“Apple and several major music companies are facing a European Commission antitrust probe after Brussels issued formal charges alleging that the deals that underpin the sale of music through the hugely popular iTunes platform violate competition rules,” Tobias Buck and Karl de Meyer report for The FInancial Times.
“In a surprise development, the Brussels regulator last week sent a confidential statement of objections outlining the accusations to Apple and to “major record companies”. These are understood to include Universal, Warner, EMI and Sony BMG,” Buck and de Meyer report.
Buck and de Meyer report, “The Commission’s main concern is that iTunes’ current set-up in the European market prohibits users in one country from downloading music from a website intended to serve another country.”
“‘Apple has always wanted to operate a single, pan-European iTunes store, accessible by anyone from any member state,’ an Apple spokesman said on Monday. ‘But we were advised by the music labels and publishers that there were certain legal limits to the rights they could grant us. We do not believe the company did anything to violate EU law, and we will continue to work with the EU to resolve this matter,’ he said,” Buck and de Meyer report.
Full article here.
You give them the stars, they ask for the moon.
This sounds like a music labels’ licensing morass (old country-by-country contracts that aren’t EU-applicable), not an issue caused by Apple.
Related articles:
Apple’s DRM-free iTunes play trumps Microsoft’s huge bet on DRM – April 02, 2007
Norwegian Consumer Council senior advisor applauds Apple’s iTunes Store DRM-free music – April 02, 2007
CNBC video: Apple CEO Steve Jobs and EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli – April 02, 2007
EMI’s Nicoli on DRM-free iTunes: ‘We have to trust our consumers,’ Apple’s Jobs: ‘right thing to do’ – April 02, 2007
Kudos to Steve Jobs and Apple for having courage to call for end of DRM and making it happen – April 02, 2007
Analyst Gartenberg: iTunes Store’s DRM-free music ‘a great win for Apple’ – April 02, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs to appear live on CNBC within the hour – April 02, 2007
Apple: Higher quality 256 kbps AAC DRM-free music on iTunes Store coming in May – April 02, 2007
EMI rejects Warner Music buyout bid – March 04, 2007
EMI halts talks about selling DRM-free music – February 26, 2007
Warner Music approaches EMI in possible takeover bid – February 20, 2007
Macrovision posts pro-DRM open letter to Steve Jobs and digital entertainment industry – February 16, 2007
Warner’s DRM-loving Middlebronfman warns wireless industry it may lose music market to Apple iPhone – February 14, 2007
Monster Cable announces full support of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ call for DRM-free music – February 13, 2007
BBC columnist doesn’t believe Steve Jobs’ Apple would stop using DRM if music labels would allow it – February 12, 2007
EMI may sell entire music catalog DRM-free – February 09, 2007
Recording Industry Association of America wants their DRM, calls for Apple to license FairPlay – February 08, 2007
Warner’s Middlebronfman: Jobs’ DRM-free music call ‘without logic and merit, we’ll not abandon DRM’ – February 08, 2007
Technology Review editor gets a lot wrong in his article about Apple CEO Jobs’ push to end DRM – February 07, 2007
Apple’s Jobs jolts music industry; Zune exec calls Jobs’ call for DRM-free music ‘irresponsible’ – February 07, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ posts rare open letter: ‘Thoughts on Music’ – calls for DRM-free music – February 06, 2007
@Linux Guy and Mac Prodigal Son:
The representative of the EU was on BBC news this morning and admitted that Apple had got caught up in what was the record companies problem. It did not sound as if they were going after Apple, who he said were perfectly prepared to offer a pan-European store. Their real beef was with the record labels.
Like the mobile phone companies the record companies are being flushed out by the EU Commission and the internet. APPLE isn’t the driver here its the record coys. For mobile phones its also a cartel but its the distributors – ie. vodaphone that will get pressed.
Apple and the labels have got to stop their country specific price fixing – it is illegal under European competition law. If you want to play in our market you have to play by our rules.
GWB – “Just don’t call us the next time you have your European war.”
*yawn*
Aren’t you just a little bit tired of that attitude by now? This idea you have that the EU and all it’s constituent nations are somehow evil is BS of the highest order. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, yet keep talking anyway.
Once again, the EMI announcement was the direct result of EU pressure on the record companies. Steve Jobs was clever enough to write his open letter a couple of months back so that he could claim credit when they started to capitulate, but it was the European Commission that has forced the change. A change which is good for consumers.
Now they want to do the same with another outdated business practice the record companies will never abandon on their own. This is a good thing, but all you can do is berate the EU because you have prejudiced views about it. Can you imagine if California and Texas had different iTMS stores, and you couldn’t buy music from one or the other depending on where you lived? That’s the current situation in Europe, and it’s a stupid situation that’s bad for European consumers. So the EC is doing the right thing and getting them to harmonise it.
Really, let go of the anger and start to recognise good things when you see them. You’re starting to look quite sad.
Europe has been lost to socialism for a while. In what is basically a brain disorder, the elite and also the general population looses intelligence over a period of time.
The Euro-commie morons at work. What a bunch of jack-asses.
Hey Ping….
“Just don’t call us the next time you have your European war.
Don’t worry, we won’t.”
Can all us Americans take your word on that?
You guys ALWAYS seem to call us to sort things out when you guys decide, once again, to try to annihilate one another… (how many times has this happened again?)
I recall just this last decade when, yet another European tyrant decided to brutally murder masses of his fellow countrymen….
And what did the EU do? Formed a committee to study the problem… It wasn’t until the Yanks arrived that things got sorted at all….
For all your talk about Americans, Europe takes the cake for truly despicable characters…..
Your intolerance of Christianity soon won’t matter b/c at the rate things are going, your women will all soon be wearing burkhas anyway… The riots in Paris were just a snapshot of what’s to come…
Have fun flying in that state-funded, 2 years late (and counting) white elephant, the Airbust A380….
Try as I might, I can’t see how this story turns into an opportunity for the “USA is No.1” crowd who post here to start their “Europe is populated by communists” rant.
Firstly, there is nothing in this probe that doesn’t further the interests of consumers (i.e. Apple’s customers) and, by implication, Apple Inc.
The EU has – for many years, and against the protectionist instincts of many member states – pursued the ideal of creating a single market for goods and services across the entire area of the union: in other words, creating the opportunity for an EU citizen in one member state to purchase a product sold from another member state.
For the most part, this concept works reasonably well: there has been resistance from some member states (the ones you’d suspect) regarding professional services like architecture where there are concerns about the transparency of qualifications, but even those areas are being harmonised over time.
The real achievement of the EU – which recently celebrated its half-century – is in encouraging genuine democracy to flourish across the continent: Spain, Portugal, Greece were all military dictatorships, whilst Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic and others were all members of the Soviet Bloc. Whilst the Union may not have directly caused democracy to rise in any of those countries, the threat of being excluded from the Union’s economic benefits should democracy fail means that the political extremism (both right and left) that affected Europe for the worst part of a century are kept at bay.
Back on topic, what the EU is doing here is confronting the cartel that exists between the record companies and their proxies in each country’s rights collection societies, for while the record companies would probably already be subject to the laws of the Single Economic Area, they escape by the fact that copyright enforcement and the collection of monies owed to artists across a wide range of fields is still controlled at a national level.
Quite frankly, this is ludicrous and represents a barrier to entry which runs counter to the public interest as well as the interest of artists who have to bear the costs of administering several rights collection societies (one for performance, one for mechanicals, one for session musicians, one for producers, etc. ad infinitum) across 27 countries as opposed to having a harmonised mechanism across the marketplace.
There are only two bodies who the current system benefits: the record companies, who use the system to maximise pricing across each nation-state, and the personnel employed by the rights societies.
In effect, what the EU Commission is doing here is enforcing an open market on vested interests who’d rather keep the status quo: that’s not communism, that’s the philosophy of free market economics which is supposed to be a rallying point for capitalism in the American model. If you’re too stupid to recognise this for what it is, maybe you should refrain from commenting.
You guys ALWAYS seem to call us to sort things out when you guys decide, once again, to try to annihilate one another… (how many times has this happened again?)
If you don’t like it, why was it the policy of your current President to actively discourage the formation of a European Rapid Reaction Force that would work outside of NATO? I think it was because your country feared that such a move would ultimately mean the weakening of NATO and the closure of all those US military facilities across Europe, but maybe that was just an interview I watched.
And – not wishing to be picky – but sitting down, thinking and talking is, for the most part, the American response if I recall the two major conflicts of the 20th Century. Just because the current administration believes in a “High Noon” foreign policy doesn’t actually make it correct – if it did, the Coalition of the Willing (or Coalition of the Gullible) would have been greeted with garlands instead of grenades.
And – on a final level of pickiness – I think you’ll find that Europe is currently helping you with your wars as opposed to the other way round. If you’d like Europe to leave Afghanistan and Iraq, so that your administration can justify its isolation to the American electorate, please direct an e-mail to the relevant embassies. It’s not like Europe is getting anything in return other than body bags.
How about we do an MDN first and drag this thread back on-topic?
We’re really talking about how the record labels complicate international copyright. If the EU can force one big store for 27 countries, would Apple be able to extend that and have one global iTMS, thereby removing all remaining territories they aren’t operating in? After all, EU pressure about DRM did not have to result in DRM being abandoned globally but that looks like becoming the result.
If the EU can force one big store for 27 countries, would Apple be able to extend that and have one global iTMS, thereby removing all remaining territories they aren’t operating in?
Sure – the simpler the better for Apple and for the customers!
It would “just” require the labels to go global with their licensing policies.
Maybe you should start lobbying for a UN regulation body with actual teeth as a next step then, because I don’t see the labels going for that on their own…!
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I, for one, am glad the EU brought this complaint forward.
I spend a lot of time in Puerto Rico as such, I have to deal with the inconsistency of how many online US companies want to treat transactions with the island. To some, not an issue, to others (like Apple) uh ah uhm, you are in Puerto Rico we can’t ship there…
Give me a break Puerto Rico is a US territory and we are all US citizens from the day we are born…just shipt the damn computer or sell me a damn song via iTunes without making such a big fuzz.
By the way, all you eeeediots dissing Europe. You seriously need to take a trip to Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid (take your pick) and sit on a cafe, drink some beer, wine, coffee (whatever you prefer) and watch all the beautiful people walk by…then come back and tell me how things there are so bad. There are very few places (if any) in the US were you could do something like that.
And that, my friends, is life…trust me, just get your damn passport and go, go…go. Go! GO!
You guys still here?
Go.
ping – “Maybe you should start lobbying for a UN regulation body with actual teeth as a next step then, because I don’t see the labels going for that on their own…!”
Or maybe you lot should just join the EU
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Or maybe you lot should just join the EU
I think we should really draw the line at the chinese border on one side and at the US east coast on the other…!
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Hm. Okay, that would still more or less leave the door open for Puerto Rico…
Please direct your application at the EU headquarter in Brussels…
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What will Europe do if no-one buys the DRM-free tracks?
Perhaps this is all just a big bluff. I mean, really, what the f*** difference does it make to any iPod owner whether the music has DRM or not? How can you tell? That is, until you try to do something illegal.
And, yes, I know some of you have 657 computers in each of the rooms in your house and you simply have to have music playing in every one of them.
DRM/DRM-free. Yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn…
Unless you own a Zune. Is it true that you have to sych to a Vista PC every 11 minutes to stop your music being deleted? Where is Zune Tang when you need him…
@edward c norton
Evidently not as stupid as you…
I mean do you actually understand what this is about?
The EU is complaining because residents of one part of Europe can’t buy from an iTunes site in another part of Europe. It would be like Texans, bless their cotton socks, being unable to buy from an iTunes site in Wyoming (though why they would want to…).
I love the way Europe has become the new “communist” bogey for some American simpletons. McCarthyism obviously lives on in some dark corners of America…
The EU parliament is more or less the equivalent of the US federal government, though with somewhat less power in most areas.
Anyway, what the hell is wrong with socialism? It keeps the hobos off the streets… Each to his own – Europe has socialism, you have religion. Perhaps there is a connection: I have heard it said that Europe breathes a collective sigh of relief every time they remember they sent all their religious zealots to the USA…
Yeah sue Apple. But let MS keep raping your productivity, crappy OS release after crappy OS release. Idiots.
@Ben Dover
Mate. You guys can’t even manage a little tinpot arab nation like Iraq. What makes you think Europe are going to call on the USA to sort out a really serious issue? And then of course there was Vietnam – those primitive little asians. You really whupped their asses eh?
I think Charles de Gaulle put it best when he said (and forgive my unintentional paraphrasing) that the United States is the only nation in history to have gone from barbarism to decadence without ever encountering civilisation…
Churchill was apparently very grateful for American intervention in WWII – and equally horrified when the US refused to head off the Risskies before they could annex half of Europe and so set up the conditions for the Cold War. But then foreign policy was never a strength of American administrations…
Many citizens of those “established” parts of the EU (I don’t include the new eastern empire countries) look fondly at Americans and are always delighted, and surprised, when an American can (a) speak more than one language and (b) know something about anywhere other than America… You may not like it, but to the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the English, even the Belgians – America is only barely a member of the brotherhood of civilised nations. Perhaps in another 1,000 years…
This feeling is probably best summed up in the charming, if snooty, expression, “NOCD”…
Not our class, dear…
So don’t go throwing your weight around. It just draws attention to your appalling eating habits…
Europe = Eurotrash-commie-transexuals
And it does suck and they are very anti-american, and they couldn’t win a pillow fight let alone a war. And it’s a waste of time talking about these whining, commie, idiots. Terrorists will be wiped off the face of the earth. Nice back bone in dealing with Iran you fools. Take them out now!
Uh oh, Dave H the British gay man is afraid of a fight again. Surprise, surprise Davie.
Stephen
Time for you to turn your power off again…
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Sydney Stephen,
No human wants to mate with you. Believe me the US could handle Iraq if it wasn’t politically correct 2003-7. 50 years ago this problem would be over. The reason Iraq is taking longer than it should is because we care and are trying not to wipe out civilians you piece of commie garbage.
Uh oh, Dave H the British gay man is afraid of a fight again. Surprise, surprise Davie.
Yeah. Well, I’d kick your arse so hard you wouldn’t even feel me fuck you afterwards, you piece of shit. Enjoy that thought next time you play with yourself won’t you.
The EU is correct in embracing the spirit of world-wide access to music. This is not an anti-Apple stance, it is simply pointing out that the recording companies are restricting who can buy what song where.
It is absurd, for example that someone in the US can’t purchase a song from the Canadian iTunes store, or a Brit cannot buy music from the French iTunes.
What’s wrong with wanting global, equal access to the music of the world?