Copyright Law

Japanese Cellphones to Block Illegal Downloads

By soulxtc

Embedded software would first detect if song is copyrighted, and if phone doesn’t contain code indicating it legally purchased it it won’t play.

The Recording Industry Association of Japan is definitely stepping up its game in the fight against illegal downloading with news that mobile phones in that country will soon have embedded anti-piracy features that will prevent the playing of pirated, or unauthorized, music.

According to the Financial Times, the way it works is that phones will contain software that will identify each song and query a security server to see if it’s copyrighted. If it is it will then check to see if that particular phone has legally purchased it. If it hasn’t it won’t play, it’s that simple.

The system could be in place as early as 2011 and would definitely make it the world’s first.

The Japanese have a true love affair with mobile phones, called keitai denwa, literally “portable telephones,” and had more than 110 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2008 out of a population of more than 127 million. That’s more than 87%!

It’s also estimated that mobile phones comprised more than 90% of all legal music downloads purchased in Japan in 2008.

The only question though is what about physical media purchased, ripped,, transferred to your mobile phone? It wasn’t purchased with your phone so should logically be considered “pirated.” It means that we’d once again (MPAA’s “making a DVD copy is illegal”) we’d have an industry trying to establish a nonsensical game of charging you for a product that you never get to fully own.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on September 16, 2009 (boomark / email).