By Jo Best, 20 March 2007 16:50
NEWS
The legal battle between music industry body the BPI and CD Wow over 'grey imports' ended at the High Court today with the e-tailer convicted of copyright infringement.
The pair have been facing off across a courtroom for some years after the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) accused CD Wow of parallel importing, or reselling CDs meant for the Asian market in the UK.
CD Wow admitted there had been some Asian CDs resold to British customers but said the number was very small and was a result of human error rather than a deliberate practice of grey importing.
The High Court today also declared the e-tailer to be in contempt of court after it was found to have broken an earlier out of court settlement with the BPI.
CD Wow will now have to make a £150,000 contribution towards the BPI's legal costs. A final settlement covering fines, costs and damages will be worked out at a hearing in July.
BPI general counsel Roz Groome said in a statement: "This judgment confirms that CD Wow have not only consistently flouted the law in their business practices but have flagrantly ignored the undertakings that they themselves gave to the Court that they would trade legally."
Henrik Wesslen, co-founder of CD Wow, said in a statement the sentence was harsher than the company had hoped for and that it will continue the fight with the BPI.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
repeat after me
I am a captive market and am happy to be so, market forces driving prices down are pure fiction invented by people who obviously don't understand the true situation
I do not want or require choice and would not know what to do with it if I had it
I will not buy or import from abroad at a cheaper rate as this is stealing money from the music industry
I am happy to pay £15 for a CD that cost £0.50 to produce
I am also happy to stump up over £100 for a concert that should really cost £5 where I stand up and dehydrate for four hours listening to the crowd screaming while looking at tiny figures on a stage several miles in the distance
the heads of the music corporations are entirely deserving of their huge salaries despite not knowing what their audience want and not really caring anyway
musicians should count themselves lucky that a music company would consider offering them a contract even if that contract takes 99.9% of their earnings even after they are dead
then breathe and repeat
2. anonymous
Having listened to someone from bpi on the radio last night trying to explain why we need to pay more in the uk/europe than India, record companies basicly rip us off to pay the artists (my foot) and record companys where in the far east they dont.
In other words they rip us uff because they can and the law is in their favour to rip us off.
3. John Jameson
I read one record industry spokesperson defending the cheaper prices in the Far East that CD WOW has been taking advantage of by saying that it was due to the amount of piracy out there. So we know what to do if we want cheaper prices!
4. Radical Meldrew
Totally symptomatic of "rip off britain" - I know the B should be upper case but it's not that Great here anymore is it?