“I just received a harsh lesson in DRM and record label-driven policy that may be of interest to those on your lists who are Apple customers and may be leaving the United States in the future. Having purchased a number of songs from the Apple Music Store while in the US and using a US funds credit card, I regrettably didn’t read the fine print. I’ve now discovered that if you leave the country, your songs may just disappear, as mine have,” writes Shawn Yeager on Politech. [Attribution: Slashdot]
Apple’s iTunes Music Store Terms of Sale clearly states upfront:
“U.S. SALES ONLY. Purchases from the iTunes Music Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.”
Full post here.
MacDailyNews Take: We have to wonder if an Expat cloaked his or her IP address via a U.S.-based server, would the iTunes songs remain intact?
This story is over half a year old (July 25 2003)! It’s already been discussed.
It seems that Apple doesn’t check IP addresses, just credit card addresses. I suggest that anyone moving outside the US (like me) should keep at least one credit card address in the US (as I do). I’ve bought 400 songs while abroad, and they all work fine.
Not only is the story old, but his DRM issues had nothing to do with his move out of the country. The guy reformated his hard drive, changed his account information, and a slew of other items, then waited to reactivated his account with a Canadian address. There’s just no accounting for stupidity. But even after that Apple allowed him to reactivate his computer.
Backup, Backup, Backup!
If you spend money on ITMS (I have and I will keep doing so) burn them to music CD’s. There cheep! You can play them in your car, there is no DRM, and if your hard drive crashes, you have a backup!
(also, if you move out of the country, reformat your hard drive, and change your account, your covered)
Apple of course would like to NOT restrict ITMS to the US if they could. It is international law issues that force them to put a policy like this in place. As Keith said it is the credit card address that is the issue. I think this is sufficient enough of a barrier to sales outside the US. You essentially have to have a US presence to use ITMS. Legal issues make them state the situation in more severe terms but I doubt very much that Apple is making much effort to catch people outside the US. Also if you reformat, etc without backing up like this guy did, and so need a reauthorization code, I can see why they can not overtly and openly condone this.
Of course all of this is really silly when you consider how much illegal fileswapping is going on. The last thing the industry should do is get strict on the few users who actually are paying for music.
I live overseas (from the USA) but maintain a USA address and credit card too. I have traveled back and forth and downloaded from USA and abroad. Nothing has disappeared yet.
Your iTunes songs just disappeared?
wow.
Did you look under the refrigerator?
You did?
Well, where was the last place you put them? iTunes songs don’t just get up and WALK AWAY!!
And in the meantime stop talking with your mouth full.
Stop tracking mud over the nice, clean floor.
WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GET’S HOME!!
DV
On another, but similiar, note.
Over and over I’ve heard speculation about what happens to the user who loses his/her collecton of music due to hardware failure, theft of powerbook, whatever.
The common consensus being that Apple should let you re-download all the songs. Yes, that would be nice.
But back in 1975, if your house burned down you couldn’t go back to London Records and get back your albums you paid for. Even if you offered to pay some sort of minimal fee for labor and materials. Nor would anyone have thought that you were ‘owed’ the albums.
What changed? the idea that everything having to do with the internet is FREE or too cheap to meter? Growing feelings of entitlement?
It is so DARN EASY to backup now. Yet people feel that their carelessness in backing up data is a blank check (altho a very small one) against the record companies if their music goes away.
It was MUCH HARDER, more time consuming, and more expensive, to backup your music 25 years ago. But no one thought that the record companies should make it easier to replace your music.
DV
why the FSCK are you guys worried about this? buya $200 pc, load kazaa lite, download and birn away. In ten years people are going to look back and wonder what you dopes were fighting over, when it was all out there free. over 5000 songs and 300 movies in my library, all cost total of zip. i dont listen or ever watch half of them, who cares they are free.
and, my karma is fine, thanks for asking.
When all new CD’s are sold in WMA-encoded DRM protected format all the legal downlaoders will want to kick all of the music thieves right in the a*s. Since when is it your right to steal someone else’s rightful property? I have no sympathy for the greedy, bloated and inefficient recording industry, but theft is wrong.
All my songs are there. Just keep billing address in the US. I buy from iTMS and listen to all over Europe. Never a problem. I am a US tax payer person, my card and my bank are US. it is all that matters.
Imagine what a blunder would be if *truly* your music disappears when you travel… c’mon!
If being an honest person makes me a dope, I’m proud of it.
I oppose the RIAA stranglehold, but I’m not going to steal from artists I like and pretend I’m taking a stand.
I have been using iTunes Music Stores and have no problems.. my music doesn’t vanish and I continue to use my US credit card to build my collection.. this story is 100% bullshit.
I thought that cursor advert on this page today loked a bit naff for a Mac site…and so it proves.
Congratulations to MDN for selling paying space to a Windoze service only. Hope they’re paying loads!
What a pin head this guy must be. I’ve been buying lots from iTMS from here in Africa. Everything work great.
Either he is retarded or this is more FUD.
david vesey: The reason people expect to get their lost files replaced is because it’s so easy to replace them, there’s no reason not to. If your physical goods are lost, it’s very expensive to replace, and it would be hard to prove they were lost in the manner claimed. But digital information can be duplicated with very little expense — virtually for free. There’s no reason for a company to not let you download a file you paid for as many times as you want, provided you’re not making a nuisance of yourself. Unless they’re just mean and selfish.
buy the DRM less CD, rip it, put it on your ipod, resell the cd, don’t worry about DRM.
As an Apple Lover, it’s really hard for me to use the music store, because that would be supporting the RIAA which should not be supported at any or all cost.
buying an iPod doesn’t mean you have to use the iTunes store, even thought it is practical and easy to use and what not, it is still a very probelmatic proposition.
I have a few basic rules for dealing with the RIAA but staying within legality.
one avoid using any service controlled or providing them with more money.
so I buy used CD’s so as not to directly affect their bottom line.
I never buy any cd or DVD with DRM technology.
and I rip my own stuff.
This is my way of dealing with Microsoft as well, I have no ms software on my computer even the free Internet Explorer. I use a file converter to make Word and Excel docs into standard compliant files, and I request my clients to provide files in non ms formats.
(I also do that with Quark, as a designer it is a little harder to get people to understand that Quark is an evil company, so I only use PDF and pdf compliant tools like inDesign.
“Of course all of this is really silly when you consider how much illegal fileswapping is going on. The last thing the industry should do is get strict on the few users who actually are paying for music.”
…When has the music industry ever done something that made sense?
As to David Vesey’s question about what changed? The Music industry. When you ‘license’ music to people, you should be obliged to replace lost data. When you push for strange and restrictive copyright legislation, you shouldn’t have it both way. If I pay for the right to download and listen to a song, it shouldn’t be contigent on any other factor. As Jack Valenti says “digital technology lasts forever” so if I pay once for a song, I should be able to listen to that song forever.
As to those who download unauthorized music in the US, don’t. If you want to boycott the RIAA, buy used albums (no royalties go to the Music companies [by the way, is THAT stealing just because the artists don’t get paid?])…get into indie music, go see more concerts (the artists get the lion’s share of the proffits), and listen to web radio. That way the Industry can’t blame poor performance on piracy. It’s a great bogey man to reference, but when you sell shit and try to pass it off as meaningful and enriching entertainment, don’t be surprised when nobody buys that crap. Lost proffits? do you seriously think that Eddie up in his room that has 8000 songs would really have bought all of them? A) he doesn’t have the money B) who in thier right mind would (or even have the option to) go out and buy some of the obscure music in his library. So all these numbers of how much money are an educated guess at best, and just made up at worst.
To those who think some company owes them replacement of their downloaded music–get a grip! THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH. Any company that would do that faces all kinds of increased costs, from developing the system to do it, storing the relevant data (and it would be A LOT of data), backing it up reliably, providing a system for accessing it, dealing with the INEVITABLE attempts to defraud/hack the system to get music that no one ever really bought, etc. Of course, it COULD be done, but those of you who are too lazy to back up your data should pay the extra costs as an “insurance” surcharge and NOT try to force everyone else to pay extra for your negligence. Again, there ain’t no free lunch–stop whining.
They could charge a download fee for previously licensed music that has been lost.
I like this idea of only buying used CDs. That’s what I’ll do from now on if possible.
I already have nearly 10,000 songs that are ripped from legally bought and owned CDs. In the UK though, there are no fair use rights, so I’m breaking the law just having this stuff in iTunes and on my iPod.
Note to NoPCzone:
I don’t condone theft either. But the vast majority of illegal music downloads are done with PCs, not Macs. It’s the PC users who should be suffering, not iTunes buyers.
back on topic: I was living in the UK last summer and bought lots of songs from the ITMS. They downloaded fine and none of them ‘disappeared’ from my hard drive. The ticket is to have a credit card account in the States, it’s as simple as that. Then you can access the service from anywhere.
People from other countries looking to use the ITMS can pretty easily get an American friend to pay for the songs (they even have a gift certificate service now!) and then just pay them back with PayPal or something. Of course, you need to have American friends… maybe this could be the way we get the rest of the world to like America again!
allgood2: how do you know that Apple allowed him to authorize his computer anyway? Please post a link if you have one.
Morty in Manhattan, your wrong and you know it. Being proud of it makes you a jerk.
SeaBass, Buy the CD and rip it, ok. Selling the CD and not deleting the music from your hard drive, is questionable.
for KennyLucious. Well, assuming you don’t want all the back and forth drama, you can read Sean Yeager’s last post on the topic, and his satisfaction with the resolution over at http://algorhythm.org (which I believe is his web site). Just search for Apple DRM.
If you want full back story, with a copy of the originally posted email (which wasn’t posted by Yeager, but a friend of his), then start at SlashDot and continue with these urls.
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/07/25/1316225.shtml?tid=141&tid=188
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000196.html
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04993.html
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200307/msg00150.html
http://algorhythm.org/archives/2003/07/25/apple_drm_and_me.html