The legal risks of buying a US iTunes voucher/gift card

My experience with safely buying a US iTunes voucher was entirely positive, but being scammed isn’t the only way things can go wrong for a South African iTunes user.

I recently came across a post discussing the legality of using US iTunes gift cards in South Africa. In short, redeeming the voucher as a South African is a breach of contract, as you are breaking Apple’s terms and conditions on voucher redemption. The article goes on to cover why Apple includes these terms, and why breaking them may also lead you to break content copyrights.

So what does this mean for us? Effectively, Apple are entitled to terminate offending iTunes accounts on the basis that their terms of service were breached, which may well result in the account owners losing access to any purchased content.

Thus far, Apple have not enforced this, and I’m hoping they never do. Currently, it’s in their financial interest to turn a blind eye in favour of increased iTunes voucher sales, but if the content providers push hard enough, Apple’s stance may change and then we all lose out.