Good news, Europe: you've been granted a reprieve! You've probably already heard that the iTunes Music Store won't be coming to your continent until later than Apple originally projected; The Independent recently reported that the rollout may even be delayed until sometime next year, due to "disputes between record companies and their artists over licensing." (Wow, so Windows users may get the iTMS before European Mac fans? Oh, the humanity...)

Well! Who'd have ever thought that any sort of legal issue would be quicker to resolve in the United States? Heck, even when disputes and negotiation never make it into actual litigation, slothlike progress in any type of legal process is practically as American as baseball, apple pie, and a firmly held conviction that anyone with the sheer unmitigated gall not to be born in the U.S. in the first place should at least have the decency to learn to speak English. (Including those funny-talking English guys, goldurnit!)

Anyway, as it turns out, musical artists in Europe typically have "different arrangements in each country over how much they are paid for a digital download," which kind of knocks Apple's whole "every song is 99 cents" system right on its hinder. Trying to administer a system in which individual songs cost different amounts of money in each European country sounds like a headache and a half (and we're getting all sorts of crazy mental images of, for instance, Londoners streaming into Paris with their PowerBooks to save sixty pence on the download of the latest Annie Lennox album). It's not an insurmountable problem, of course, but even Apple Europe bigwig Pascal Cagni now insists that "Euro iTMS" will not be online by September.

Which is why you've got what amounts to a stay of execution. Trust us, folks, the iTMS is evil in its simplicity and it's more addictive than crack. Heed our advice and take these extra iTMSless months to get your affairs in order and straighten out any potential financial snags, because it's only a matter of time before you, too, are still up at 4:30 AM, clicking "Buy Now" buttons at a feverish pace and muttering things like "I don't even like ABBA, but a 23-minute medley for [insert minuscule amount of European money here] is too good a bargain to pass up" and "I didn't even know that Sonic Youth had recorded a cover of Heart's 'Barracuda'!" You've been warned.