We have discussed the issues of sending CDs and DVDs as gifts before. There is no problem with that, as each recipient receives a physical article which is paid for. OTOH sending downloads as gifts does present issues. One can send a gift token (I don't like those things ... ***) to allow the recipient to choose a download, but suppose one wants to send a particular track, album or collection to another as a gift. The easiest way might be to put everything on a memory stick and hand it to them.
The copyright holder, or seller have virtually no way that I can see of preventing this, or policing it - apart from blatant copyright infringement on a large scale for profit.
Some sites offer the possiblity of doing multiple downloads - that is more than one copy of a single item - but unless this is somehow reconciled with the actual downloaded material the difficulty of establishing that each copy sent as a gift has been properly paid for remains.
One could assuage personal guilt as a donor by payiing for more than one download copy. Alternatively one could provide the means for the recipient to do the download and "pay" - but that passes the problem on, might be inconvenient, and there is no guarantee that the particular downloads will be available when the recipient wishes to finalise his or her gift.
*** one reason I don't like tokens is because they might come with time restrictions and other issues. They are not quite the same as real money, which has no such problems.
The copyright holder, or seller have virtually no way that I can see of preventing this, or policing it - apart from blatant copyright infringement on a large scale for profit.
Some sites offer the possiblity of doing multiple downloads - that is more than one copy of a single item - but unless this is somehow reconciled with the actual downloaded material the difficulty of establishing that each copy sent as a gift has been properly paid for remains.
One could assuage personal guilt as a donor by payiing for more than one download copy. Alternatively one could provide the means for the recipient to do the download and "pay" - but that passes the problem on, might be inconvenient, and there is no guarantee that the particular downloads will be available when the recipient wishes to finalise his or her gift.
*** one reason I don't like tokens is because they might come with time restrictions and other issues. They are not quite the same as real money, which has no such problems.
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