Ordering from the UK iTunes store when you live abroad

This is ridiculous. I am British living in Germany and made the mistake up updating my UK bank account to my German address. Now all I can access is the German iTunes and App Store. I find it absurd that there are films that were made in English, but I am not given the opportunity to watch them in the original language. Surely if a film is available both in the UK and mainland Europe, it should be available in all languages. You can't tell me that it's a copyright issue for the same **** film in a different language. I am in the middle of an email exchange with Apple and all they could offer me so far is to change the language of the German store to English (only for headings etc), or to watch the bloody thing with Closed Captioning, which would really ruin my enjoyment of it. I'm intrigued as to whether this is legal according to European law. From the EU website:-

From the EU website:-

You must not be refused a service (e.g. DVD rental or a holiday booking) simply because you live in a different EU country.

To me that is exactly what Apple are doing. They are refusing to provide me the service in my own language, because I live in a different EU country. However I know I'll get nowhere with this. Apple aren't famous for being amazingly consumer-friendly.

EU laws and regulations do not cover copyright and intellectual propery rights for digital downloads yet. They're been working on it, but at this time nothing has been done, so each country has their own copyrights, and each have their own distribution entities, all of whom want their money and so do not allow Apple nor any other download store to allow cross-border sales. There's nothing Apple can do about this.

As to language of movies, that is completely up to the owners of the movies. If they choose to provide movies only in the language of the country, again, there's nothing Apple can do about it, nor to my knowledge is there any EU law or regulation compelling the movie distributors to offer movies in all languages used in the EU. Complain to the movie distributors in Germany, or look for another German movie download service that offers a better selection of movies in English.

Regards.

varjak paw wrote:

EU laws and regulations do not cover copyright and intellectual propery rights for digital downloads yet.

EU laws, bla bla bla. Sorry but Apple needs to do it's homework and stop hiding behing this utter NONSENSE! Why can other European companies offer services and products in different languages? Why can Amazon do it? Why can I change the online language setting of my EU bank account? Why can I (German resident) order an English language book off a Dutch website? Why can I watch a DVD movie that I purchaced in English, German, Russian and change the language and subtitles any way I want to?

I never use Apple/iTunes for anything else but App purchaces, simply because of Apple's totally out of date policy. Wake UP!

Unfortunately Apple is in some aspects typical American: perhaps good technology, but culturally lightyears behind and totally oblivious to the fact that some people perhaps speak more than one language and live abroad.

p.s. slightly off topic, but another example of the total lack of easy language switching is evident on iPhones and iPads. A few years ago the word "spacebar" was written on the keyboard in the auto-complete language you had selected. So I'd instantly know if I would start writing in English, German, French or Dutch. Nowadays, you either have to cycle through the languages to see which one was selected, or you have to start typing and realize that after a few words nothing makes sense because the wrong language is selected. Very annoying and totally user-unfriendly, but things like these are becoming more and more typical for Apple....unfortunately!

Apple is not here. And I have no interest in further trying to explain to you the differences between digital downloads and physical merchandise and how the content owners control things. If you want to rant to Apple, use their feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

varjak paw wrote:

And I have no interest in further trying to explain to you the differences between digital downloads and physical merchandise and how the content owners control things.

I (and many others!) keep on telling you: we can DOWNLOAD any language Kindle ebooks from Amazon! In my case, I always download English ebooks through Amazon.de, the German version of Amazon!

Anyway, unfortunately your attitude is very typical of some Apple zealots: you just don't want to hear any critisism and you just believe the hype!

That's a decision made by the publishers, not by Amazon, though Amazon has the financial clout to in effect force such decisions on them. And movies are a completely different issue.

But believe what you will. It's very easy for ranters to call someone an "Apple zealot" and dismiss their statements and opinions rather than actually try to understand the issue completely. Feel free to rant away. I'm not wasting more time here. Again, though, if you would like Apple to hear your ranting, use their feedback page.

There are movies I want to buy from the British iTunes as the American iTunes doesn't have the right movie. They have the same movie but not in the translation I want. The movie is The Gospel of John which comes in NIV and KJV. On the American store it's only available in NIV. In the British store it's available in both formats. I prefer the King James. On other competitors sites it's also only available in NIV as well. Don't know how to get this movie. Scratch that. I just added it to my wish list from the UK store. 🙂