Published on Newswire, September 15 1999

Here's a good working definition of stupidity: a song which you can purchase, fully authorised, from the Web -- but only if you live in the US.

The culprit in this instance is Tori Amos, the kooky singer/songwriter (think 'Professional Widow', 'Cornflake Girl', 'Crucify' and topless woman suckling a pig). Amos herself has long worked hard to present a technology-friendly image. Her official Web site is awash with Net-only bonus tracks, tour diaries and useful links, and her recent US tour with Alanis 'I want to whine a lot' Morissette was sponsored by MP3.com.

However, her tech sensibility doesn't appear to extend to her new single, 'Bliss', which is being offered as a download for 99 US cents through retailer CDnow (the normal CD costs $US2.49). This is all very well and good and digitally proactive, except for the notice that reads "'Bliss' is available for transmission to U.S. addresses only". Ah yes, we'd all forgotten that the World Wide part of the Web doesn't need to extend much further than Florida or, at a pinch, Alaska.

Of course, this stupid arrangement actually has very little to do with Amos herself, and everything to do with the kind of recording contracts which prevent promotional activities in one country from spilling over into another. Considering that so much of the anti-record-company spiel that bands like Public Enemy promote is based on the premise that globe-straddling record companies are screwing fans and artists alike, it's amusing that Warners (the conglomerate in Amos' case) doesn't seem to have its exploitative strategies fully in place.

CDnow is concerned enough about the download that it doesn't simply place a warning on the site; if you try to access it with an Australian account (as I, a longstanding customer, initially did), it refuses to let you proceed any further. Of course, where there's a will there's a way, and it took me all of about two minutes to create a new CDnow account with a more-or-less spurious delivery address in the good old US of A, and I was in, even though my credit card details remained Australian. Having chosen a fake address in New York, it even charged me the appropriate sales tax.

Technically, of course, this was an illegal act. But in an environment where MP3 copies of 'Bliss' are probably already trading cost-free on a dozen sites the world over, I should think Warner would be grateful for all the sales it can get. And I certainly can't see any reason why being Australian should disqualify me from paying to listen to music I like. If the record companies can think of one, perhaps they'd like to let me know.