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UK Music Industry Stomps on Imported CD Seller
MungoBBQ writes "The Independent is one among the many news sources reporting that BPI, the British equivalent of RIAA, has made a large online retailer of CDs, DVDs and games, comply with their demands to raise prices by 2 pounds per CD sold on their website. The retailer, CD-WOW, based in Hong-Kong, agreed to raise their prices offered to their UK customers to avoid legal battles. CD-WOW caters to many other European countries, where people have been enjoying their cheaper CD prices. However, it can now be assumed that other national recording industry organizations will make CD-WOW and other online retailers jack up their prices to 'better compare' with the local prices in each country."
Or did they cover that already?
Sure, charge 'em 2 pounds more, then offer a 2 pound instant savings for customers in the UK.
F the BPI and the RIAA.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
At least in the US it is... but I thought that was a basic anti-monopoly legal concept.
CDWow were buying CDs from outside of the EU, which is what the BPI didn't like. Makes me wonder what they think about play.com? They're based in Jersey, and by the looks import their music from Canada. Their prices are the same as CDWow were, so could go up a few pounds also. If they do, the difference in price between play.com/CDWow and HMV or Virgin will be negligible, and play.com and CDWow are going to suffer as a result. I can understand why the BPI are doing it, seeing as its copyrighted works being transferred in and out of licence areas, but it seems a bit wierd. Its a 'cut off the nose to spite the face' thing. On the one hand they're trying to make us buy more albums, and on the other they're making it more expensive. Maybe they should try making the high-street retailers cut prices a bit more. HMV seem to have two broad price ranges - 5-10 and 15-20. You'll sometimes find the same CD in both price ranges, on opposite sides of the shop. At least the online shops are consistant in their prices, and keep them low no matter what.
This just strikes me as being a silly idea, considering the current circumstances.
I'm not getting ripped off anymore. I tell everyone I know to do the same, for all the usual reasons, as I've been doing since I started to get informed on these greedy leeches. But if people wanna keep getting screwed, and the artists don't demand better conditions, I don't feel bad or angry anymore. Only justified in my newfound (albeit limited) apathy.
---rhad, who is a little cynical today
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
The BPI are threatening to go after Play and Amazon next. It'll be interesting to see whether they win so easily against bigger companies who can afford lawyers.
I'll be particularly gutted if Play are forced to raise their prices. I buy all my DVDs from there.
COntact their local authority complaining about price gauging from the part of the EU.
Let China raise a complaint in the WTO.
Small companies, and individuals should try top leverage the weight of their goverments in this kind of disputes, specially when clearly the BPI is in the wrong (UK people should not the dissatisfaction with them and perhaps with the corresponding branch of the goverment. This stinks of monopolistic behaviour).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
CD-Wow probably pissed off the BPI because they have a section "Unsigned - as yet" which sells CDs from as-yet-unknown bands, which doesn't make any money for the big labels. [Gratuitous plug - look at 'Bridgefield' in this section - they're friends of mine, and think CD-Wow are great for giving them a chance to get better known].
Phil
Personally, I think this extra two pounds we have to pay is theft. How do they justify it? This is cartel price fixing.
How many millions are the music industry going to rob off UK customers as a result of this action?
The music industry are theiving b******s, which is why they are so obsessed with telling everyone that it's the public that are the thieves.
play.com operate a similar scheme - bulk import to the Channel Islands, then ship *every* dvd/cd separately to avoid VAT. It seems stupid to send 5 parcels rather than 1, but VAT and import duty aren't charged on items 18UKP.
We really do get bent over by everybody when it comes to our cash.
:), I smoke and drink alcohol, both of which are heavily taxed so I probably wind up paying about $100 a week on the tax on those, then I've got road tax, council tax, x tay, y tax and z tax, and to top it all off I pay V.A.T on everything I buy - that's 17.5 percent added on *after* taxes, shit we even pay VAT on delivery when we buy our [overpriced] stuff.
:D
Looking at my own economic situation (I'll convert prices to dollars
In a regular week with no cash spent on toys, I probably pay about $200 on sales taxes, my wages are even better, with upward of $700 getting taken off my wages every week.
that's close to $1000 a week I pay the government, I'm really curious as to what the fuck the government does with all that money.
Now I'm going to be taxed up the ass for, uhh... well, going by the article, *nothing at all* - it's just some greedy assholes who want money for doing zero.
I used to buy CDs, not any more, I refuse to piss away any more money on money-grabbing fucking middlemen without the skills or talent to produce something worthwhile on their own. I'll support the artists I like by going to their concerts, buying stuff off their sites, or even just *giving them cash* ffs. The music industry is a total farce and I think I've been a total dumbass for continuing to support it financially all this time.
No more CDs for me, not until the industry is fixed.
And seriously, would it kill the government to *not* take so much money from us?
This is why I get so mad when I hear about jobs moving from the USA and Europe to India and other low-wage countries. We're told by supporters that we should simply do with less like those in India and we would get those jobs. But the truth is that the price of living is ARTIFICIALLY high in the USA and Europe. We don't require higher wages simply because we want more stuff, it's because the price of everything here is higher. And it's higher for no other reason than that companies can charge more here.
The labor movement in the USA and Europe created these powerful economies and fought for fair labor practices. We shouldn't be forced to overpay for everything simply because we fought the fight, and sweat shop countries haven't.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Anyone agree ?
It doesn't take a college education or anything more than the old saw of "two wrongs don't make a right" to shoot down the obvious flaw in your reasoning. That said, fallacy and all, I still don't (never did) have any sympathy for the record companies who wage war against their own customers.
This was more of a an import tariff than a tax, coerced through extralegislative channels regardless (hey I just coined a new word). Either way mind you, all this will do is simply chase more people into using iTunes and the like.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It's because they're selling to british and the british are meant to suffer.
We surely are. As an example, I recently sought to nab the 3rd and 4th MST3K box sets. So to start with, not available in the UK. I shop around, find a good deal on Amazon for the pair, and send off. Now, importing into the UK is an absolutely random gamble - your package may or may not be checked and subjected to extra duty. Mine was - an extra 13 on top, split between Customs and the Royal Mail. But it's not all bad - the total price was still less than the other vendors, and way less than I would have been expected to pay if there was a UK release. Our prices are generally ridiculous for DVDs and CDs - there has been some improvement of late, but price cuts are generally led by major chains who can afford the risk, leaving smaller independent stores in an unfortunate position. If I think an independent store is worth supporting, I'll happily do so - but I won''t fork cash out to high-street chains when I can get the same product much cheaper online (though the online store is probably a subsidiary of the bricks-and-mortar one) and I won't buy British when I can buy American (or even better, Chinese) for far less. It's not like I'm helping kill off master British craftsmen - just a few corpulent CEOs. And while I might contribute to a salesperson begin surplus to requirements, I'll also be contributing to the demand for postal workers...
But if you want cheap stuff from abroad, you're free to either go there or order it direct from stores in that country (but be ready to pay import taxes)
But that's the whole point. CD-WOW is in another country - it's in Hong Kong. I am ordering direct from them, and I am liable for any import duties (which are actually waived under 30GBP value). So this is what I have a problem with - CDWOW bought a legitimate product from their local supplier. They then decided to sell it to me, who happens to be in a different country. This is somehow deemed "wrong". That's crap, and it flies right in the face of any notion of free trade.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
If I'm in Florida and buy something over the Internet from a store whose sole physical presence is in Oregon, did the purchase take place in Oregon? My credit card was certainly charged in Oregon, as surely as if I were there in person to hand it over to be swiped... The same would be true if I were in the UK buying from an HK website. Once purchased, the CD is my property so, would I then be importing it for my personal consumption if I instructed the dealer to forward it to me?
Wow, I would never buy a CD at those prices. I can pick up most CDs locally for under CAD$20, most for under CAD$18 (or about 7.50 to 8.50 pounds.)
Even at the "we never discount" places in the mall, you hardly ever see a CD over CAD$25.
15 pounds (CAD$36) for a CD is insane. Then again, people in the UK are used to getting screwed by high prices.
Maybe you should start ordering from Canadian stores. (absound.ca, amazon.ca, chapters.ca, futureshop.ca to name a few big ones...)
Then again, you'll probably just get a 150% duty/tax slapped on it at the border.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
This is somewhat off-topic, but I think it's important enough to post anyway. One of the nicest things about the classical free market perfect competition economy is that products are sold at the lowest possible prices. If one producer charges more, consumers would soon flock to another producer who is willing to take less profit, so prices soon drop to just above production costs. It should not be surprising that few producers like to operate in such a market,
so very few consumer goods are traded in markets resembling perfect competition (perhaps generic hardware like brandless DRAM or ethernet cards?).
Most goods are produced/sold by a fairly limited number of parties, who often engage in some form of collusion (i.e., a block of producers acting together as a monopolist or cartel). This usually takes the form of price fixing, which may or may not be forbidden, depending on the exact market and the nature of the agreements. Other than boycotting the industry, there is little that individual consumers can do about collusion. Legislature on the subject is pretty complex, and proving tacit collusion is usually difficult.
The other way for producers to escape perfect competition is to differentiate the product, through quality, design or simply by promoting the brand. Notice that almost everything you buy has a brand? All marketing is designed to make you believe that that brand is *different*. The more different the brand name product is perceived to be, the more the supplier can act as a monopolist. Being a monopolist is not a binary state, as many people seem to think. A producer can act more as a monopolist if there are fewer substitutes, but there are few products for which no substitute exists at all.
A singer has a monopoly on his/her voice, but if the price is too high, find another singer. The RIA may have monopoly pricing power on music CDs, if they set the price too high, find another medium for music. If alternative distribution channels are outlawed, find other forms of entertainment, like films, books, games. If entertainment products are priced too high, entertain yourself. The key is to realize that we have many many options, and there are very few products that we in fact cannot live without.
JEBUS. Since when do trade groups get to directly enforce tariffs. At least back in the day you had to purchase a polition, or a few of them and then pass a tariff to be put on a good. Now it seems that trade groups with the threat of legal action impose a tariff on companies they dont like. Couple this with the recent news that the RIAA is building a shock trooper squad and it becomes obvios that the Publishing groups are no only producing media, but rather inventening their own goverment system to steal the rights from citizians of the old system.