A person now living in Canada who was told late last week by an Apple support person that his songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store were not usable outside the United States, learned recently that this is not the case.

Shawn Yeager wrote an e-mail to Politechbot.com last Friday, reporting that after he had e-mailed customer support when he could not re-authorize his songs to play after moving to Canada, the missinformed support staff told him that it was part of the Terms of Sale.

The Terms of Sale, which can be missinterpreted, state: "Purchases from the iTunes Music Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance."

Yeager was told by an e-mail from Apple on Tuesday that the licensing wasn't the problem, but that a small glitch with his account caused his music to not be available. "I'm certain that AMS customer support will be briefed, to put it mildly, on correct interpretation of the Terms of Sale." wrote Yeager in his online blog on Tuesday. "Personally I'm pleased with Apple's response, though it required a small, online forest fire to get their attention."

News sites such as MacNN posted stories Monday that iTunes songs would not play, or even dissappear, when taken outside the U.S.

This proved to be incorrect. In order for users to use the iTunes Music Store to download music, customers have to provide a U.S. billing address in their Apple account, as well as provide a U.S. credit card, but, according to Apple customer support when we contacted them on Friday, a user who moves outside the U.S will "at this time be able to use any service of the iTunes Music Store aside from purchasing new songs." This including authorization.

According to the New York Times (free account required), an Apple spokesperson said last Friday that Shawn Yeagers' problem was, again, only caused by a small system error, stating that, "Once you download a song, it's yours."

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