Brussels, 12/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - On the occasion of the "European Competition Day" in Stockholm (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.12), Commissioner Mario Monti announced that his services had initiated a preliminary investigation into the price of Digital Video Discs (discs of the same size as a compact disc but with a storage capacity seven times higher and that can record video and audio signals, computerized data and software). The Commission's services have sent letters to seven cinema companies asking them questions on how they set their pricing policies, following several complaints from individuals denouncing particularly high prices for this type f product in the EU compared to the United States. The companies in question are Disney/Buena Vista, AOL/Time Warner, Universal/Vivendi, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The European Executive is particularly keen to know of the regional coding system for DVDs, otherwise put the division of the globe in large geographic zones between which DVDs and players are not compatible, officially organized for avoid pirating and parallel sales, do not conceal anti-competitive practices at the origin of the prices in Europe. The plaintiffs thus denounce the fact that the system enables cinema companies to impose higher prices for DVDs in Europe, in the knowledge that European consumers will anyway not be able to buy cheaper elsewhere, due to the fact that DVDs are incompatible from one region to the next. "If the complaints are corroborated by facts, we shall ensure not to approve a system providing greater protection that intellectual property rights as such, if it allows companies to dissimulate the maintenance of artificially high prices or deprives consumers of choice", declared Monti.
The Commissioner announced, moreover, that the Commission's services were examining the opay on-line music sector. The large music industries are indeed preparing to launch "Duet" (Vivendi, Universal and Sony) and "MusicNet (AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI with the help of RealNetworks), two pay services. The Commission fears that the record industry should dominate the music trade over the Internet, with the risk of creating a situation of monopoly in an already particularly concentrated sector. The Commission stressed that, although it was appropriate to see a rapid development of on-line music, they nevertheless had to safeguard the diversity of suppliers.