Nokia Comes With Music T’s and C’s include ‘Abusive Use Policy’
Nokia’s Comes With Music service doesn’t launch until 16 October in the UK, but the terms and conditions for it are online already – you can find them here on Carphone Warehouse’s website (the page is the top result when you Google ‘comes with music terms and conditions’).
The bit everyone will be interested in is the section on ‘Abusive Use Policy’:
“Your licence to download Comes With Music Content is limited to your personal non-commercial and reasonable use. If our analysis of your use of the Service suggests abusive or excessive downloading, Nokia may contact you and ask you to moderate your usage. If you fail to comply with such a request, Nokia reserves the right to restrict or terminate your use of the Service.”
In truth, it’s no surprise to see this kind of clause in there. Nokia needs some recourse if a few users start hammering the service to a ridiculous degree. For the vast majority of users, CWM will ‘feel’ unlimited, in that they can download as much as they want.
However, the clause is still likely to cause a stir – particularly on tech blogs. Given the interest in this aspect of CWM, it’s still a bit fuzzy – users won’t know what Nokia defines as ‘excessive’ usage until they’re rapped on the knuckles for it. Then again, if Nokia were to set a specific number of downloads, it would risk creating something of a badge of honour for geeks to aim for.
Some other interesting points:
- A user’s 12 or 18-month CWM service period only starts once they activate the service. So if they buy the handset in October but don’t activate CWM till November, it’s from November that the period starts.
- The PINs used to register a CWM handset are country-specific. In other words, people outside the UK won’t be able to buy UK 5310 CWM phones on 16 October to use.
- You can store CWM downloaded tracks on one mobile and one PC at a time, but you can’t burn them to CD.
- There are also more details on how the ‘restoration period’ works after your initial 12 or 18 months, with info on how you can or can’t re-download your songs if you upgrade your PC or mobile.
Tags: Comes With Music, nokia
October 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
[...] T&c’s also reveal that although the service offers unlimited downloads, there’s still an Abusive Use clause that stresses the service is for personal, [...]
February 7th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Very very clever bit of marketing. On the face of it, it looks like a good deal however once the required quota of subscribers is achieved there is nothing stopping this service from being a paid service whether subscription or other. Then it’s a question of value thereafter.
Moving your music from one device to another. Oh yeah one phone your Nokia and one computer. How many people out there have a single device. Not many. Most have iPods, a laptop a desk top etc. All of a sudden not such a flexible service.
Finally give the music industry traction I don’t think so. Right now my music is cheaper than it has ever been. The music industry wants a real competitor to a leading music service ( iTunes). As a consumer I know who I want to shop with in the long run and
its not Nokia or Amazon. To do so would allow an industry which has significantly exploited consumers regain traction and quite frankly I hope that doesn’t happen.
Thanks Nokia but I think no thanks!