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[IP] Mobile phones open new front in war on music piracy





Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 28, 2005 4:34:28 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Mobile phones open new front in war on music piracy


Dave:

For IP, if you think its sufficiently newsworthy in IP-land

From today's (UK) Guardian newspaper:


Mobile phones open new front in war on music piracy

Robert Booth
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian

Children with the latest mobile phones are posing a new threat to sales of recorded music by illegally sharing songs, according to music industry leaders.

The spread of mobile phones capable of carrying hundreds of easily transferable songs has opened a new front in a war against piracy. Illegal downloading has already cost the British music industry £650m in the past two years.

The chief executive of a company planning to sell mobile phone downloads said the piracy problem caused by mobiles could be worse than that caused by the internet. Martin Higginson, the chief executive of Monstermob, told Music Week: "If piracy on the internet was a tidal wave, this is going to be a tsunami."

The fears have been triggered partly by Nokia's plans to release a phone early next year capable of storing 3,000 songs - enough for about 250 albums. The Sony Walkman phone, launched this month, has the capacity for about 500 songs and, although only 10cm (4in) long, sports built-in stereo speakers.

With 900m tracks already available on websites for illegal downloading, the growth of mobiles that play music raises the prospect of millions more in people's pockets which can be shared illegally without even connecting to a computer.


 . . .

Full story at:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1602743,00.html


Cheers

Brian


--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/


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