Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Piracy

Fred Wilson spends a lot on music. He's a brilliant customer. He's the sort of person the music industry would have to keep sweet. So how come he was forced to "steal" music? It's a story of how the music industry really isn't ready for 1995 yet:

Then I searched the Internet for the record [The new Streets album]. It was not even listed in iTunes or emusic. It was listed on Amazon US as an import that would be available on Feb 15th, but only in CD form. I'm not buying plastic just to rip the files and throw it out. Seeing as it was an import, I searched Amazon UK. And there I found the record in mp3 form for 4 pounds. It was going to be released on Feb 4th. I made a mental note to come back and get it when it was released.

I got around to doing that today. I clicked on "buy with one click" and was greeted with this nonsense ["Sorry, you can't buy outside the UK" message]

[via Charles Arthur in the Guardian]


1 comment:

Koshinokinsho said...

This policy of restricting availability of paid-for downloads is just ridiculous. There are plenty of things I'd be willing to download from Amazon (primarily because I'm familiar with the site and trust it with my credit card details), but it won't let me because I'm in NZ. It seems completely pointless and rather short-sighted in this day and age.

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