Users of Pandora.com were met with disappointment today. At least, users outside the U.S. were, as the popular Internet radio station has closed its doors to any IPs originating outside the U.S., due to "legal pressure" from U.S. record labels. While Pandora did not want it to come to this, it seems they had no choice:
"It's devastating for us to have to do that," Pandora founder Tim Westergren told The Register. "We're terribly disappointed and frustrated, but the existing law right now is such that we can't legally," stream to most users outside the US.
Obviously this will affect the popularity of the site, though they are hoping to restore access to those users in the future. This is a bad blow to Internet radio, which is already suffering quite a bit from the royalty fee increase that looms ahead.