Japanese Govt., Labels, Carriers to Address Mobile Music Piracy

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 8, 2009 - 9:43am.

Tokyo - The Japanese government, in concert with record labels, mobile network operators and other parties, plans to collaborate on a campaign to help curb music piracy on mobile phones, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

Mobile phones are used to illegally download an estimated 400 million songs annually in Japan, compared to the around 330 million legal downloads sold.

Government officials will meet on Sept. 16 with the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), mobile network operators and other affected parties, to create a council that will debate ways to curtail mobile music piracy.

The council then hopes to launch its plan by April 2010, RIAJ spokesperson Yoichiro Hata told Billboard.

The plan being discussed would reportedly authenticate songs downloaded over-the-air, and send a warning message to any mobile user making an unauthorized download.

If a user repeatedly downloads unauthorized songs, the server may then either terminate the download or make the resulting song file unplayable on the user's phone.

http://snipurl.com/roc5e (Billboard)

http://www.riaj.or.jp/e/index.html