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.
The real story? (Score:5, Interesting)
What business is it of theirs (Score:5, Interesting)
Let the record companies deal with it, not the government of another country.
Yeah, globalization is a bitch. Deal.
Being depressing (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just a battle slowing the seemingly inevitable unless changes that are more fundamental are made. It is just part of the trend like DRM, software patents making it into Europe and the like...
What's the real solution to the continual move of power to corporations? Or is it best we all just roll over and take it like good domestic livestock?
Re:Why should US companies complain? (Score:2, Interesting)
Kind of like a global mob.
The last comment in the post is telling. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I guess the answer is obvious. But it irks me that everyone bought into international trade organizations that are so clearly biased.
By the way, does this price-fixing crap remind anyone else of a similar US case? Did members of the industry get personally fined, or were they protected behind the corporate veil? Good thing Australia's got its act together. At least someone does.
Parallel imports outlawed in US too (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of small time record distributors routinely ignore this regulation and get cease-and-desist orders or worse when the US record company catches up with them.
To legally make an commercial importation of a sound recording that is already owned or licensed in the USA you must have the permission of the company that currently holds the rights in the USA.
I love a sunburnt country (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing we have to be proud of is our judicial system, the guys who blocked the Gordon below Franklin damn even though blocking it was COMPLETELY unconstitutional it was just right, the guys who locked up Pauline Hanson, the guys who fined those record labels, the guys who don't give a DAMN about what the big guys say about what you can and can't do with your own stuff. They make me proud to be an Australian,
Even though in Australia it is unpatriotic to be patriotic (or at least you are judged to be a weeny if you are). It is times like this when I would like to press my hand to my chest, salute our crappy, halfarsely designed flag, scull my VB (not Fosters, YUCK!) and sing "Advance Australia Fair" at the top of my voice (even though it was written by white supremists, at least it is not about a suicidal sheep duffer).
Australia, please hit them harder. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a U.S. Citizen, and I would like nothing more than to see all members of the RIAA and the MPAA dry up and blow away. I am certainly not alone in this view.
I look upon the recent financial woes of many of these corporations with schadenfreude - pleasure at the woes of another.
These organizations are making the US into a police state. They have orchistrated a coordinated attack upon our Bill of Rights, and they make a mockery of copyright law.
That they are suffering now is no great surprise. May it continue.
Apparently it is illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
I can understand why it might be a breach of the Classification act as what you are selling may not have passed through the required rating procedure.
But I can't understand how the sale of something can be a breach of copyright.
Re:What business is it of theirs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Myth of the Free Market (Score:2, Interesting)
"Your country's people may freely take goods and services not subsidized trough taxes and bring them into our nation to sell to anyone at any price they are willing to pay, and our people may do the same in your nation."
Anything with tens of thousands of pages of regulations and restrictions, like the WTO/GATT, is not free trade. It's managed trade. Basically the current (and previous since Clinton made GATT) administration's idea of "free trade" is moving managed control from the federal level to some global pseudo-government entity, like the WTO. Either way it is restricted, controlled trade. This is not only anti-socialism (the socialists being the primary WTO protesters) but it is also anti-capitalism, since capitalism is about trade of labour amung willing individuals (with property being the end-product of labour) without outside forces controlling their labour transaction. And when trade is controlled by government entities it is pretty much a given that it will be used to the advantage of those in power rather than to promote actual free trade.
So you have a good point in seeing policies that fly in the face of "loyalty to global 'free markets'". Even the WTO flies in the face of such, being an organization that *controls* trade. The bigger picture truly is that the administration has no loyalty to global free markets. It has loyalty to market systems that it can weasle the most power from, like any other administration unfortunately would, including Clinton's from which the WTO was born.
CDs are CHEAP (to manufacture) in Australia (Score:3, Interesting)
I run an independent record label and I get my CDs manufactured in Australia precisely because it is CHEAPER for me to do so!
Free trade and parallel importation (Score:4, Interesting)
The US Trade Representative warned parallel importation had led to increasing piracy of DVDs and VCDs."
The US maintains that importing identical commerical copies of music or video from another country is equivalent to piracy? What balderdash.
To put this is perspective, if a company in China found a better deal on wheat in the Ukraine than what their "authorised distrubutor" of American wheat in China could offer them, then that company engaged in wheat piracy?
I am of the mistaken belief that free trade was meant to foster GLOBAL trade, not regional cartels.
Authorised Distributor is now another term for MONOPOLY. What a hypocrital nation the US has become.