So far, people could freely choose the iTunes store of their liking – for example, yours truly chose to base his account on iTunes USA as it was the first store where the infamous promo codes became available. Apple has not performed any kind of geolocation checks so far – but it looks like this will change in the near future.
German Apple blogger Florian Schimanke reports that Apple has recently changed the terms and conditions for users of the German iTunes store – they now have to agree to the following:
Users are not permitted to access content of the US iTunes store from outside of the USA. Apple is explicitly permitted to use technology to make sure that the aforementioned condition is met.
Even though no technical limitations are in place as of this writing, I predict that they will pop up shortly…
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The good news is that Apple doesn’t really want to do that, as it will create a big problem for the many thousands of Americans who want to use iTunes when travelling overseas. Because of this, users outside the US can buy content if they can get a valid US iTunes account and gift cards. Check out http://www.itunesaccess.com to both get a US account and gift card redemption codes.
EDITOR’s NOTE: I emailed the service and got no reply from them. So – caveat emptor.