Q: Downloading Past Purchases

Not whenever you want, not exactly, no.  The powers that be don't want you going into each of your friends' computers and downloading all your purchases to them, so they place limitations on what you can do, even if that's not exactly what you are trying to do in this case.

iTunes Store: Associating a device or computer to your Apple ID - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4627 -  In connection with, "When you turn on iTunes Match or Automatic Downloads, or when you download past purchases on an iOS device or computer, that device or computer becomes associated with your Apple ID." "Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID for 90 days." - Additionally instructions for "Removing an associated device or computer from an Apple ID"

From reading other web pages reporting the message you quote and mentioning multiple Apple IDs, it seems there isn't any resolution.  I guess if you had a second computer you could do it, but even families with multiple Apple IDs on one computer are blocked.

On the side issue you are not supposed to be using the Apple Store in two countries unless you somehow reside in both countries (this is rare -- a US citizen living in Canada is not a resident of the USA and should not be using the USA Store).  Even if you do, you are supposed to be physically present in the country from which you are downloading.  The number of people using the multiple ID workaround legitimately is probably incredibly small.  Then too, Apple points out you should be making your own backups of media, making the actual need to download a second time very small.  Combine the two...

Not to name names (which we can't do here) but picture a big company trying to get media companies to let them sell media online.  The media companies are terrified about piracy.  They say, "Okay, you can sell our stuff online, but in order to do so you have to put in certain features which will make it hard for people to pirate our media.  This includes making it hard for them to download to different machines in short time intervals.  You put that in or you can't sell our media" 

Untl recently you could not download a second time at all from Apple, and still cannot do it with everything, nor in certain countries.

As for having accounts in multiple countries, that's easy.  Not everything is licensed in each country, nor with the same distribution rights. Not too long ago you could not get Charlie Chaplin movies in the USA.  If a company, or the performer, says you can buy a song in Canada but not in the USA then they have the right to do so.  In a few cases it can be the country itself prohibiting distrubution. The easy way is to just flat out prohibit cross-border sales.  If something is available in your country of residence then you can get it, if it isn't then you're not supposed to have it.    Sure, practically with a song or app it is easy to bring it with you from another country, but I remember the days when Apple's operating system specifically said you were not allowed to take certian versions out of the USA.

We're not allowed to question Apple's policies on this site, but frankly I don't think it is Apple.  I'm sure they would be glad to make money off you selling anything they can.

Add me to the list of surprised customers.  I just upgraded to the new iBooks and tried to download a book I had purchased and sure enough I got the above message.  I did not sign out of my device, and originally purchased the book with this Apple Id so there was no reason for the message.  It's just disappointing because it is one more thing that has come to my attention that is leaving a bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to the current direction of the company in the post Steve Jobs era.  I recall a number of times visiting the Apple store and asking them how to deal with a family of Apple consumers/fanatics.  Everything Apple created we have purchased but the problem was how do we manage the software and media we purchase for all family members to enjoy.  The recommendation was to create one central apple ID for all members and individual ones for specific use for each member.  Which fell in line with the message from the company.  This new function has just made it a bit more inconvenient for my family to function freely with the products we purchased.  It is just a question of how long will we be able to handle this little annoyance until we buy the same app for each individual device in our home.  So now instead of one downloaded purchase we now purchase five downloads.  That is the situation my sister faced.  She lived in Germany and spent a substantial amount on app purchases only to find that those purchases were not available to her when she moved to the US even though those products are available in the US and Germany.  As she was told by customer support you are not able to combine your purchases even though they are offered in both countries.  Double billing for the same product...starting to understand the statistics coming from the product release events.

As if that was not enough now it is becoming a bit problematic within the US and multiple IDs within families.  I  think I may have to revert to the old system of buying physical books, I can read the book then my sister can read it, her children can etc etc.  I am hopeful that Apple will introduce some kind of solution for families so this will not become a problem.

Sounds like its better to use Amazon.

The part that really ***** is my iPod had crashed and I had to reset it and lost all my music. I now have to reload all my music, but I can't for some of them because I have to wait 83 days before I can re-download them. Some of these are Christmas music, so how's that gonna help me after Christmas...

Mental note... stick with Amazon for music...

Additionally, some of these albums were origianlly downloaded over a year ago...

We are 4 people in this household with different Apple IDs and we are all syncing our phones to the same PC. I used not to have any problems switching and downloading. How recent is this? This really really *****. When you have competition such as Android and Amazon, why bother with Apple? We have always concentrated our device sync on a single computer that has its storage on a raid-5 disk array. Furthermore, we leverage the AirPort device to play music through our house. Now it's just getting too complicated with Apple.

I used not to like Apple before because of those complicated things. I thought things got better with OSX but we are regressing here... Might switch back to PC... :-/

I can't even BUY the episode of the Wire I already bought back home (im on vacation). The only option is "download" but then it wont let me! Iwould even pay the $5 again. How hard can a company make it to let people buy content legitimately. I mean preventing you watching it on two devices is bad enough but to block you from even buying it twice means it's just too hard with Apple now. Netflix or Amazon will do well.

This is so frustrating.  I'm literally locked out of a service I paid for - specifically to access my media.  Come on Apple.  I create and use playlists and access tons of music weekly for classes I teach.  Since my family now accessed their cloud accounts I can't access any previously downloaded music to create a new playlist for class.  We're ALL paying for cloud accounts and now can only access them 9 months/year - there's 3 of us, so now only 6.  Can I get my music and my money back or at least only pay for 1/2?  Apple Please Help.  3000+ views means more people are abandoning ship...

I'm baffled by this.

I have an iMac that we use as the primary computer for our kids. Way back when they got their frst iPods, I set them up with seperate UserIDs so they could have seperate iTunes libraries and iTunes accounts. I never had any problem with this setup until recently when we upgraded the OS to 10.6 (both kids got 5th Gen iPods).

Does this mean I can no longer host both accounts on the same desktop? will one of them be blocked from purchasing content on the iMac, or from downloading content they purchased on their iPods?

Yes this is exactly what it means. You need to setup multiple Use Accounts on the same computer then each account can have it's own itunes and Apple ID do you can achieve what you want.