MrZaius.com

A year ago I posted a review recommending both Amazon and Rhapsody’s MP3 stores in quite glowing terms. Both seemed to work from Nepal at the time, and Amazon has continued to work up until at least as recently as September 28th. Even the largely CC and globally available work of Jonathon Coulton is blocked. It is unclear whether they’ve gotten to Hulu-esque levels of controls, going out of their way to block proxy servers, but we shouldn’t have to bother – Not for a paid service, with an American address, and American billing information.

• Amazon.com: No mention at all of the policy change on their website until checkout, and nary a word in their customer service help pages. Tested multiple tracks from multiple artists, freebies included, and not a one worked. The actual error message also implies that territories have been stripped of access as well:
  “We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.“
• MP3.Rhapsody.com: Rhapsody tells you they won’t do business with international IP addresses on every page. These guys have always proven to be more expensive than the other vendors, so I’ve never had to make a purchase, but it sucks to lose the option.
  • Caveat: My wife’s subscription to Rhapsody’s DRM-encumbered streaming system is still working, for now.
• eMusic.com: Signups are forbidden from overseas, but they suggest they can make accomodations on their website. More than either of the above offer.
• AmieStreet.com: Hit or miss. Seems to depend on the band and the label. Sadly, that seems to be as good as it gets at the moment.

Still, nasty, brutish, and myopic as it is to cut off access to overseas users, I would encourage people to write in and complain, and on two key grounds:

1. The labels stand to gain next to nothing by blocking American users, or even users with American addresses and billing information. They can already bypass their half-hearted attempts to price fix between markets by shipping CDs across borders, but by blocking access to instant downloads for those same customers, they provide a quite compelling incentive to either not bother with an impulse buy or copy or to go to freer sources like YouTube or seedier places for instant access.
2. We currently have some 300,000-500,000 servicemen and women posted overseas (chart’s a bit vague vis a vis the warzones [via en Wikipedia]), which accounts for a quarter to a third of the entire military, not counting family. Even ignoring civilian USG employees overseas, blocking a quarter or half a million young men and women in the key demographics for their service is obviously far from wise. Regardless, even if they have, again, short-sighted, poorly thought out, blah, blah, blah contracts with the labels that prevent them from opening the service up to all Americans, surely opening up access to users with APO/FPO addresses and posted to civilian missions abroad with 20189 zip codes isn’t a hard sell while we simultaneously fight two and a half wars. (2.6 counting the narco-stuff, eh?) On that tact, sent the following to Amazon, but got only a wee little “thanks for the feedback” formletter. Still, this does seem like the sort of thing we can get around if more people are willing to give ‘em a poke:

“You recently blocked international downloads of your tracks which, though shortsighted and foolish on the face of it, is downright insulting when you include customers with APO/FPO addresses and 20189 zip codes. By doing so, you also block your country’s servicemen and women overseas, as well as the Foreign Service, from the only reliable, timely method of legally acquiring music available to them.
Please reconsider your policies and add exemptions for customers with APO/FPO and 20189 billing addresses post haste. Failure to do so can’t be wise: Given our mail-order heavy lifestyle abroad, we surely purchase far more per capita than any other class of customer.
Flip your patriotism bit back on and undo this, please.”

Will update if I ever get a human-written response.

Tags: amazon, amiestreet, drm, emusic, foreign service, rhapsody