Slashdot Mirror
British Record Companies Win £41m In Damages
Benjamin Fox writes "The BBC is reporting that online retailer CD-Wow has been ordered to pay £41m to the British Phonographic Industry. The London High Court ruled that Hong Kong-based CD-Wow, which imports cheap (but genuine) CDs from Hong Kong and elsewhere into the U.K., is '"in substantial breach" of a 2004 agreement to stop importing CDs.' This is a serious blow to proponents of an open, no-barrier music market."
From TFA:
"The vibrancy of British music depends on a fair return on the investments that allow British talent to shine.
"This decision is an important step in ensuring that British music has a bright future."
So my question is... Why are the cd's being sold at such low prices in places like Hong Kong, where this company is buying them for resale in England. How are the artists getting a fair return selling their albums for such low prices in Hong Kong?
Regards.
If this Internet company is based in Hong Kong, how does British law apply exactly?
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
"A Hong Kong CD Reseller has been found to be in breach of contract, by violating an agreement it made with British record companies in 2004. It agreed to certain restraints on its trade practices in exchange for financial consideration but did not abide by the terms of its contract. In football news, the Manchester..."
Doesn't really sell into Your Rights Online, does it?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If I was British I'd be calling for a replacement of the government over this. Whose interests are the government protecting with a decision like this? Clearly not the people themselves, who are one of the most overcharged (look at the cost of a PS3, for example) populace on this planet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Your cynical definiton of globalization is skewed. Globalization should mean more and global freedom for everybody. For many companies and ordinary citizens, this is already a reality (in the European Union, for example). What we need to do now is to make globalization the reality for everybody. For example, this would mean that a UK citizen can buy CDs in Hong Kong or anywhere else (usually where they get them for the cheapest price).
However, in this special case we are dealing with, the company apparently broke an "agreement" (i.e., a contract) - although TFA is not very clear what exactly happend (speaking of "breaking [a] 2004 court undertaking [...]", whatever that is), and if they did that, they are lawfully punished for it.
Anyway, the course must not be more restrictions - it must be more openness and liberty for companies and citizens alike.
Axe me while I slumber
Actually, there are lots of similarities between the music biz and the drug biz - maybe why these are both such hot-button issues in the age of easy IP transfers. In both industries, it costs a lot to develop a new product, and next to nothing to produce copies of it. In both industries, the argument for IP controls is that they are needed to keep up high levels of interest in developing new products, while the argument against is that there would be high levels anyway and all high prices are doing is propping up bloated corporate profit margins.
This is kind of an interesting revelation for me. But maybe I'm late to the game on this one.
It's a tricky issue for a libertarian-leaning capitalist like myself. On the one hand, big businesses deserve no special favors. On the other, property rights should be respected. On yet another, making copies is so cheap and easy that enforcement of property rights is next to impossible without extremely intrusive verification. Where's the right balance?
I do think that the fact that music is entertainment while pharmaceuticals are life-sustaining makes a big difference. Just because the two industries share a similar stance with respect to IP doesn't mean that the balance between all those hands in my previous paragraph must come at the same point. My inclination has usually been to tell the music (and content in general) business that they're SOL on this one - technology has simply passed them by - but to protect drug companies' patents as well as possible. But I might be convinced otherwise.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Someone doesn't understand how the law works.
I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice and this is based on Canadian law, but UK law is similar.
If the new corporation is controlled by the same people, the transaction is considered to be non-arm's-length. If the assets aren't sold at fair market value and the old corporation goes bankrupt (as a result of a legal judgement), the transaction could be set aside and the assets would go to the old corporations creditors. Courts don't like bankrupt people or companies giving away their assets.
What they could do is start a new corporation in the same business without any of the old corporations assets. They are two distinct legal entities, so the contract probably wouldn't apply.
I'm sure this is flawed thinking, but oh well:
If you want protection from parallel imports/greymarket sales, then you should be forced to develop your products from scratch in the country in which you're expecting protection.
e.g., if you benefit from cheaper production in China, the customers should be able to expect cheaper sales via China/HK. If you want to kill off parallel imports in CountryX, then research, design and handle production for your product entirely in Country.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Interestingly, in Australia the court system has found on several occasions to date that "grey importing" (unofficial importing) is legal and in fact (as sony found out: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/06/ 1211211) circumvention of devices which prevent grey importing (e.g mod chips which get around region encoding) is also legal.
It's interesting/scary how countries seem to go in virtually completely different directions on some of these issues (and in this case it is the UK and Australia which have inherited the same legal system).
What's been particularly interesting/scary is the complete lack of "mainstream" journalism on this subject. I watched a section on BBC Newsnight which totally failed to address any of the issues that even the most unkarma Slashdot troll would have raised. The mouthpiece from the BPI was given free-reign.
This is very disappointing because it means we are not getting our message through to the mainstream.
Rich
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Okay, let's flash forward to the future and see how that works out.
Awesome Rock Band: Damn, I'm tired of keeping this server running and processing all these credit card orders for our music. Can't we get Steve to take over? He's a computer dude. He knows that Linux Windows shit and everything!
Steve: Sweet! I hate working for The Man anyway.
six months later...
Awesome Rock Band: Thanks for all the help, Steve! We've gone double platinum, and with all the people we've met we've actually met a couple of other awesome bands. We want to help them get distribution, so you wanna add them to the server?
Steve: Sweet! Rock on, fellas.
Awesome Band With Emo Hair: Hooray!
Weak Band With Hot Singer: Beer for my men!
six months later...
Awesome Rock Band: Well, Steve, we have good news and bad news.
Steve: For reals? What's up?
Band With Tattooed Chick With Nice Rack: The good news is that we're the sixth band to go platinum on your server.
Steve: And the bad news?
Solo Bi Alt-Chick Who's Big At Women's Colleges: You represent nine successful bands, contract with our lawyers, help book our tours, and make a decent living at it.
Steve: Sure! And?
Jailbait Hottie Who Made it Because of That Video: That makes you Really Important Artist Assistant.
Steve: wtf?
All: DIE, FASCIST RECORD LABEL STOOGE OF BIG MEDIA! [ka-BLAM!]
My long-winded point being that record companies, however corrupt they may be, are a necessary evil of the world. A band that becomes in any way popular will soon find themselves needing help, and that help can - with a minimal amount of leveraging - offer the same help to several other acts. A band that can manage itself, book itself, do its own merch, handle its own distribution, handle its own releases from recording to pressing, and manage its own finances is really *not* all that popular. Say what you will, the support team behind a band that needs one *is* a record company on some level. They'll never be pointless.
Labels are doing well by the latest craze: online stores. iTunes is booming, eMusic is doing well, other online store sound like things are working out. It's a good thing.
A big downside to online sales is the glaring fact that many of the employees (and I mean "non-artists") in the industry becomes irrelevant. From CD factory employees to all levels of distribution from stockboy to the brick & mortar stores.
Trolling is a art,
Here in Australia, they removed all parallel import restrictions on CDs and record stores didn't go out of business. Stores like JB Hi Fi, Sanity and others are still doing a roaring trade.
If the same thing happened in the UK and all the UK record stores were on the same level playing field (and could import stuff from Hong Kong just like CD-WOW does), this wouldn't be an issue.
Not CD Wow.
If I live in the UK and order something from overseas, I am officially the importer.
I have to pay the relevant import duties and taxes when the goods arrive. In this case, as you will notice from the text quoted from CD Wow's site, the duties are paid on my behalf by the shipping agent, out of the payment made to CD Wow. But in essence, it is still me, as the importer, who is paying the duties albeit through an agent.
The company selling the stuff to me is the exporter.
Beef.
Way back when, British Leyland aka Rover was a Great UK Car Company. This is before it finally exhausted subsidies and went bust. In those days, to keep it in business, the Government permitted a cartel which fixed prices at levels where BL could more or less break even. This was at levels about 40% higher than in Europe. Everyone in Britain paid far more than the world price for cars, just as they do now for CDs. To benefit BL, just as now to benefit the record companies.
So guess what? BL then exported their cars to Germany, and sold them below cost. Doubtless in pursuit of the Queen's Awards for Export. Enterprising people with a crazed desire to buy cars guaranteed to rust and break down then tried to import them back into the UK.... After all, if you were going to buy a pile of junk, why pay list for it? That's not quite how they thought of it.
The more it goes around, the more it comes around.
Prices for *everything* in the UK are outrageously higher than in continental Europe, USA and even Mexico. But I guess the main reason for that is because the government let corporations do these kind of things. It is so stupid that they do it *even* against their own companies. For another example see the Tesco vs Levi where Tesco (a Wal*Mart like supermarket) was importing Levi's jeans cheaper than the price they got from Levi's... guess what happened? Levi's sued and they where forced to buy directly from Levi's... at the highest price.
But hey, the guys over here are used to that, if you tell a Briton that they are getting raped with the prices they will have a *hard* time acknowledging it, they do not believe it as most of them have not traveled outside their island... and when they go to Spain they are surprised *how cheap* is it... they should look all around the world to see *how cheap* is everywhere, excepting of course their island.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
It's a really good idea. Someone should set up a site with audited donations. It would probably have to be paid as a donation as all mainstream bands will be signed up with exclusivity clauses. Which would make it impossible to pay them money directly for a product marketed via their record co. wouldn't it?
I'd love to see the RIAA reaction to that one!