As Apple continues its takeover of the planet, it announced on Wednesday that it’s now opened an iTunes store in Thailand. But will we be shopping there? Heck, no.
I hate Apple. Hate everything about them. I hate their products that their marketing tells you are better than any other products (they’re not, they’re just expensive. I’ve ditched both an iPhone and an iMac as they were both junk and Apple’s customer service was terrible), and I hate the fact that they were started by Steve Jobs (a nastier individual you couldn’t have hoped to meet and an abysmal boss). So, now that Apple is trying to take over the music download industry in Thailand, I wouldn’t touch a Thai iTunes store with a 10 foot pole either.
Funnily, I’m not sure how many Thais will either. It’s so easy to buy bootleg music in Thailand why would anybody pay for it on iTunes?
Bootleg music CDs are available at half the shopping malls in the country, and at just about every market. You can pay 100 baht ($3.20)and get a CD that has 5 full music albums on it and, at some shops, they’ll let you choose exactly the 5 albums you want and then download them onto the disc for you while you wait. Plus, when you buy 5 discs, you get another one for free.
And, sure, America will keep harping on about Thailand being one of the worst violators of intellectual property in the world but, just like with China, they will never manage to stop Thais from producing bootleg stuff or selling it.
The bootleg industry in Thailand is a multi-billion dollar business, and as much as successive Thai governments pay lip service to the US about “stamping out bootleg products”, they never will. The simple fact is, the country makes too much money out of them.
Meanwhile, Apple opened it’s iTunes store for Thailand and, with typical Apple arrogance, IT’S ALL IN ENGLISH.
