify the price differential, they responded: "The underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads. That's not unusual, look at the price of CDs in the US versus the UK. We believe the real comparison to be made is with the price of other track downloads in the UK." '

Price discrimination based on geography. Just another symptom of DRM.