GREAT MOMENTS IN PRACTICAL JOKES: FREE AS IN COPYRIGHT-PROTECTED BEER

[defrog]

And now, a true story.

Recently I bought some CDs from Amazon.com, one of which entitled me to a free MP3.

Like so.



I tend not to download MP3s from Amazon, partly because of the uncertain DRM situation (i.e. will this file still play if I change iPods), but mainly because they won’t let me. Not even if they’re free (like the time Mojo Nixon’s entire song catalog was offered for free for 24 hours).

Because I’m a foreigner, you see. If yr outside the US and try to download MP3s from Amazon, here’s what you get:



But I figured, “Okay, this will be different. I may be a foreigner, but I am a foreigner that they have explicitly granted the right to download an MP3 on their dime. So let’s try it.”

So I cashed in my MP3 credit. And got this.



Ha ha. Good one, Amazon. You totally punk’d me. Dude.

I’m more amused than upset – I mean, the free MP3 was an added perk to buying something I would have bought even without the free bonus offer, so it’s hard to feel ripped off.

But the “logic” behind the “Americans in America only” rule continues to baffle me.

To be fair, I’m sure it’s not Amazon’s fault entirely – it’s probably a condition imposed by the music labels. And I’m not sure if the issue is licensing (which tends to be geographically limited), or stopping piracy. The latter makes zero sense. Apart from the fact that it assumes that only non-Americans steal music, it also assumes that foreigners who are free to buy as many CDs as they can afford won’t rip the tracks and post them on Limewire.

But then it’s not as if the RIAA’s anti-piracy strategies ever made sense in the first place.

You can’t always get what you want,

This is dF

Comments

[gvdub.livejournal.com]

International licensing is a jungle that very few can find their way through. Like films and books, there's no universal distribution, and whoever has the license to distribute where you wants their cut of the swag, which they won't get it if you buy the song from Amazon.

On this end, I run into it when I'm shopping for some Hong Kong films that have had rights for remakes bought by American studios, at which point the DVD release of the original film is frequently blocked for sale in the U.S. Most notable in this was Tsui Hark's "Zu Warriors", which Miramax was supposed to distribute in the U.S. as part of some deal with Quentin Tarantino, but they could never cut into a story that would make sense to a Western audience. So it sits, unreleased in the U.S. with the DVD sales blocked.

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

The silly part is that they can sell me the CD but not the MP3 version. I'm assuming it's because digital downloads may not be covered under existing distribution contracts – I know there's been some dispute with artists about whether a download counts as a sale or a license because the latter would mean the artist gets a larger cut, so that might be part of it.

Either way, they're preventing willing customers from paying for music, which is no way to run a business. The same goes for DVD regional coding – my DVD library would be a lot bigger than it is if my choices weren't limited to Region 3.