A Rendering Tax on IE7?

It's not about being a secure browser, IMHO, it's about everything that old IE versions do wrong when rendering websites. I'm in web development and ideally we would only design one site, but in reality every site needs to account for visitors using old versions which might move a div a pixel or two and break up the entire page. It's a nightmare, and very costly.

Old versions of Opera are just as bad, by the way.

?! Well, if it works for them.... (taxing it, I mean, not the browser. We know the browser doesn't work for them).

It's illegal, the ACCC will kick their arse ...

^ He means http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/142

The Australian Competition and Consumer  Commission.

Agreed re Opera, and about the 'rendering', note the third sentence in the OP. 

And so it begins. 

Not necessarily...as a 'shop keeper' has the right to refuse customers...and it doesn't classify as 'discrimination', not in a legitimate/legal sense.

If Kogan was an essential service eg utility such as a Gas co ...then they would be screwed...;)

Ah, but Jafo, ONLY government in Australia can impose a tax... and this company, Krogan, IS calling this charge a TAX... therefore it is illegal.

If however, they rename it to 'surcharge' they'll be right... no law against that.

A business is allowed to recover a extra cost of a service, what they are not allow to do is gain more money than the cost. If Kogan had a fixed amount, say $20, they can argue that every time someone uses ie7 it cost us $20 and we have to recover the cost. It will be up you in the civil court to prove the cost is less than $20.

The problem is Kogan wants a % of the total bill. If a person buys a item for $1000 they will have to pay more for the service than someone buying an item for $100. There is no justification for an individual to pay more for the service than someone else.

taz....the only way they could get into trouble with this is if they were to, say, charge black people a % more ... or Catholics, or Europeans.....

They aren't imposing a charge for a 'service' at all.

It's not a service...it's a private commercial enterprise.

If you want something for the A triple C to worry about....try IKEA and the disparity of pricing world wide.

Or try how I bought [for a friend] the Beatles Collection from Amazon US including postage for 168 ... or could go into JB HIFI and fork out 300 .....

Kogan is a 20-something who saw a hole in the market and filled it....now 4 or 5 years later he's a multi millionaire.  The potential loss of sales [yes, they can walk if they don't want to pay the surcharge] is easily outweighed by the publicity.

It's win - win ...;)

About 1.3% of Aussies use IE7 - the free publicity beats that by a whole helluva lot even if they all bought something there.

Yes, but they are charging someone more to provide access to their site. The issue is to ask for a % 'tax' and the amount that they charge will be different for every punter with ie7.

I think it would be far easier if they denied access to the site until you ungraded you browser.

[edit] good point he is getting a lot of publicity out of it

And that is illegal unless you're government... ONLY government has the right/ability to impose a tax here in Aust.   For an individual or company it IS illegal

starkers....semantics....don't get hooked up over the word 'tax'.  It's a surcharge...a service fee... the 'price of entry' 'the cost of doing business'.

The difference between a Govt imposed 'tax' is that it is compulsory [unless your name is Gina]. A fee to access Kogan's site is NOT compulsory as you can choose NOT to access it.

Which doesn't need to be paid if you simply update your browser (a painless and smart thing to do), or by not purchasing anything. In that case, the work done to render the site usable for IE7 goes down the tubes, and Kogan's swallows it. Additionally, the purchase could be made from a friend's computer... with a more updated browser.

Semantics or not, anyone other than government must call it something other than a tax... as anything that is collected as a tax must be handed to the government.  That is a fact... and if the government wanted to take Kogan to task over it the government would win.

Even the Brisbane City Council, Australia's largest, cannot impose taxes.  It can levy rates and impose parking fines to raise revenue... but it CANNOT levy taxes.

Yes, [apart from the nasty sting to the back pocket] tax is just a word, but it is a word, when imposing a charge, that only governments [state and federal] are entitled by law to use.

I see this is taxing your brain...

I gotta agree there.

Semantics are a pretty big fucking deal when it comes to the law.

They need to change the name to a surcharge, and make it approximately equivalent to recovering costs.

what... so... older than ie 7 is fine?

Yes. As a paper weight. 

You don't know the half of it.  At 5 something in the morning it was a major effort to string all them word t'gether

And now it's 7.45 in the morning and I still haven't been to bed...2 days in a row now.  Yup, just about running on empty.

Yeah, like when I asked the cop if he'd arrest me for calling him a fucken dirty low down pig.

He answered in the affirmative, so I asked: Well could you arrest me for thinking it?"

"No!", he replied, so I piped up and said: "Well in that case, I think you're a fucken dirty low down.... "

Yup, though you wouldn't believe unless you saw it for yourself, but there are a few descendents of Moses who are still using Papyrus 6.

which just highlights what a load of rubbish this stunt is. at least make it consistent.

Yeah, it's a ridiculous stunt alright, but it sure serves the site owner with free [international] publicity.  I mean, here we are talking about it on a multi-national forum... not that I'd be tempted to frequent his establishment/purchase his wares.  For mine, this is a slippery proposition geared towards profiteering. 

The site is his store, and effectively he's requiring some patrons to contribute to it's maintenance, something customers of a 'brick and mortar' store would not tolerate. I can see it now, various stores charging an entry fee to cover cleaning and repair costs.  Yup, people would be inclined to shop elsewhere/stay away in droves.

Come to think of it, which I do, I have a copy of IE7 tucked away somewhere in my archives.  Maybe I could charge a rendering fee to those sites who don't play fairly with it.

You might... if your name was Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer. But if you were, you wouldn't need to do that... another Catch 22, eh old mate?