Cell Phone Ringtones Give Music Industry Another Headache

Alien54 writes "Xingtone's desktop software allows you to create mobile phone ringtones using digital audio files on your computer. As seen here, The software evokes the same ``oh wow, oh no'' reaction from the labels that greeted the original Napster. The fear is that people will make 30 second long ringtones out of popular songs, thus compounding the file-sharing problem while robbing the music industry of a new source of revenue. Many users find the technology quite cool. IANAL, but current copyright guidelines seem to permit fair use of "Up to 10% of a body of sound recording, but no more than 30 seconds". All of which should make for an interesting legal debate. I can hear the gnashing of teeth already."