All was well in the world of iTunes for me. I have bought several albums over the year and have marveled at the convenience of it all. Yet the illusion of simplicity fell apart for me last Saturday when I purchased an 11 song album. 10 of the songs arrived over the wire as scheduled. Yet the 11th was having a problem. iTunes informed me that an "unknown error occured -208." I was instructed to try the "Advanced>Check for purchased music" item in iTunes. I tried this three times. Each time the data seemed to make it over, but at the very last step it would inform me that an error occured. I tried on Sunday, and I tried today. Meanwhile after 3 vollies back and forth between Apple's iTunes service, I have learned that I have been "escalated to iTunes Music Store engineering."
Now, let me get this straight. If I had bought this album in the physical domain from a Tower Records or what-not, I wouldn't be having this problem. I wouldn't put the CD into my stereo to discover that the 11th song was missing. Nor would I would be standing across the street from Tower Records yelling to the shop worker to, "Throw me the 11th song again!" realized as some missing plastic shard from the CD that is flying through the sky ... only to shatter at my feet.
There are incidents when brand-new CDs come scratched, which result in a similar form of agony. Now we're in the same ballpark as my iTunes h*ll. And maybe you try to return that CD, but it's out of stock ... for another week. However, in the physical domain you have return policies that are often pretty generous. Is it possible to return my faulty CD download to Apple? From a cursory look at Apple's website, it doesn't seem that I can do that. Imagine millions of people that listened to iTunes music and then "returning" the music for some set of reasons. We all know it's awfully difficult to return something digitally when you've already got a copy of it. Granted there is copy protection and so forth attached to these iTunes tracks, but super-nerds will always find a way to set us free.
Digital rights management will have to deal with the issue of returns policies as the web becomes more competitive as a primary marketplace. Consumers demand their money back when they aren't happy. I sure am not happy. And I've got nowhere or nobody to go to complain to. I'm just another anonymous voice-as-text on the Internet.
Now, as with most shattered illusions of great feelings of simplicity, I will dread the buy button on iTunes. It was good while it lasted. How do you make reliable experiences on the Internet? Without reliability, there can be no simplicity.
The SIMPLICITY Consortium's RF-ID goto guy Henry Holtzman comments, "Indeed I've been pondering other similar questions about my iTunes purchases, such as how will my kids take possession of their portion of the family music collection when they get old enough to establish their own iTunes accounts? What will the courts decide when they try to arbitrate the divorce of a couple with substantial iTunes assets? In a somewhat famous test from the early days of the iTunes Music Store, a fellow tried to auction on eBay a song he'd bought. He wanted to put Apple to the test: in the physical world, you have the right to resell you music. How would Apple handle it? There was keen interest in the experiment and the auction topped $15,000 (there was a promise to donate the proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation). Unfortunately, the digital gods conspired to leave the question unanswered. eBay decided the auction violated their policies and canceled it."
Sean Durham writes, "I had a similar problem downloading the first track of a cd from the music store. I wrote an email to the itunes support people and they reimbursed me for the whole cd purchase." I haven't gotten my reimbursement yet ...
Posted by maeda at April 5, 2005 12:00 AM