EU opens investigation into iTunes UK overcharging

Remember how back in December Britain's Office of Fair Trading said they were transferring a complaint to the European Commission that Apple's iTunes Music Store was overcharging customers in the UK? Well, a spokesperson for the commission has confirmed that they have formally opened an investigation. You can argue all you want about how local taxes and differences in the general cost of doing business means it's perfectly reasonable for a company to charge more for the same product in one country than they do in another, but the EU has rules about how businesses have to treat the entire, um, entity as a single market. Obviously all this Internet stuff makes issues about geography a little messy, but it sounds like Apple's practice of blocking customers in one EU country from buying songs from another country's iTunes store could possibly run afoul of that policy.