So it turns out that, two days before the Olympics started, Apple’s iTunes store started selling “Songs for Tibet:  The Art of Peace,” a new album featuring twenty cuts by everyone from Imogen Heap to Jackson Browne — and a twenty-first cut from the king of the Far East Coast DJs, the Grand Master with the mad skillz, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Here’s a screenshot of the album page:

For a few days, it was on the iTunes front page.  It’s currently #4 on the Billboard downloads chart, just below Conner Oberst and just above M.I.A.

So no big deal, right?  Just another compliation album.  Except for one thing:  the Tibetans are public relations geniuses:

More than 40 Olympic athletes have downloaded a Tibet album called “Songs for Tibet” to show solidarity with the Himalayan people’s struggle for more freedom, according to a Tibetan rights group.  The athletes downloaded the songs as part of a project to highlight the plight of Tibetans, who are subjected to religious restrictions from the government and an encroachment by Han Chinese in their Himalayan homeland.

International organizations including the International Campaign for Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, and Team Darfur helped contact the athletes, who were assured anonymity, the group said.

China’s official media, however, recently reported that Chinese internet users denounced the top-selling Tibet album.

Report on the semi-official news portals china.org.cn said some Chinese people have called for a boycott of products by companies that make the album available for sale on the web, and a ban on people involved in making the album from entering China.

Apparently a few of the athletes downloaded it from Beijing.

So guess what the Chinese did in response?  Block access to iTunes.  Here’s a screen shot via Students for a Free Tibet:

Now I know what you’re thinking:  so what?  The Chinese block access to sites all the time.  Yes, it’s a big deal right now, but it will go away soon, and then folks in China will have access again.

Except for Apple, it’s bigger than that:

Apple is in the early stages of a much belated (and arguably long-overdue) push into China. After nearly two decades of near-invisibility, the company opened its first Apple store in China just three weeks before the Olympics. A second Beijing store is under construction, and Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, said there are many more China stores to come.

At the same time, Apple is apparently deep into negotiations with at least one Chinese carrier to start selling a (fully-enabled) iPhone here in China.  And of course, Apple has finally begun making headway in the market against its rival computer, phone, and music player rivals.

By selling “Songs for Tibet,” Apple has placed these efforts in jeopardy.  Apple has given the government all the excuse it needs, not only to block the iTunes Music Store, but to raise extra barriers on permits for further Apple retail stores, to throw barriers in the path of Apple’s iPhone deals with state-controlled carriers, and to make the creation of a Chinese iTunes Music Store and App Store a distant dream (unless the[y] let the carriers run it.)

Apparently the folks over at China Media Blog are upset.  Because “the situation in Tibet is a far more nuanced than the media, activists, and general public outside of China understand”?  Perhaps.  But I think there’s a more likely reason:

[Apple has made] the lives of thousands of dedicated Apple customers here in China just a little more miserable - especially those of us who count on iTMS as our sole source of legitimate (non-pirated) music.

It’s a valid point — in a market where it’s easier to buy pirated music than the real thing, setting up roadblocks to the latter is going to encourage many people to take advantage of the former.  But is access to music really a valid reason to oppose a company’s decision to permit peaceful opposition voices to express themselves during the Olympics?

So kudos to Apple for having the temerity (or perhaps the cluelessness) to feature the album.  But it may cost them in the long run — China is likely to make them pay and pay and pay.

I think there are four questions to which we don’t yet know the answers.

1. Did Steve Jobs know what was going on?
2. If not, will he will pull a Rupert Murdoch — back down, drop the album, and apologize to China — in order to maintain access to the market?
3. If he doesn’t, will Apple shareholders revolt and demand that he do so?
4. If he does, what will be the impact in other markets?  Will we see efforts to organize counter-boycotts?

Right now, however, Apple is on the side of the angels (at least on this one issue).  I think I’m going to give them some download love.

But not the Tibet album.  Sorry guys, but the artist selection here blows.  Suzanne Vega, Sting, and Rush?  What is this, 1985?

Hat tip:  China Media Blog

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