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Euro iTunes Store Delayed
pnjman writes "Due to the record labels being unable to agree licencing issues, the European iTunes music store has been put back until at least next year."
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It's too bad that licensing has been so difficult for Apple in Europe. It seems like this will be a roadblock for any kind of digital content distribution service.
If you accept flat-rate, simple click-and-download content distribution as the future, then it is obviously necessary to re-think the "every little European country is licensed differently" international licensing model.
Otherwise, imagine some of the weirdness you could pull off... imagine remotely accessing a machine in Finland, using that machine to download from Apple's store at a cheaper rate than your home country, and then downloading from the Finland machine to yours. I'm not familiar with the security measures that might combat this, but I imagine any that are in place could probably be circumvented.
Um... as one who just came back from an EU country and visited the EU buildings themselves, not to mention studying my brains out about it, this is just what the EU is for. to be treated like one *financial* country. What is more, having total-european standards for every shared product is a major part of that. With that goes the using of standard policies on things such as copyright and telecom and such. In practice, it is a tad more complicated, but that is just because their policies are more French, ie: artist work integrity centered instead of focus on profit and poorly worded royalties contracts. Probably something like the % that goes to the actual artists are what is holding this deal back.
the failure of the music business to get a grip on new models of doing business is, again, shocking. i'm having a hard time coping with it! (a) for one, the record companies themselves have made these completely different contracts by country. in order to maximize profits they have agreed on different pricing per country. i understand that there are legal differences, and that from a legal point of view the contracts are difficult and different also but anyways. i feel that the record companies should make a move towards apple (and maybe others as well) to set this up. (b) the prices of CD's is very high here in Europe. partly that is because of higher taxes, but the biggest cut still goes to the record companies. this encourages p2p filetrading as all internet-literate people *know* how much a CD is in the US. (c) the failure to give the rest of the world the same access to (legal) onlne music *will* hurt the music industry. because of all the different legal systems it is nearly impossible to go after the big traders, unlike the RIAA in the US. the situation in Est-European countries is even more difficult! my guess is that apple would do wise to crack the European market one-by-one and force the record companies to come up with a solution on their end (by forcing 1 pricing schema!!!). start with the UK and Germany (big markets and easier law). Move on to the other ones, eg. the countries where apple stores are in place so you are a legal entity already. ....
I have to salute you. For the first time in recent memory, someone's made a legitimate "the record companies are out of touch with technology" post. This isn't just a "I'm not getting free music, so the record companies suck" post, but a good point.
May we never see th