Vintage piracy in mobile bottle

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Vintage piracy in mobile bottle

Mobile chip piracy, a concern for music, movie and gaming industries as IMI intensifies crackdown

Sushma Naik

Thursday, April 10, 2008

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HYDERABAD, INDIA: The growing penetration of the mobile phone has spun off a piracy wave fear in the music industry, which it is desperately trying to fight.

Piracy has a new enemy on the block, one that is accessible to 300 million Indians, and has brought about a revolution -- the mobile phone.

While the communication device has great growth opportunity, it has also become the a medium for piracy, one that will create as much if not more damage to corporates than the other existing physical forms.

Downloading content such as music, movie clips and games illegally on to the mobile phone can amount to piracy of mobile content or 'mobile chip piracy' a term used by Indian Music Industry (IMI).

These transfers can be made either through wireless methods such as Bluetooth or physical methods such as data cable and mobile cards with content already stored on it.

Digitized content and the easily available storage devices such as USB, memory sticks or flash cards have made data transfer easier than ever before. On one hand it enhances consumer convenience but also brings great damage to the music, movie and gaming industries.

Potent mobile

Music, movie and gaming industries stand to gain excessively, through a plethora of choices that can be provided on the cell phone such as ring tones, movie content, gaming clips and many more.

"The mobile phone is a strong revenue stream and it is only business sense for the industry to have the need to protect it," said Savio D'souza, secretary general, Indian Music Industry.

IMI estimates that 10 per cent out of the 300 million subscribers in India would use 'chips' or data transfer devices.

Assuming that 10 per cent of mobile users download content worth Rs 100 from stores and through other illegal methods once a year, the revenue loss could amount to Rs 3-4 crore.

Physical piracy makes the music industry poorer by another Rs 600 crore.

The high growth of mobile usage especially in the Asian countries is a cause of great concern, as this revenue loss is set to grow multifold.

"Don't forget that tomorrow these storage device may very well come embedded in the mobiles making it even more difficult to have secure content," lamented D'souza.

Apart from the revenue loss to music, movie and gaming industries, there is a significant uncalculated loss to network service providers, value-added service providers and distributor partners, who miss out on potential consumers.

IMI action

With such revenues at stake, the IMI has pulled up its socks and collaborated with police nationwide to stop mobile chip piracy at the ground level itself.

"We have conducted over 300 raids since October last year and interact with police stations in whose limits such piracy activities occur," said D'souza.

The raids are part of the organization's strategy to fight intellectual property rights infringements. An anti-piracy team also creates awareness among police officials to help them act against mobile chip pirates.

Technology savior?

Whether technology will bring a solution to piracy is a debate that rages with experts in the field.

Digital Rights Management technologies are those that have access control to free distribution of content.

While many corporates plan to implement DRM technologies to protect their products, none have been completely successful. In the digital world, Sony Playstation has enabled its latest version PS 3 to be non-compatible to pirated games.

"DRM technologies may be a technical strategy, but legal systems must be put in place as any lock, however secure, needs to be broken only once to be misused," said D'souza while commenting on the need to spread awareness on mobile chip piracy.

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