The EU has concluded an 18-month long investigation into 301 websites selling ringtones and wallpapers, which has resulted in Italian authorities fining some of the industry’s top brand name companies in the space, The Register reports.
Most of the issues revolve around how much the ringtones cost and whether those prices or subscriptions were easily found or explained on the web site. The EU said in a release it was able to resolve issues with 210 of the websites. Of those, 159 websites have been corrected and 54 websites have gone out of business.The EU said it will continue to work on the remaining 91 cases with other actions planned in 2009 and 2010. The investigation kicked off in June 2008 and 27 Member States, Norway and Iceland participated. As part of the investigation, the EU said today that the Italian authorities imposed fines of 2 million Euro ($3 million) on nine companies that were in breach of the law. Those companies included: Telecom Italia, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Wind, Dada, Zed, H3G and Zeng, Fox Mobile and Tutto gratis.
The EU found that over half of these websites targeted children. In a release, EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said:

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