Using iTunes abroad

Back in the fall, my final paper for a communications class argued that DRM—digital rights management—technology wasn't a problematic way to restrict music and movie piracy. I said enforcing anti-piracy laws was a better strategy, and the paper got an A.

Being in France has further confirmed my belief. See, all DVDs are region-coded, which means if I buy DVDs here in France and ship them back en masse to the U.S., they won't play. Region coding is ostensibly to prevent people from buying DVDs cheaply in one region and exporting them to another for profit.But it also means that if I wanted to rent a DVD here, I wouldn't be able to play it on my American laptop... "hacks" excluded.

Here's an oddity that really frustrates me. There's nothing to stop me going into a store today and buying a French CD—it'll work anywhere in the world in any CD player. Yet the iTunes store won't let me buy French music online. Many French songs aren't in the U.S. iTunes store, but because my iTunes account has an American credit card and billing address, I can't buy those tracks.

I understand there may be legal licensing issues at play, but given that I could buy the CD in person, how do the iTunes restrictions make sense?