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UK's Office of Fair Trading reports iTunes to European Commision

4 December 2004 6:19 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 1 comment

The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT), has reported Apple's hugely successful iTunes music download store to the European Commission claiming that it infringes European Trade regulations. Apple seems to want to open single music stores for most European states, which goes against the laws which govern the free movement of goods and services between EU member states - the single market. In the UK, customers pay 79p per download, and in France customers pay 99c. At the current exchange rate 99c in euro is 68p. The problem is, Apple will not allow UK customers to purchase music from its French store.

Apple blames the fact that different states have different have different music licensing regimes and it's the terms of its licenses that prevent it from selling music from one store to a customer in a different state. The differential pricing is also a result of this licensing mess, and from differing tax regimes between EU member states. Earlier this year the European Commission told Union's various rights agencies to devise a standard, cross-border licensing scheme as it is already aware of the problem with the iTunes music store. The same problems put Napster off opening stores all over Europe in April, and they settled for a UK-only launch.

The strange thing however is that Apple has its own cross-border European Store that sells to a number of European countries, including Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, basically clouding Apple's argument.

Source:
The Register

Permalink to this article

iTunes launches in Ireland (6 January 2005)

iTunes has now sold 200m songs (16 December 2004)

iTunes customers can now use PayPal (12 December 2004)

Apple Vs. iTunes.co.uk (6 December 2004)

Band Aid song available in iTunes (1 December 2004)

iTunes store to launch in Canada (26 November 2004)

Napster UK now offering 1 million tracks (26 November 2004)

Universal Music Group launches download-only label (23 November 2004)

iTunes Japan to launch in 2005? (17 November 2004)

Court: Apple doesn't have to license its DRM (12 November 2004)

iTunes launched in nine European countries (26 October 2004)

iTunes rules the legal online music, but sales are down (13 October 2004)

Microsoft admit copying iTunes (16 September 2004)

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djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 4 December 2004 10:30
what do you expect...its apple. they're money grubbing thieves! just compare the price of a g5 to a PC. With my last breath in life...I curse Apple! [ + quote]