Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Fined $143m for Price-Fixing
kyz writes "The BBC is reporting that the anti-trust branch of the European Commission has fined Nintendo 146 million euros (roughly $143m) for preventing its distributors from selling games as cheaply as they are sold in other European Union countries. For example, "prices of Nintendo products were up to 65% higher in Germany or the Netherlands than in Britain".
Now if only the EU could do this with Microsoft, Levi Strauss and the MPAA members..."
All they have to do is make a Pokemon game, and then paint it 4 different colors.
....the president of Nintendo flew up into the air and coins exploded from his body?
Does anyone else remember getting a check from Nintendo (in the late 80s) for like $5 or $10? Apparently they were price fixing the NES Unit for $99, and were order to pay a fixed amount to every registered NES owner.
Wouldnt it be great if the money fined went to all the people across europe who had bought all these high priced games!! Though I think thats unlikely to happen as it will no doubt go into the bottomless pit of the EU.
In the end the end user ends up paying this fine as although prices might come down in europe they will no doubt go up in the UK.
Disclaimer: I am not one of those people you see protesting around every IMF meetings
With that said, I swear to god, multinational cooperations have no conscience. Turn on the news, and all you see is the Enrons, Microsofts, and all these other coopertions who do everything they can to screw the consumer and their employees to make an extra penny. Good for the Europeans, bout damn time someone smacked those companies down, even if it is one with good Karma like nintendo.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
...that as part of the ruling, the head executives of the branches of Nintendo International concerned with this case will have large barrels hurled at them by a giant ape while trying to get up several stories of floors. In a press release, one of the executives said simply, "BEEP."
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
Sounds like they are just trying to get some extra coin out of Nintendo. Bill Gates probably put them up to this!
If Nintendo sells units for more money in a country with less demand, it's illegal? Price-fixing? Nintendo competes in one of the fiercest markets around. *BOGGLE*
<Amanda`> I just went out to the parking lot in my bathrobe to exchange warez CDs.
Nintendo has only loved the pocketbooks of their users, nothing more.
People have already mentioned their price fixing the NES, but how about their security chips and their rabid hate of Tengen? And then there's the Game Genie and how Nintendo did their best to put Camerica out of business.
Nintendo just ain't cool when it comes to anything that lowers their share of pocketbook abuse. Always has been, always will be.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Normally it's the UK that has the highest prices in Europe.
But the period they were fined for was only 1991-1998. That still leaves the past 4 years to be accounted for.
But then again Gamecube games are still a lot cheaper than X-box and PS2 games if you know where to shop so maybe they have learnt their lesson.
They will fine the DVD consortium for region coding. I'm sure that it's cheaper to buy american DVDs than the the euro ones that are likely released much later.
...or 1430000 extra lives! Game over!
It seems like it has more to do with the open trade policies within the EU than it does with Nintendo.
End of Line.
Because of this Nintendo will have to cut prices across the board. The red potion in the original Zelda will only cost 20, and you only need 80 coins in Super Mario Bros. to get an extra life.
It's just a symptom of a much bigger problem. The global economy has reduced the importance of national laws. If you don't like the laws in the country where you operate, moving has never been easier. Child labor laws? Move to Cambodia. So it makes my day just a bit brigher when I see them getting smacked down for it. But, I would much prefer to see a $143 billion instead of million. That would get their attention
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I don't see why the EU get's to benefit from screwing consumers. Why not let the consumers screw the company by not buying the product, or ordering it from somewhere else, or otherwise avoiding the price gouging? Is the EU going to give the money back to Germany and the Netherlands to the consumers who got ripped off? I don't see how the EU is doing the right thing.
When is a market unfair? When is it unfair for a company to set a price for their products? If I offer to sell you a video game for $50 or for $100, then isn't it just a private transaction between the two of us?
Now, if I want to sell that game to someone in Britain for $50, and someone in Germany for $100, is there something wrong with that? After all, can't the German customer just call up someone in Britain and have them buy it for him and ship it to Germany, and pay him the $50 plus a bit for his troubles?
Perhaps the problem here isn't Nintendo. Perhaps the problem is government laws that prevent the free exchange of goods across borders, or government fees and taxes that discourage cross-border trade, and enable companies like Nintendo to pull stunts like this.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Probably $143 million worth...
"And like that
The lead attorney for Nintendo, upon hearing the verdict, angrily tried shutting off the power to the courtroom while screaming "FUCK THAT SHIT MAN, THE FUCKING SYSTEM CHEATS! I HAD THIS SUIT WON".
Other attorneys on the case were quoted as saying that the lead attorney had a copy of the trial saved on a memory card, and would try his closing arguments over and over again until he won.
This is an important less, corporate boys and girls.
If you're fixing prices, then you'd better make sure that you charge the same high price in every single country in the EU.
Got that?
You can still catch flak for uniformly high pricing, though, but it beats this kind of bad press and fine crap.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
DVD's have a built-in way to enforce trade restrictions: region encoding. Of course, film distributors will claim it's about release dates or other such crap; but in reality, region encoding was always intended as an anti-free trade measure.
The distributors want to extract as much money as they can from each market: while they can easily get $18 for a DVD in the US, that would be way too high in China.
The way to scuttle this is to reform copyright to be free trade- and fair use-friendly: demand that, as a condition of receiving copyright protection, distributors not cripple the product in any way---no "copy protection," no region encoding, etc.---and allow users to buy and sell and resell them as they please, and to make copies for archival purposes or for limited distribution to friends. (Note: Your 10,000 closest friends on Gnutella don't count.)
OTOH, if the distributors want to put in anti-free trade or anti-fair use measures, they obviously don't need copyright protection. (LOL)
The point of this proposal is simply to shift the balance back to the center, away from the veritable power orgy for content owners that exists today. Reasonable people realize that copyright, patent, and trademark protections exist for a reason; reasonable people do not believe that these protections should come at the expense of all liberty for users.
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]
not that i am a big fan of nintendo, how could the EU enforce a rule that the price of anything sold has to be the same across the EU states. In that article they compare the price of cubes sold in Britain & Germany. Does this essentially mean that the services (shipping, handling etc)would invariably cost me the same in germany & Britan ?
More over, there could always be the additional language barrier & translation costs for the cubes or any other product. Wouldnt it be a valid argument for price hike from nintendos side ? (although 65% is a little too much)
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
charge what they want? If its overpriced, tehres one simple answer: dont buy it. Its not as tho these products mentioned (anything by nintendo, Levi, Microsoft etc) have anything to do with practical and normal living needs?!?! Now, if this was against a supermarket or a foodgoods seller, then fine, but in this case i dont agree.
Firstly, its their product, why cant they decide how much they want to charge? The value is only that of what people are willing to pay, people stop paying and the product obviously isnt worth what they are asking.
Secondly, as i said before, its not a vital product. All of these things are luxuries, and definatly things we can live without.
Priorities people, want to go after a price fixer? Then go after the Pharmacuetical Industry who definatly fixes prices! That sort of battle would benifit more people than this.
Coincidentally, I've just finished reading this book, which gets into the original court case in the US. It's a very interesting read (although it's not so good at the very end). Unfortunately, I think it may be out of print.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Nintendo says that they were "more victim than villain" of price fixing.
Exactly how did they arrive at that conclusion? Is not making more money an overall goal of the company that they'd be happy about? Sell your stock now!
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
No matter how much the EU tries to, its countries are not the same.
You have avg income differences, and most important consumer diffences and market penetration differences.
Prices should not be the same in each country, as these conditions are not the same.
If i live in Germany and i see prices are cheaper in the uk i simply buy in the uk, that is what online stores are for. Granted, this would also make the price difference pointless but i bet that online sales for nintendo games (bought mostly by parents) is less than 5%
The number is EUR 149 million.
Read the press release from the European Commission.
Some facts:
And so on and so on. You can find more facts about it at the rather appallingly designed Rip-off Britain website.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Fair enough, the stories don't have much shelf life (why don't we go kill some pre-teen beauty pagent winner and give them something to talk about)
But nowadays, it seems there are so many that they just keep coming out of the woodwork.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Coins exploding from his body Sonic the Hedgehog style?
No, that's rings, and that's when you get hit, not when you die (as "explode" in the blurb implied). Coins come off a dying player in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You mean remember, right? ;)
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
For example (and for argument's sake) why would a person spend $60 for a game when they can get the exact same game for PS2 for $40? (Notwithstanding the difference in the cost of the hardware - which at roughly $50 evens out at about 3 games. Who only ever buys 3 games for a console?) You'd think that this scenario would simply hurt sales, and not increase profit. Unless of course, they only care about short term gain and higher profit margins and not increasing market share. Makes sense in the short term, but kills you in the long term.
Sounds to me that not only is Nintendo guilty of price fixing, but that they're guilty of having a somewhat flawed business model.
Hopefully they won't try this kind of BS again. Nintendo has existed for over 100 years and, as far as large media companies go, has been very ethical.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Luigi: "Yessah, to make-eh some extra gold coins, eh!"
Princess: "Oh, dear."
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable. -Mencken
The Register is carrying another story here with evidence that Nintendo expected a far smaller fine - around 50M. An interesting read that'll make you think twice before publishing MSWord docs to all and sundry :-)
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
Obligatory link to The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Behold, evil!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
And cute spanish women to boot? Im shipping out!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
What strikes me is that there is something of a double standard in play here. The EU makes no attempts to make sure that it costs the same amount to advertise a product in different EU markets, or that it costs the same amount to get a product on the shelves in each, but it does use fines such as this one to make sure that a producer can't charge different prices for the same item in different places.
As far as I can tell, this will tend to make profit margins necessarily higher in some EU markets than in others, with the result that either all markets will get more expensive, or that producers will stop selling in some markets.
In other words, if it costs Nintendo more to operate in the Germany than in the UK, and if they are prohibited by law from charging higher prices in Germany than in the UK, then their only options are a.) to not sell their products in Germany at all, or b.) to charge higher prices for their products in the UK.
If the goal of this legislation is to stiff the Brits or to reduce the number of products the Germans have to choose from, it would seem to be working quite well, but if it's goal is to make the product cheap everywhere, it's hard to see how it could possibly succeed.
You are a troll, but I'll bite.
... You must be joking. Maybe if you live in the US which does not really import foreign cultures, but if you live in Europe you cannot possibly say that there is no NEW European cultural productions.
Many European companies have and still produce video games. So there are no issue there.
Europe is not producing for itself its own fresh supply of culture
No European movies, actors, writers, musicians, painters,
And Orson Welles compared Swiss peace with Italian anarchy. Are you saying that the US or Japan are anarchies?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Microsoft is evil. Sony is part of the MPAA. And now Nintendo is doing bad things.
I just want to know who I can buy console from and not feel guilty. Where is Atari when you need them?
Publicly traded corporations have one overriding goal: increase shareholder value. And since they are a non-human legal entity they have no inherent moral tendencies to keep watch over their behavior. Therefore, they never "feel bad" when they act outside the law or society's mores. This is perfectly illustrated with the way companies view fines and lawsuits as "costs of business" that can fit into their accounting books. If by polluting illegally for 10 years, a company saves 200 million over proper disposal, but then pays a 100 million dollar fine, the books show that as 100 million dollars in the plus column.
In order for companies to start obeying the law, the penalties need to make it more expensive to break the law then to follow it.
Everywhere I go, video games cost the same. I've never seen them go down in price until they hit the "we need to get rid of this junk" bins. Why isn't this price fixing? Or is it? Sure looks that way to me.
Like shooting fish in a barrel...
I write in my journal
I didn't even know I was this interested in console history. I can't stop reading, this is quite fascinating. Thanks for the link.
put the what in the where?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Okay, Nintendo screwed their customers with price fixing. What I want to know is who's gonna be on the recieving end of that 146,000,000?
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Nintendo has already changed it's method of distribution YEARS ago. That is why they are appealing.
The EU contacted NOE, and they cooperated and fixed the problems, now the EU is back stabbing them.
--- From a maining list I am on.... On Tuesday, September 24, 2002, Home Depot Canada sent a small army of private security guards backed by a small army of Toronto police to forcibly evict about 125 people from a homeless encampment on their unused property in downtown Toronto, Canada. Home Depot needs to be held in account for its actions. Due to the urgency and seriousness of this matter, please respond immediately to our international call for solidarity and action against Home Depot. -- While the property is theirs, and really they can do what they wish to it. Using security guards and cops to toss homeless people off your unused property with no notice, with winter coming is somewhat evil. This is all the more evil as there is a housing crisis in Toronto, and winter is coming.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
"Now if only the EU could do this with Microsoft, Levi Strauss and the MPAA members..."
Yeah but why would they? Those companies are not Asian, they are the "good guys" not the "bad" guys.
Not because they went after Nintendo, but it validated that their actually a govermental body that can actually do something. As for the Levi's comment, I like Eddie Bauer jeans anyway.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Anyone here notice yet that the popular opinion on this discussion is that who does the damned EU think they are to regulate how Nintendo can sell their product; whereas on SuSe Linux will run Microsoft Office, it's all about how MS is an evil monopoly that needs to be regulated?
/. crowd loves busting on Evil Devil-Worshipping MS but will defend to the death their Beloved Happy Shiny NES, even though the actual differences in behavior might be quite slim.
First, some information. The decision wasn't made based on how Nintendo wants to set prices. All you free-traders are right - they can do whatever they want. However, the laws they admitted to breaking concerned their price-fixing, not their pricing, ie their strong-arm tactics in preventing distributors from selling their products in countries where Nintendo wanted to price them higher. This is exactly not free-trade.
A couple of thoughts:
(1) There are completely different people making the arguments. None of the free-traders are hanging out on the SuSe Linux discussion, but they're coming out in numbers here.
(2) The
(3) ?
That's what I love about slashdot. The diversity of the uninformed opinions... =)
I guarantee you get a lot more return for your money from the government (which isn't hell-bent on taking off a maximal ROI from every taxpayer dollar it collects) than you do from a corporation, which always wants its 15%+ profit.
Or don't you like roads, electrical grids, and all that other good infrastructure and all those wonderful services? Me, personally, I like paying taxes.
Coincidentally enough, I don't think people hate corporations for the same reasons they hate governments. It's not about the money corporations take away, it's the exploitation without accountability (or transparency) -- unless you are a shareholder, you cannot vote a corrupt CEO out of office. I am acutely aware of this paradigm, because there are US politicians who somehow directly affect my life and whom I would dearly love to vote out of office, and I'm not a US citizen.
While I agree that Nintendo's price-fixing is a non-issue as issues go, it's still worth a weather eye, much as many other things are. I'd hate to be serious and uptight all the time.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Not true. The only examples where that holds are where heavy advertising is used to sell the products, e.g. Coke, McDonalds, movies and music.
You don't see many US cars on our streets, yet there are loads of Japanese and cars from all over Europe. Electrical goods are mostly the same, as well as most food, TV shows and just about everything else.
Besides, culture has nothing to do with consumerism, except perhaps in the US, where a main part of it's culture is consumerism, the traditional "Capitalist and proud" attitude. Just because we don't embrase that ideology as much as you, it doesn't mean we lack culture. Eatting a Big Mac is not cultured!
Having a 50% penalty on illegal gains is actually an enducement to break the law.
Actually, no, it would be a pretty serious penalty when imposed on the personal wealth of the executives making the decisions but calculated on the corporate gain from the illegal scheme. If International Widgets fixes prices and reaps a revenue windfall of $500M, then Liesure Larry, the exec responsible for it, would be fined $250M personally, even if he personally didn't make anything other than his usual salary and bonuses.
Sure, the corporation profits on this deal, but the people responsible for it pay very heavy prices out of their own pockets. If you want to eliminate that, make it 100% damages.
The whole point here is that the *people* engineering these schemes need to be accountable. Fining the corporation is pointless -- it just encourages the execs to be more careful and to raise their prices to cover future potential penalties.
This is double-screwy and quite hypocritical when you consider the artificial EU VAT TAX THAT IS NOTHING MORE THAN GOVERNMENT-MANDATED PRICE FIXING. But I digress. Can't wait till they pull this one on the drug companies -notorious for variable pricing.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars a year on research, development, and testing. Forcing them to lower their sources of income would mean they spend less on this, and thus would harm the people more than benefit them because of the unavailability of drugs.
... yet those who benefit from government granted monopoly regimes, like Patents, manage to convince people it is okay anyway. Inventors (incluiding pharamceutical companies) can make a perfectly fine living competing against others selling an identical product (who cares if the competitor didn't invent it first and just copied the invention, invented it independently, or did invent it first but lost the footrace to the pantent office? None of that stops the inventor from marketing and selling their product, indeed the only thing the competition will insure is that the market price is a fair one).
... achieving all the downside and little of the upside.
Bullshit.
1) Pharmaceutical companies exaggerate the amount they spend on research, often vastly so, as a club to use whenever patent reform is proposed (or discussed in government circles). Much of that expense isn't R&D related at all, it consists of normal, non-research-related costs which through the magic of accounting have been transformed into R&D Costs.
2) Much, in some cases most, of the money funding research comes from public funds (grants, generally paid for by taxpayers) and private donations (been to any AIDS benefits lately?), as well as the time, resources, and materials of publicly funded educational institutions (Universities, Government research labs, etc). It is an appalling outrage that the products of such contributions are then privately patented and sold back to the very contributors at inflated monopoly prices.
3) It is a myth that an inventor requires a monopoly in order to make money on their invention. Ironicly, it is an anti-freemarket myth that flies in the face of virtually all free market economic data and theory
4) There are a number of other methods for financing R&D that are more effecient than the blanket granting of 20-year monopolies to private interests. Indeed, we use several of these and still give them their monopolies
5) Selling AIDS medication for $20,000/year that costs $200/year to make does not benefit the patient (and in that example most of the money financing the research came from public funds to begin with), it only benefits the pharamceutical monopolist.
6) Monopolies are virtually by definition "price fixing," as only one entity can sell the item and are thus free to "fix" the price wherever they would like. When they fix it too low it is called "dumping" (though that isn't the only example of dumping, it certainly is one, e.g. Microsoft and Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player), when they fix it too high it is called "fixing" or "gouging", but the reality is a monopoly, whether achieved by government fiat (Pharmaceutical Patents), through predatory anti-competative business practices (Microsoft), simply because one is the only one to offer a particular product or serve a particular niche (Power and Gas companies in some locales), or for whatever reason, a monopoly is always 'fixing' a price, as there is no competition to otherwise affect and determine pricing. Maybe, if one is lucky (or has good government oversight) the price will be fixed "fairly," but fair or not, the price is definitely fixed.
No free market, no non-fixed prices.
It is just that we as a society have, foolishly, choses to hone rather large blindspots with respect to much of the price fixing that goes on, because we either charish, or do not question, many of the monopolies that surround us (particularly those which exist through government fiat via Patent and Copyright law).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Presumably because all of Europe is under one DVD region. The EU's purpose is to handle things between it's different member states, it has no authority over trade between EU states and other non-EU states, or at least not the same level of authority.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Yes, the UK does generally suffer from retail rip-off compared with the rest of the European Union, but not in this particular case. Surprised me too. Here's the quote from the EC press release:
UK by far the cheapest country
The investigation showed that during the seven-year period price differences in the European Economic Area (EEA) EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein -- were frequent and significant. The UK usually had the lowest prices by far, which understandably tempted traders into re-exporting cheap goods to high-price countries.
The most striking price differences were observed in early 1996, when certain Nintendo products were up to 65% cheaper in the UK when compared with the Netherlands and Germany. They were also more affordable than in Spain (up to 67% more expensive than the UK), Italy (54%) and Sweden (39%). The difference narrowed but remained significant in 1997, when the UK price for all N64 game consoles and game cartridges was 33% lower (in October) than everywhere else in the EEA.
Considering they stole the game Double Dragon from a kid when he submitted it to them to try and get a job.
The Ninentendo case is an example of price discrimination not price fixing.
Price discrimination is when a single producer charges different customes different prices. Price fixing is when different producers agree to sell to all customers for the same price.
What followes is some detail on each and then some argumentation for why the ethical case against price discrimination generally is weak, without adressing the Nintendo case particularly.
Price fixing is an instance of collusion, where ostensibly competing producers negotiate an agreement to restrict price competetion between themselves. That is, producers agree not to sell their product for below some specified amount. The purpose of the agreement is to increase sales profits by rasing sales prices. Note that such agreements are always accompanied by another agreement about how producers divide up the market. Sometimes producers carve up the market geographically. For example, "You sell in Michigan and I'll sell in Ohio." Sometimes producers carve up the market by number of sales. "You won't sell more than x billion barrels of oil and I won't either."
OPEC is the quintessential example of a price fixing organization. Price fixing is its sole and explicit purpose. (OPEC can do this because it is an organization of governments, and there exists no super-governmental body to place on governments the same rules by which those nations govern their citizens.)
Price discrimination, on the other hand, is a pricing strategy of a lone seller for raising profits on sales without organizing agreements with his competitors. For each buyer, the seller attempts to negotiate the maximum price that buyer will pay. For the seller, this stragy works to raise net sales income above what would be obtained with a one-price-for-all strategy.
The moral case against is price discrimination is pretty weak for these reasons:
-Because richer customers are willing to pay more, in practice price discimination amounts to giving poorer customers a break on price. It places the costs of production more heavely on those who can best afford them. If you look at Nintendo's pricing scheme, I would predict you find that Nintendo charged more in richer countries and less in poorer countries.
-Most people don't regard price discrimination as unethical. There are plenty of examples which demonstrate how this is cool with most people. Like Priceline's "Name your own price". Or the bazaar, where buyers and sellers haggle over prices, the buyer attempting to determine the lowest price at which the seller will part with a good and the seller trying to find the highest price which the buyer is willing to pay. There is no guarantee or even an expectation that such a system will result in the same price for each customer, and that's just cool with everyone.
-With progressive taxation, tax payers are assessed different fees according to their ability to pay. With price discrimination, buyers pay different fees according to their willingness to pay. Goverments make the "Different people pay different amounts" argument in the case of taxation. However, the argue against "different people pay different amounts" in the case of private sales. The reason for the contradictory approaches is that with taxation, goverment is as the recipient of tax revenues adopts the strategy which maximizes those revenues. In the case of corporate sales, they have little such insentive. My point here is not that one or the other is eithically correct, but that it is difficult to make the ethical case for one as you engage in the other.
With price discrimination, the rich lose out becasue sellers can exploit their willingness to pay more than the poor. Mario Monte stands for their interets here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Add to this that most Europeans are pro DVD-modding simply to be able to play the DVDs they bought - heck I know of a number of shops where its part of the sales pitch. In certain case from the US where they cost half the price.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Okay, I see there are already a bunch of (pro|anti)-(free trade|WTO|EU|Nintendo) posts here, most of them without a clear understanding of the situation. I guess the headline made it seem like the EU was dictating what Nintendo could charge. That is false. The ruling was about Nintendo stopping third-party distributors from importing games from countries where they were cheaper. To clarify:
1) The ruling is *pro*-free trade, as it's basically punishing Nintendo for stopping import-export within the EU.
2) Nintendo *is* alloweed to charge whatever it wants, and charge different prices in different countries. What they cannot do is stop people or companies from re-selling to countries where the products are more expensive.
3) The ruling is based on actions in the mid-90's. It does not have anything to do with the market currently, I think things have changed since then. Anyone from Europe care to comment?
So flame on, but please flame on based on facts, not false statements.
And his makes them different from who? Every corporation (save a few oddball nonprofits) is in the business of making money. That's the whole point. Corporations will also defend their position in the marketplace and do their best to weed out the weaker competitors. That has always been the case.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If I legally make a billion dollars, why should I be forced to give it all to the governement? Why can't I keep the money I made?
I have nothing against paying my fair share of taxes, but punishing (which is what you are advocating) people because they make obscene amounts of money is 100% grade-AAA horseshit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Criminals suck.
I agree... sometimes. It depends on the law in question, doesn't it? What if the government made free press illegal? Publishing a newspaper without the consent of the government would then make you a criminal.
The gov't is not a bunch of criminals for taking your money. They are doing things that benefit society with that money.
The notion of "that which benefits society" and the notion of "that which is moral" are equivalent. Furthermore, they aren't always doing things that benefit society with that money, right? The government is composed of fallible humans subject to the corruption that power brings. History is rife with examples of government abuse so that those in control can profit at the expense of private citizens. The principal difference between corporations and government is that corporations do not have the legal right to use deadly force to acheive their goals. Of course, corporations can always bribe government officials. Everyone knows that this happens to this day and it blows holes in your claim that governments are "not a bunch of criminals."
I personally believe that at some level of income, the tax rate for individuals should become 100%.
Two words: class envy. It's getting so old and so tired, yet it will probably never ever go away.
No one person should have a billion dollars, it's impossible for a democaracy to exist when people do.
"Democracy" is one of the most abused words in the English language. What happens if 51% of the democracy decides that the 49% should be their slaves? This is the "Tyrrany of the Majority" that Madison wrote about in _The Federalist_.
The economy would still function just fine under this system, since indiviuals could still pool their money by creating corporations.
What's to stop the government from taking control of all corporations if they so decide? Remember, the only reason that they'd do such a thing would be for "the benefit of society."
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Yearly average spent on limes in the US : $50
Yup, the lime bacardi breezer is very tasty. But at £3.20 a bottle (eep!) it adds up very quickly. Not that I drink 2 bottles a day...
It's only £1.40 at the off-license next door to the pub, but the bouncer takes a very harsh view of people going next door :-(
A lot of people here are writing "why can't they charge the same across Europe". THIS IS NOT THE ISSUE.
Nintendo have been found to have formed a cartel with their distributors - who have also been fined a LOT of money. The EU decided that the distributors along with Nintendo had fixed prices among themselves. This means that there is no price competition on games (there can't be). This kind of thing happens a lot and a lot of people getted spanked when it happens. The car industry was famous for it for quite a while.
Apart from that I think fining the Big N is rediculous. I was an owner of a SNES and am the owner of an N64, GBA and Gamecube. Where does 150 million go??? Well - it comes from Nintendo so I guess as a paying customer I'll have to help Nintendo recoup costs.
There must be more elegant solutions than this - if the consumer was ripped then the consumer should be repaid. Not the EU. Free games!
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
EU cares about discrimination inside EU. All EU within one region code = no problem. Personally I would wish they did though. I can live with CSS but I really hate those region codes.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From the little I remember of my economics classes, can't the "price fixing" of the sort that is at issue here (charging one set of consumers one price, charging another set another, higher, price, and coupling that system with some method of separating the two groups) be a good thing? (By good thing, I mean good thing for the wee, downtrodden folks -- which here appear to be the British, and not the Germans.) I remember the rationale being something like this: assume the market will bear out a certain amount of profit for me. I can either capture that by charging the same amount to everyone, or by charging folks varying prices according to their ability/willingness to pay. The latter method will allow more people who has less money to spend to buy my products, and the expense of screwing those who've got more money to do so. Hardcover/softcover books are the classic way of doing this. You market hardcover first to capture the higher spending folks, who are willing to pay a premium to get the books faster (and in better shape), then follow up with softcover to capture the cheapies. On a related note, don't the Finns give out traffic tickets like this? The rate you pay isn't flat, but varies according to your ability to pay? Likewise, this interest in "fairness" underlies the U.S.'s graduated income tax. One can debate the fairness, certainly, but there are at least good points to be made on both sides.
I don't know about you guys but I thought it was quite funny that name of the EU spokesman is Mario...
I imagine this comes from the publisher. Sure, you don't HAVE to sell it at our suggested price (That would be illegal), we'll just choose not to sell you ANY next time if you don't.
Something I've never understood - when the publisher sells the games to the wholesaler, they've already been paid. They make the exact same amount of $ whether the game sells for $10 or $50 at retail - so why do they mandate a retail price? You'd think they would want to sell as many copies to their wholesaler as possible. Isn't the easiest way to do that to allow super-low retail pricing?