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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."
You know what the sad thing is? This idiot editor ScuttleMonkey picked from an obviously massive number of iTunes Australia submissions the one that doesn't write iTunes correctly.
GG SCUTTLEMONKEY! Want a free Ipod?
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
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?
That's great, but I just hope it doesn't scratch easily.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I tried it, but the songs were upside down.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/iTunes_M usic_Store_comes_to_Australia/0,2000061733,3921879 8,00.htm
The article comes up here just fine. Also, another interesting article: Apple: Our biggest competitor is P2P.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/iTunes_M usic_Store_comes_to_Australia/0,2000061733,3921879 8,00.htm
I have a friend in India who says that he would use iTunes store if it were available, but because it isn't he simply uses peer-to-peer.
As the iTunes store becomes available across the world it will help legitimize the online music industry. I think there are a lot of people in the world who don't have the option to go and buy the music they want to listen to. If they could, they would.
Of course there are a lot of people who will jump at the opportunity to get something for free if they can, but no one is stopping these now, so it's not really the point. But if you give everyone the opportunity to pay for the music, many will. I think this is a good thing.
Speaking of online music sales, I'm really looking forward to another price war. Come on guys, we need a legit iTunes competitor to drive down the prices!
Looks like it's not variable pricing as I thought it might have been. Thus, I hereby retract my "Crikey!"
This lack of participation is a Very Bad Thing for anyone who likes to buy digital music easily online. As a consumer in Japan, I have been much-thwarted in my attempts to buy songs I hear on the radio or wherever. Though iTunes is very convenient, I haven't spent any money on iTunes Japan because it's so crippled. Obviously, I don't think this is good for either Apple or Sony-BMG, and hopefully they work something out eventually.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Fair use is irrelevant here, as Apple have permission from the record companies to publish it in the relevant format.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
A spokeswoman from Warner, Maverick's parent company, declined to comment.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
how about Itunes service that includes NZ too?
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/
That's right, Jim. We leave that up to Sony.
Badda-ching!! I got more, I got more...
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
But what is the user allowed to do with it once they buy it? How many devices can it be stored on?
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?
Cause we won't be able to download the lastest Australian Idol releases...wait did I say shame?
So Sony won't allow Apple to sell their tunes library, (about a quarter of the big five's recorded music), in Japan and now Australia/New Zeland. interesting. And ABC (Disney) is the only TV network willing to sell their TV Shows, Pixar only willing to debut a few (very cool) shorts.
This is very important everyone. the content providers are VERY SCARED. First they were scared the medium wouldn't be popular enough to thwart file sharing, now they are scared it is SO POPULAR it will thwart their very role in distribution!
I for one welcome the medium - The quality of "Lost" is totally acceptable for the price and download time, actual movies should only be provided in a hgher quality though.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The pricing is just ridiculous. $1.69 per track for lossy recordings that, in Australia at least, you cannot necessarily legally burn to a CD or otherwise duplicate is simply outrageous.
The record companies (I don't think this is Apple's fault) need to realise that they are competing with FREE on the Internet, not with each other. They also need to realise that when they have ZERO manufacturing costs they are going to need to reduce their prices accordingly.
This is a perfect example of what a sheltered and monopoly/oligopoly dominated market Australia is. Other examples are air travel (two airlines), print media (one and a half newspaper conglomerates, most major cities have no media competition) and telecommunications (one major telco). The record company execs have obvious sat down and decided that they think Australia is sheltered enough that they can continue to screw us, iTunes or no iTunes.
Send them a message: do not use this service. Buy a physical CD instead - it'll work out about the same price if you shop somewhere decent anyway (10-12 tracks = $17-$21 on iTunes, which is crazy). Alternatively, if you have a UK or US bank account, use the services in those countries to encourage Apple to put more pressure on the record companies in Australia.
Read Pynchon.
New Zealanders who feel left out are apparently lying to Apple and getting songs anyway...
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
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.
As recording artist "Tool" noted
I love "Tool." He's hot.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
the dude from Tool also wrote
"i sold my sole to make a record"
"then you brought one"
Yes true fans don't ripe off the band.
Which is why true fans support CDBaby, iTunes, and the little independant Record store so the next gen of Artists can be free of the crude we know today.
Some Day down the track we will have the market driven by the culture not a culture driven by marketing like we have now.
That day will come, the record compaines will disappear. The fans don't need them anymore, the artists don't need them anymore.
The only ones left are the techinical support people but i'm sure they will learn how to break free soon enough.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
According to this person's research into the Terms and Conditions, it's ambiguous whether buying a track from iTunes Oz grants you any CD burning privileges or not:
So you're allowed to burn and export products; but you don't get any copyright waiver, and there's no such thing as fair use in Oz, so you're not allowed to burn or export. So ... are you allowed to burn CDs or not???
cAlm dOwn, fAnboy. aPple dOesn't rEad sLashdot. nO bRownie pOints fOr pRosletyzing hEre.
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 Aussie store currently doesn't have the Just For You feature, but if you go to the home page and switch to the US store using the popup menu at the bottom, it appears.
(You have to switch back if you want to buy a song later.)
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*
It is true that there isn't a 'fair use policy' in Australia equivalent to the US. However, this has nothing to do with lack of Australian TiVO models. We have plenty of personal video recorders, both for free-to-air and pay (cable) TV. Most of those are more permissive than the TiVO - we have no broadcast flag issue here, and we can freely copy files from PVRs to computers via USB. As for why TiVO doesn't seem to be available here, you'd have to ask them about it. They probably have their own reasons for not producing an Australian model.
I have been downloading from iTunes to Australia for well over a year, because I have a UK bank account as well as an Australian one. The choice from the UK store is probably better than the Australian offering at the moment anyway. Apple doesn't care where your IP address is from, they only check that your credit card is registered in the territory that the music store is located in. This seems to work around the regional disaster that is the record industry quite neatly. In fact, I'd say it makes a mockery of the whole regional distribution model, and really it's about time that the record industry realised that it needs to wake up and smell the coffee as far as globalisation is concerned. As for any tracks I still can't get legally? Well, there's always Acquisition...
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?
Blank until