James Delahunty
4 Dec 2004 6:19
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