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ITunes Australia Goes Live
daria42 writes "ITunes Australia has finally gone live, after more than a year of waiting. Apple is holding a press conference in Sydney this morning to officially launch the service to the media, but the store has already opened. Like the Japanese ITunes store, it looks like Sony-BMG is not participating."
Modding down the only people who TRY to RTFA?
The URL is WRONG
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/iTunes_M usic_Store_comes_to_Australia/0,2000061733,3921879 8,00.htm
Simple - each record company is a single company but they operate separate divisions in each region and each division/branch deals with the copyrights in their own country.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/iTunes_M usic_Store_comes_to_Australia/0,2000061733,3921879 8,00.htm
Looks like it's not variable pricing as I thought it might have been. Thus, I hereby retract my "Crikey!"
I'm sure there are numerous world branches of just about every major record label out there. What's stopping Apple from running a global iTunes Music Store?
The record companies. The songs are licensed for sale in one country only. Apple would love to be able to offer their entire catalog to anybody anywhere, but the record companies won't allow that. They have to negotiate completely separate licensing agreements for each country.
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Until now, an iPod was an expensive paperweight unless you were prepared to infringe copyright, which meant that it was a copyright infringement tool, which meant that it had the same legal status as a X-Box or PS-2 mod chip.
Didn't stop them selling them though.
You have to remember that in Australia there are no fair use rights. You do not have the right to make copies of content for personal use or even backups. People do, and they are unlikely to be prosecuted, but it is illegal.
Attempts to get this law changed have met with howls of protest from the likes of ARIA, and it probably won't happen until Digital Restrictions Mandating becomes universal so you won't be able to do it anyway.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
You are deeply, deeply missing the point.
The only way to legally burn a CD from your digital music in Australia is the iTunes store. Because when you buy a song from iTunes, you get a license from the label via Apple to do certain things with the music. Fair use isn't necessary if you have a license from the owner.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
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I agree with most of the rest of your post but if you really want to send them a message, stop buying music all together and send in letters declaring your boycott. Buying CD's is not going to send them any sort of message other than you like their current business practices in general.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I just tried it. The US store pops up a one-button dialog box:
"Your account is only valid for purchases in the Australian Music Store. Clicking OK will take you to this store. [OK]"
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Knowing that iTunes Australia was launching, I did an interview with AppleTalk Australia that tells a little bit more behind-the-scenes stuff, in case you're interested.
I'm glad this is finally up-and-running. Australia has a great independent music scene (as I spoke more about in previous Slashdot comment).
"The record companies."
Partially correct. In most cases rights must also be secured from whomever owns the publishing rights -- that is, the copyright on the words and the lyrics. Words and music are owned by the songwriter and composer, unless they transfer the rights to somebody else. Record companies typically only own the copyright on that recording of the words and music. Sometimes the local country's artists' rights management societies get involved as well.
This is important to understand for folks who kneel at the shrine of "record companies bad, artists good." It's not just the greedy, stupid record companies that are getting in the way of progress -- sometimes it's the greedy, stupid songwriters and composers!
I'm sure you were aware of that, but the way your post was written, it gave the impression that the record companies are the only obstacle.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Don't bother with ITMS.au, it's slower than molasses. In fact it's so slow it makes dial up look positively snappy. I think they have employees that read the incoming HTTP requests out, and someone writes it down, walks over to the library catalogue of songs they have... works out the search results, writes it down, hands it back to the data entry employee (there is just one, who is really busy) who then types up the results in HTML and sends it back out the 300 baud modem to me. It is faster to find and download a song over p2p than it is to see if ITMS even has the song.
And no PayPal, despite there being a PayPal.com.au site. *sigh*
There are a few different reasons behind the absence of TiVo in Australia. One is that if they can't make a profit in the UK, they're unlikely to here. Another is that the Australian courts have deemed raw TV guide data to be IP (Telstra vs Desktop Marketing), so you can't produce one without the networks' permission. There's no way in hell they'll give that to a PVR manufacturer, and without TV guide data, PVRs aren't so useful.
The same issue makes it a little harder to set up something like MythTV; you need to use slightly dodgy open/volunteer TV guide data or (technically) break the law with a Perl script that scrapes it from the networks' web sites.
I should buy some cement.
Australia has no "Fair Use Policy" laws
Howabout Div 3 of Part III of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth)? - scroll down to the appropriate point on this page http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/244/to p.htm and have a read as to what is permitted as "fair dealing" under Australian law.
so far there has been no test case
This is just wrong. There have been cases about fair dealing and so forth since the Act was encated. Try this link http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinocgi.cgi/au?m ethod=boolean&rank=on&query=ca1968133%20s40 if you're really interested.
This is the reason TiVO has not been introduced to Australia.
I would suggest that there are several reasons TiVO has not been introduced, such as:
- only 5 free to air channels
- no free cable, encrypted pay TV
- no electronic program guide
- TV stations who persist on not running to time
- different video standard (PAL not NTSC)
It's certainly not the law - which hasn't prevented VCRs from flourishing (albeit they reisde in a somewhat grey area) - but more likely a question of economics.
It is illegal to record any TV show that is not being broadcast live to air
In fact its UNLAWFUL (but not illegal) to record a TV show at all (except in the case of fair dealing, and other exceptions I wont go into now) whether broadcast or not.
But the distiction between unlawful and illegal is an important one. Unlawful means that the TV station or distributor or somebody has to come sue you for infringing upon their copyright. No jail time. Illegal means that somethings is a crime - the copyright holder just has to notify the cops, they can pick you up and you might face jail time (although now is not the time to go into criminal sentencing procedure).
It is also illegal to rip cds to MP3
Again, it's unlawful, but not illegal.
Apple have finally taken the chance, which is good to see.
I would suggest that this is not, in fact, a chance or risk for Apple. Australians are high per-capita purchasers of music. It is guaranteed profit which will also drive the iPod market with a legal source of downloads. Apple has only "waited" so long because the record labels in Australia have been absolute asses to deal with. Sony BMG is still not on board.
Hopefully none of the recording labels will launch a lawsuit
This is the bit that gets me most... it is the labels WHO ARE COOPERATING WITH APPLE TO ALLOW APPLE TO SELL THEIR MUSIC. The labels would be, in effect, SUING THEMSELVES. This will not happen.
So ... are you allowed to burn CDs or not???
The answer is although it's technically illegal, in practice nobody has ever been prosecuted in Australia for making personal copies. The reason is simple: if you're not standing on a street corner handing them out, who's going to know?
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