When will the US realise that the Internet is global?
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A client of mine gave me a $50 iTunes gift card as a thank you present for being amazingly awesome, so I decided to use it today to pre-order the new Alanis Morisette album, ‘Flavors of Entanglement’ as the iTunes pre-order has 5 bonus tracks. The link from the Alanis newsletter was to the US iTunes store which once I said I was from Australia redirected me to the Australian store. The problem is, the Australian stores does not have the Alanis album available for pre-order only the US one does. However, iTunes won’t let me buy anything from its US store as I am not located in the US.
In case Apple has not noticed, the Internet is a global entity. Why should it matter that I want to buy an album that has a worldwide release from the US store if I am located in Australia? Ok, so there is some tax shit or something, that’s fine, but then why is something that is available in the US store not available in the Australian store?
I am sick of not being able to participate fully on the internet because I am not located in the US. Can’t pre-order albums off iTunes because I am not in the US. Can’t watch TV episodes online because I am not in the US. Can’t text Twitter using a local number because I am not in the US (or in this case in the UK either).
This is the Internet! It is global and yet it seems every cool development that hits the Internet is only for users located in the US. Have you guys not realised that the rest of the fucking world exists? We want in on the fun too.
So, I won’t be using iTunes to buy the new Alanis album and am strongly debating never using the iTunes store ever again. Why bother if I can’t buy what I want to buy because I am not living in the US.
Apple either make everything available through all your iTunes stores or let users buy from whatever store they want to. Telling people that they can’t legally buy the music they want to buy will just make them get it from illegal sources. The illegal sources don’t give a shit where you live. They realise that the Internet is a global phenomenon.
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Tags: Alanis Morissette, Apple, Flavors of Entanglement, internet, ITunes Store, music, shopping
This weekend I have been focusing on how to improve my blog. I have been reading lots of articles about blogging such as those over at 
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