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Apple and others meet with EC over antitrust charges |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Saturday, 08 September 2007 |
 The European Commission (EC) plans to hold antitrust hearings with Apple and several
major music labels later this month to address their concerns over
unfair pricing and sales practices of the iTunes Store in Europe.
The major lables include EMI, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG which will be joining Apple in the hearings. They were accused by the EC
earlier this year of pressuring Apple into going along with the country-specific
pricing scheme.
The current iTunes Store policy only allow users to purchase music in their
countries of residence, which Apple enforces by requiring the use of
locally-issued credit cards. This is not really a problem when looking at the European Competition Law.
However, the
pricing differences between European countries is a major problem. Songs and
albums can be priced very differently depending on which country they are being
sold in, which the EC says is in violation of European antitrust laws.
The EC aims to harmonize trade between all the member states and what is being done here is segmenting the market which they do not like. What they are doing now is quite possibly in violation of Article 81 and doesn't seem to have any block exemption to allow it to be done.
We shall wait and see what would happen but I would suspect that it will eventually have to have on price for all Community members.
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