Australian Court Doubles CD Importers' Fines 258
anti-fsck writes "Australia's Full Federal Court today upheld a lower court's decision that music labels Warner Music and Universal Music had engaged in anti-competitive practices in the .au CD market by threatening retailers who imported cheaper CDs. The court also doubled the labels' fine - and the fines for senior label executives - to more than $A2 million. w00, cheap CDs at last? Now if we can only get US-zoned DVDs legalised as well ..." Another reader notes that the U.S. government is busy trying to get Australia to change its laws to increase the profits of U.S. record companies.
Re:Why should US companies complain? (Score:4, Informative)
US-encoded DVDs? (Score:5, Informative)
If the first, well....fat chance. The guys running those publishing companies have their heads in a tight, dark place.
If the second, just ax the region encoding on your DVD player.
Re:Being depressing (Score:5, Informative)
In fact the majority of the EU doesn't actually want it and a lot of the EMP's are fighting to have it chucked out.
S
Re:Can they really.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What business is it of theirs (Score:5, Informative)
the U.S. government is busy trying to get Australia to change its laws to increase the profits of U.S. record companies.
The very first sentence in the linked article says:
US TRADE officials have backed off from a tough line on music, movie and software piracy, admitting that shoehorning Australia into a copyright regime based on criminal law may be "a bridge too far".
Under heavy lobbying from the US entertainment and software industries, the Office of the US Trade Representative had listed the harmonisation of copyright legislation among issues to be raised with Australian negotiators for the Free Trade Agreement. But the head of the US Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration, Undersecretary Grant Aldonas, said America would not be pushing too hard on intellectual property during the current negotiations.
Yeah, the *IAA pushed hard, the US govt doesn't seem to be doing too much though.
Re:Bleeeech. (Score:2, Informative)
Free Trade (Score:5, Informative)
What does free trade mean?
Basically having the US not protect its own farmers and let Aussie produce compete on an even footing with US produce.
Problem is. The US government will never play in the important markets. Beef. No chance. Wheat, yeah right.
Lamb. (The US has no real lamb market or demand) OK Free trade on Lamb. Oh and by the way. To get that you need to strengthen your Intellectual Property laws.
Well Mr Howard being Bush fanboy #2 thinks that's a great idea.
Aussie farmers are pretty ambivalent to the whole deal. No free trade basically means we now have one of the best performing farm systems there is.
Oh check this out:
http://www.austa.net/pdf/chapter4.pdf
From within:
US Interest in Australias position:
- Restrict parallel importing of recorded music and branded goods
- Concern about laws concerning decompilation of software
- Concern about the adequacy of test data for pharamcueticals.
- Concern that civil rather than criminal remedies are favoured for abuse of copyright or music.
And we are going to sell that to sell a few friggin' sheep that Americans don't eat anyway.
Idiots.
Conversion Rate (Score:4, Informative)
TCO rather TCP (Score:4, Informative)
Forget the total cost of ownership here, anyone ever take a look at the total cost of production of cd's and dvd's and the markups on them. While cassettes can be rather costly, and often sell for like typically 7.99 - 14.99, cd's and dvd's are made for peanuts
Personally I could care less what one court says since another will go back and reverse and vice versa, but some of the record companies should tone down their bitching considering they're sticking it to the consumer %99 of the times. It's about time P2P came to bite them in the ass and give them a wake up call, and now hopefully some of the courts will too
Re:Business as usual... (Score:5, Informative)
So you would be referring to the man who in 1786 founded Molson's beer in Canada, having emigrated from Britain where cider is so common that the West Country (south-west) in particular is known as one of the great cider-making places in the world, and is only peripherally - not to mention frequently reluctantly - close to France, a country that is known mainly for its wines and champagne?
I think your geography's a bit off, as is your history of liquor (hmm...perhaps the two are related)...
Oh, and we didn't conquer France in 1786 - they were busy winding up to chop a lot of people's heads off. A suitable fate for SCO executives, perhaps.
Re:US-encoded DVDs? (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a law in place in Australia against importing Region 1 DVDs???
I understand that there are trade-barriers in place, so that you have to pay VAT on the DVD's. But is there a law that actually states that you cannot import region 1 DVDs?
Last I checked, several online retailers in the US and Canada are willing to ship their DVD's worldwide. DVDBoxOffice [dvdboxoffice.com] will even package them one by one so you don't have to pay VAT (when shipping to Europe atleast). Play [play.com] is based in the UK, and they sell region 1 DVDs and ship worldwide.
In regards to the region protection in DVDplayers.. well.. it's a joke. I think I could solder a chip into one of those players in my sleep (I know some are harder etc). On top of that, some cheap players I've come across had a hidden menu where you could simply change the region. So, I don't see how it would be difficult to get Region 1 DVD's in Australia, or any other western country for that matter.
Re:court number (Score:1, Informative)
It's ususally written as A$2 million, though.
Re:The real story? (Score:2, Informative)
"Under heavy lobbying from the US entertainment and software industries"
"The US Trade Representative warned parallel importation had led to increasing piracy of DVDs and VCDs."
"The report also highlighted the "relatively low priority" assigned by Australian state and federal police to the enforcement of copyright law"
"He said getting an immediate agreement in place on intellectual property "might be a bridge too far". "
Last sentence: "The Australian Government is reviewing the 2001 Digital Agenda legislation."
But this headline is wrong . . . (Score:2, Informative)
(As Emily Litella would have said, "That's quite different, isn't it?")
They may not be pushing hard (Score:3, Informative)
A few weeks ago I heard that they (ie the American government) were trying to get the Australian content quotas on our radio stations reduced under the banner of "free trade".
Of course that's total garbage. Our airwaves are a national resource and it is entirely reasonable to ensure they are exploited for the national good. People can't just waltz in from anywhere and exploit our mineral or land and the airwaves shouldn't be any different.
Re:What business is it of theirs (Score:3, Informative)
I would believe that if the tariffs were targetted at just those countries that did subsidise their steel production. However, none of the European countries affected by this tariff do subsidise steel production - they simply have a lower cost base due to much more modern production facilities. The British steel industry had to slash costs in the 80s to meet foreign competition and so has a much more modern industry than the good old US of A. This is called competition and competitive advantage - it is nothing to do with subsidy...
Non-RIAA classical CDs (Score:2, Informative)
ummm dudes (Score:3, Informative)
Let me guess, we have people who are PAID to edit here?
ACCC et al.. (Score:4, Informative)
I know that in the case of Playstation discs, Sony won a case recently that basically has made modding Playstations in Australia for playing any kind of disc (pirate or import) illegal.
But the DVD Region code issue has been in the press here alot, IANAL but I believe due to the actions of the ACCC, Multi region DVD players here are quite common in the retail market to give consumers choice, I guess its up to the DVD Player manifacturer weather they include the feature or not.
Personally my PHILIPS DVD-707 is modded All region from the remote and I own a number of Region 1 titles that just arent available locally here.
I'm all for import CD's too, alot of Japanese releases come with extra tracks and collectors packaging that if imports were banned, we'd never get to see (legally).
To a point as a consumer, I dont mind if the disc costs me the same as here or even a bit extra, but we should get the choice to buy the product we want, expecially if the product offers features not included on the domestic release.
Jim.