![[Politech logo]](http://www.politechbot.com/image/logo.gif){kind=logo}
Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04993.html --- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/technology/28APPL.html http://www.iht.com/articles/104391.html Border-crossing trouble for downloaded tunes By Bob Tedeschi NYT Tuesday, July 29, 2003 Online music-selling services have far fewer restrictions than the industry's early offerings, but they do not necessarily travel well. That became evident last week after an Apple iTunes customer posted a complaint on the Web log of Declan McCullagh, who covers technology for CNet's News.com, and the discussion list of David Farber, a business and technology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The posting, from Shawn Yeager, a technology consultant in Toronto, related his problems gaining access to songs he had downloaded from the iTunes online music store before he moved to Canada from the United States. In an interview, Yeager said that after complaining to Apple, he received automated e-mail responses implying that international licensing rights were to blame for his troubles. An Apple spokeswoman, Lara Vacante, said that Yeager's disappearing music files were not the result of Apple's policies but a systems error, though she and Yeager disagreed about where the error occurred. "Once you download a song, it's yours," Vacante said. But she said a consumer who did not have a credit card with a U.S. billing address could not download iTunes, because Apple has rights to sell the more than 200,000 songs in its database only in the United States. Yeager said that the problem had been resolved to his satisfaction but that "this points to some core problems" with how online companies restrict the use of the music they sell. His posting Friday resulted in much discussion in online news groups and inquiries to other online music services about their international sales policies. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------