After being fined £41m and told to stop selling Cheap CDs in the UK, CD Wow are very bravely going to fight on and take their case to the European Courts. If you missed the original story, CD Wow were fined and forced by the UK recording industry to stop giving customers a good deal by providing better priced CDs, lower than the prices ‘maintained’ by the rest of the industry.
Unfortunately, I don’t reckon much to CD Wow’s chances as their assets have been frozen by the courts. I think this is a real shame, as CD Wow were probably doing more to stamp out piracy by offering reasonably priced products, than the misguided music industry.
I think co-founder Henrik Wesslen was spot on when he said:
“The current copyright laws are mad, but that doesn’t mean we don’t stick to them…..The fact is though, 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. Isn’t it time we focused on a combined effort to stop the pirating that is hurting all of us?”
