Music labels unveil new mobile phone anti-piracy technology

October 15, 2003

Via our news submit GristyMcFisty lets us know that last Monday music
giants Warner Music and Bertelsmann BMG introduced new a new
anti-piracy technology enabling music fans to download songs onto a mobile phone
and share music with friends. The new digital rights management technology,
called the OMA DRM server, was developed by Oslo-based Beep Science
AS.

The technology works on the concept of a
restricted peer-to-peer network in which owners of mobile phones equipped with
multimedia messaging, or MMS, can send and receive pictures and sound clips to
and from other mobile phone users:

With OMA DRM, the music labels can collect revenues for each song
downloaded off a central computer server and for those that are swapped
between mobile phone users, said Jan Rune Hetle, chief executive of Beep
Science.

The emergence of MMS phones enables media companies to
sell a variety of short media clips from songs to condensed sports
highlight reels.

Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan expressed some
skepticism the new technology would stamp out mobile piracy.

"DRM is a great idea if it meant users could only
secure the music from secure sites. But you can still get around DRM by
sourcing the music elsewhere," Mulligan said.

Rune Hetle said BMG and Warner Music are the first two
major music labels to try the technology, which is being deployed in
conjunction with mobile technology outfit Netsize Group. Netsize offers
the technology to 50 mobile phone operators across Europe, including
Vodafone (VOD.L) and Swisscom (SCMZn.VX).

The article adds that Jupiter Research in London predicts
that European sales of ring tones and logos alone will jump ninefold by
2007 to 3.7 billion euros (US$ 4.32 billion).

Source: Yahoo! News