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Japan's Cell Phones May Get DRM, At Music Industry Behest
An anonymous reader writes "The Japanese Music Industry is currently in talks with Japanese cell phone providers to introduce a new anti-piracy system in all cell phones in Japan. This new system would make DRM software mandatory in all cell phones; this would connect to a DRM server on the Internet whenever the cell phone user would try to play a song. The song would only play if the response of the server would be positive. Otherwise no song would be played. The system raises several questions and concerns that the Financial Times article did not address. These include ripped legally bought music and music that has been released under a CC license or similar. Who would pay for the costs of the DRM checks, and what would happen if no connection could be established?"
In what way will this provide _ANY_ benefit to legitimate users?
More music sellers will be willing to provide music through such a system, making the available amount of music larger as a whole. (Kinda like how the vast majority of legitimate paying mobile application developers have flocked to the iphone, where the largest successful DRM implementation is)
I'm not saying I at all agree with this plan, i'm simply answering your question.
Forget about no coverage, usually snakes are more of problem.
This may be the same reason why top100 music generally licks balls
Could you clarify - is this meant to be a good thing or a bad thing? Surely it depends on who the balls belong to and who or what does the licking.
Having this system in place will make sellers willing to provide more music. Because there is lots of popular music that HASN'T been ripped into downloadable form. FInally, the long song drought is OVER!
When a comment on slashdot contains the words top100 licks balls and gets a 5 - insightful rating, you know that the RIAA painted itself into a corner that may never dry off again.
Travel to another country, listen to your music. Enjoy your $20000 roaming data charge.