July 21, 2005
'Free' ringtones cost Europe dear
A common loophole on ringtone websites means many people are downloading popular tunes without paying a penny, research shows, reports the BBC.
"Ringtone sellers could be losing more than 50m euros (£34.7m or $60m) a year through the loophole, said security firm QPass.
QPass predicts that losses will grow as people look to download ever more types of data to their hi-tech handsets."
According to The Register, "out of 100 "leading" download sites, the preview files could be downloaded and used as ringtones at one-third of them. Two-thirds of the sites offered preview files between 15 and 30 seconds long, "the perfect length for a ringtone".
In some cases, the sites didn't have the the rights to distribute artists' ringtones, while others are ringtone specialists which are "inadvertently giving away their products for free", Qpass says.
The trouble is that many sites want customers to have the chance to listen to a ringtone before they buy. However, "this is the mobile and cyber-equivalent of test-driving a car and then not having to give it back to the garage," said Steve Shivers, a senior veep at Qpass. "When the trial is as good as the actual product, why should consumers spend money buying it? It's so simple to shoplift ringtones that even a 12 year old child could do it."
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