digital music/video
04/02/2007, 6:55pm, EDT
Monday, April 2nd
EU investigates Apple, may levy £323m fine
Despite a landmark agreement with EMI to offer DRM-free music via iTunes, European Union regulators are investigating Apple's iTunes Store for possibly violating competition laws, and said that they object to the Cupertino-based company's practice of forcing consumers to purchase songs from its iTunes Store only in their home country. The European Commission sent a letter outlining the accusations to Apple as well as major record companies -- including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music, and EMI Group, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for the EU competition commissioner says Apple's arrangements restrict music sales because "consumers can only buy music from the iTunes store in their country of residence." Companies that breach competition law face a fine of up to 10 percent of annual turnover, which according to the Times Online would total roughly £323 million.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said the Cupertino-based company originally wanted to run a Europe-wide store, but music labels and publishers feared legal concerns as well as copyright complications.
"We will continue to work with the EU to resolve this matter," Dowling said.
EMI said it doesn't believe it has breached European competition law, and will make its case strongly to the commission.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video
, 
, 28
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy an iTune as far as I know...?
How about they sue the record companies that set up the distribution systems? This is nothing more or less than old world business practices that allow some company to buy an exclusive license for distrubtion, of something like Pepsi. You do know that Pepsi at your grocery store doesn't come from Pepsi-Co but from a local bottler that bought a license to server your community.
This was a nice practice back in the day when material goods were expensive to ship around the country, but all it does today is limit competition and favor the good ole boys that bought in early. When it comes to intangible electronically distributed goods, there isn't a reason for it in the world.
Count on the record companies to fight this tooth and nail. While companies would have new markets opened to them, many would probably see a large portion of their bread and butter from distribution deals of foreign music go up in smoke.
If the EU thinks that Apple wants or likes to have to deal with umpteen different distributors of Britney's latest 'music', and having to negotiate deals in every country they go to, they are smoking some excellent weed. Start suing the people that are really responsible for system instead of those who have to deal with it.
On the other hand left EU alone, look around - the famous Russian mp3 online store allofmp3.com quietly has been selling music from all of the World to any resident in any country, DRM-free, various quality and much much cheaper (songs $0.10-0.20, albums $2-4).
How many times the US Government have tried to shut down the store? It's still up and running. Read here: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6139350.html
No success. It's in Russia and it's an Internet store. They are saying that the songs sales were not intended for other countries other than Russia. But anyone can buy from it. Nobody, nobody can touch them.
iTunes store, yeah! They have a lots of money, we will make them to share with us. Who cares about the Russian store? Can't reach them, they probably don't have too much money, plus why deal with the bad guys?