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Previously it was possible to buy from an iTunes account registered your home country from wherever you happened to be, provided you had a credit card whose billing address was in the same country as the account.

But under the new Terms of Sale

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this is no longer permitted.

"Purchases and rentals (as applicable) from the iTunes Store are available to you only in the UK. If you are not in the UK you may not use or attempt to use the service," the revised terms state.

Apple adds that it may use technologies to verify compliance, presumably by detecting the IP address of the user to determine their location.

This is not the first time that Apple has changed the rules for buying from iTunes over international borders. In the past it was possible to use a credit card from one country, for example one issued by a UK bank, to make purchases in another, provided the billing address was in the latter. That is no longer permitted.

Apple has given no explanation for the change, which may be related to the recent announcement that three of the four major record companies had agreed to join the other in dropping their insistence that Apple applies DRM to iTunes music downloads.