Australian Court Doubles CD Importers' Fines

anti-fsck writes "Australia's Full Federal Court today upheld a lower court's decision that music labels Warner Music and Universal Music had engaged in anti-competitive practices in the .au CD market by threatening retailers who imported cheaper CDs. The court also doubled the labels' fine - and the fines for senior label executives - to more than $A2 million. w00, cheap CDs at last? Now if we can only get US-zoned DVDs legalised as well ..." Another reader notes that the U.S. government is busy trying to get Australia to change its laws to increase the profits of U.S. record companies.

Comments

Re:Why should US companies complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the complete opposite. They want to make CDs cheaper for people by encouraging parralel imports. Import duties would be counterproductive to that aim.

US-encoded DVDs?

[LehiNephi]

Get US-encoded DVD's? Does the submitter mean getting those DVD's in Australia, or does he mean getting them to legally play in Australia.

If the first, well....fat chance. The guys running those publishing companies have their heads in a tight, dark place.

If the second, just ax the region encoding on your DVD player.

Re:US-encoded DVDs?

[muffen]

Get US-encoded DVD's? Does the submitter mean getting those DVD's in Australia ... well....fat chance.

Is there a law in place in Australia against importing Region 1 DVDs???

I understand that there are trade-barriers in place, so that you have to pay VAT on the DVD's. But is there a law that actually states that you cannot import region 1 DVDs?

Last I checked, several online retailers in the US and Canada are willing to ship their DVD's worldwide. DVDBoxOffice will even package them one by one so you don't have to pay VAT (when shipping to Europe atleast). Play is based in the UK, and they sell region 1 DVDs and ship worldwide.

In regards to the region protection in DVDplayers.. well.. it's a joke. I think I could solder a chip into one of those players in my sleep (I know some are harder etc). On top of that, some cheap players I've come across had a hidden menu where you could simply change the region. So, I don't see how it would be difficult to get Region 1 DVD's in Australia, or any other western country for that matter.

Re:Being depressing

[boogy nightmare]

Software patents have not yet made it in to Europe for fear of it being like the US, in fact all over europe at the moment there are protests to software copyright and patents.

In fact the majority of the EU doesn't actually want it and a lot of the EMP's are fighting to have it chucked out.

S

Re:What business is it of theirs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I RTFA, and I can't come to the same conclusion as our illustrious slashdot editor:

the U.S. government is busy trying to get Australia to change its laws to increase the profits of U.S. record companies.

The very first sentence in the linked article says:

US TRADE officials have backed off from a tough line on music, movie and software piracy, admitting that shoehorning Australia into a copyright regime based on criminal law may be "a bridge too far".

...but this is /. and I guess it's easier to just take a comment from Michael for granted and just react to that, huh?

Under heavy lobbying from the US entertainment and software industries, the Office of the US Trade Representative had listed the harmonisation of copyright legislation among issues to be raised with Australian negotiators for the Free Trade Agreement. But the head of the US Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration, Undersecretary Grant Aldonas, said America would not be pushing too hard on intellectual property during the current negotiations.

Yeah, the *IAA pushed hard, the US govt doesn't seem to be doing too much though.

Free Trade

[muzzmac]

One of the Big Deals in Australian politics is what is called "Free Trade". John Howard (Our Prime Minister) seems prepared to sell his soul to get "free trade" with the US.

What does free trade mean?

Basically having the US not protect its own farmers and let Aussie produce compete on an even footing with US produce.

Problem is. The US government will never play in the important markets. Beef. No chance. Wheat, yeah right.

Lamb. (The US has no real lamb market or demand) OK Free trade on Lamb. Oh and by the way. To get that you need to strengthen your Intellectual Property laws.

Well Mr Howard being Bush fanboy #2 thinks that's a great idea.

Aussie farmers are pretty ambivalent to the whole deal. No free trade basically means we now have one of the best performing farm systems there is.

Oh check this out:

http://www.austa.net/pdf/chapter4.pdf

From within:

US Interest in Australias position:

- Restrict parallel importing of recorded music and branded goods
- Concern about laws concerning decompilation of software
- Concern about the adequacy of test data for pharamcueticals.
- Concern that civil rather than criminal remedies are favoured for abuse of copyright or music.

And we are going to sell that to sell a few friggin' sheep that Americans don't eat anyway.

Idiots.

Conversion Rate

[loserbert]

2000000 Australian Dollars = 1300300 United States Dollars 1 AUD = 0.65015 USD 1 USD = 1.53811 AUD Taken from ozforex

Re:Business as usual...

[Talthane]

So you would be referring to the man who in 1786 founded Molson's beer in Canada, having emigrated from Britain where cider is so common that the West Country (south-west) in particular is known as one of the great cider-making places in the world, and is only peripherally - not to mention frequently reluctantly - close to France, a country that is known mainly for its wines and champagne?

I think your geography's a bit off, as is your history of liquor (hmm...perhaps the two are related)...

Oh, and we didn't conquer France in 1786 - they were busy winding up to chop a lot of people's heads off. A suitable fate for SCO executives, perhaps.