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British Record Companies Win £41m In Damages

Posted by kdawson on from the segmenting-the-world dept.

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."

2 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Phonographic?. by Das+Auge · · Score: 0, Redundant

    What does a music website have to do with porn?

  2. Region Coding is the Answer! by erroneus · · Score: 1, Redundant

    This way they can maintain several "level playing fields" instead of one leveled playing field. At the moment, several level playing fields are what they are attempting to maintain. Now, I know what you're thinking... price fixing right? Controlling the prices in several markets. I'm pretty sure the wisdom of the courts have already accounted for that and went on to disregard it.

    Now with video DVDs, there's a thing called "region coding" that will permit only appropriate players to play DVDs of the appropriate region. This mechanism properly allows the DVD consortium to maintain several markets and to price each item based upon which market they are selling in. If audio CDs had such a mechanism, this problem would be moot.