The cost of the iTunes workaround
So, yes, it is possible to buy music, videos, games and other great content from the USA iTunes Store here in South Africa but it involves buying iTunes vouchers from eBay and other sources and giving the iTunes Store false information. Once you get past that, you will have an iTunes Store account and can enjoy what our friends in the USA have been taking for granted for the last few years. On the positive side, this is a way to still buy legal copies of all that wonderful stuff available in the iTunes Store but on the negative side it is a clear violation of Apple’s terms of service and its terms of sale. The terms of sale start with this unambiguous statement:
U.S. SALES ONLY
Purchases from the iTunes Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.
The terms of service have this bit too:
14. Termination.
a. Termination by Apple. If you fail, or Apple suspects that you have failed, to comply with any of the provisions of this Agreement, including but not limited to failure to make payment of fees due, failure to provide Apple with a valid credit card or with accurate and complete Registration Data, failure to safeguard your Account information, violation of the Usage Rules or any license to the software, or infringement or other violation of third parties’ rights, Apple, at its sole discretion, without notice to you may: (i) terminate this Agreement and/or your Account, and you will remain liable for all amounts due under your Account up to and including the date of termination; and/or (ii) terminate the license to the software; and/or (iii) preclude access to the Service (or any part thereof).
These are just two provisions that deal with a key component of the voucher workaround, namely the address in the USA you have to give the iTunes Store to create your account. The vouchers enable you to circumvent the requirement for a valid American credit card which is more of a problem for most of us who have enough difficulty with a South African credit card. There may also be legislation which imposes liability for gaining access to the iTunes Store this way and with that, massive penalties.
I did a post about this a week ago or so (which I subsequently took down in a rare act of self-censorship) and at the time my thinking was that this was at least a way to buy legal copies of music from the iTunes Store, albeit in contravention of Apple’s terms. It gives people here what they want and is better than buying pirated copies of music from seemingly legitimate download sites based in Eastern European countries! The problem is that it is still, at the very least, a violation of Apple’s terms and could result in Apple shutting down those accounts and rendering all the music and other goodies you buy useless by revoking the license to use that stuff (I am pretty sure Apple can do this). At the very least it means all that money you were spending is wasted.
There is another cost depending on what you are buying and this could well be the reason why we don’t have an iTunes Store here in South Africa. If you buy a movie from the iTunes Store you can expect to spend from around $10 to $15 (roughly R68 to R103 at today’s exchange rate). Each movie is at least 1.2GB to 2GB and unless you are downloading using an uncapped service or someone else’s bandwidth (naughty naughty) you have to cater for the additional bandwidth needed. I use Axxess for my ADSL service (great company and great prices) and I pay about R60 per GB. If I buy an older movie, say "Usual Suspects" for around $10 I will need at least an extra GB of bandwidth for the download or I will hit my cap before the end of the month. That brings the cost of that movie to about R130. Look and Listen is selling the DVD for R79.95.
The download is convenient and there is the cool factor because I could buy it from the iTunes Store. On the other hand the movie’s resolution is 640 by 480 which isn’t bad but it is less than DVD quality. I also have the limitations on how and where I can watch the movie unless I am using an Apple TV or something like that (I am not sure of you can burn these movies to a disc). On the other hand the physical DVD can be played almost anywhere, is cheaper and, if you are so inclined to commit criminal act anyway, there is software freely available that you can use to rip a DVD to your computer at a higher resolution than the download and which you can play on your iPod too if you wanted that.
Another example is the latest Pirates movie which costs $15 and is about 2GB. That brings the cost of that purchase to over R200 whereas you can buy the normal DVD version for about R140 and the whole trilogy for R300. When you look at the costs involved, I am not sure the iTunes Store is worth it given the cost of our bandwidth at the moment. On the other hand where it is great is when it comes to buying music from the store. Singles cost around $1 (R7 or so) and full albums start at around $10. The audio quality isn’t bad (128 kbps) and the download isn’t too big either although you can only play the song in iTunes using an authorised version of iTunes (the music still has DRM). A CD you buy could (theoretically) be ripped at a higher bit rate (better quality audio for those who care) and you could rip the music into whichever music software you want and into a variety of formats to suit your needs. Even with music, you need to weigh up the costs and your needs.
I thought I’d explore some of these issues and put the workaround into a cost perspective. I would love to see a South African iTunes Store and I would definitely use it, a lot, but until we have cheaper Internet access, it remains a costly option. In the meantime if you are looking for a couple legal music download sites, I have a couple links here for you.
Tags: itunes, itunes store, cost, bandwidth, downloads, legalities, terms of service, terms of sale, apple, dvd, cd, analogue hole
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