The BBC is reporting that:

Online retailer CD-Wow must pay £41m to British record companies after breaking a deal to stop selling illegally imported cheap albums in the UK.

CD-WOW is a company based in Hong Kong and the complaint is that they buy their CDs over there and then sell them over here at a discount. CD-WOW made this comment to the BBC:

“It shouldn’t matter whether we are buying from an official distributor in the UK, Europe or the Far East, what is important is that we are buying legitimate products from the record companies themselves.”

While the The Entertainment Retailers’ Association (ERA), which represents companies like HMV, Play, Tesco and Amazon, welcomed the ruling:

“It is vital that all retailers compete on a level playing field,” said director general Kim Bayley. “Illegal imports threaten that level playing field and threaten British jobs.”

I find that a bit rich, having several years ago worked on a business plan for an Internet CD retailer, during our competitive analysis we quickly realised that it was going to be very hard to compete “on a level playing field” with the likes of HMV, Play, Tesco and Amazon all of whom have operations in Jersey to avoid paying VAT.

While I’m all for supporting British jobs I’m not content the pay more for music or software just because I live in Rip Off Britain, if you want me to pay more then add some value to what I ‘m buying.

Subscribe:
If you enjoyed this post and would like to be kept updated on future posts, then please Subscribe by Email or subscribe to my RSS Feed.