ZDNet: Amazon.com implicated in CD-import row

A British music retailing trade group - with a retro name: British Phonographic Industry (BPI) - is attacking American ecommerce companies for undercutting the generally high music prices in Britain. Music labels charge higher prices to Britons, and companies like Amazon.com have been undercutting English retailers by selling directly from the U.S.

The issue is very much like drug price controversy in the U.S., where Americans in northern states have been bussing over to Canada to enjoy the cheaper prices pharmaceutical companies charge Canadians. It involves a befuddling mix of populist politics, free trade concerns, ancient distribution price stratifications. Regional commerce barriers are fast falling under the wheels of the Internet, and the losers from these changes tend to try to seek legal protections from their governments where previously they hadn't proved necessary.

A European Court ruling in 2002 decided that "parallel importing" would be legal only with explicit permission from the manufacturers, and it remains unclear what sort of agreements - if any - exist between the music labels and the big U.S. ecommerce companies.