October 28, 2005
Mobile phones open new front in war on music piracy
Children with the latest mobile phones are posing a new threat to sales of recorded music by illegally sharing songs, according to music industry leaders, reports The Guardian.
"The spread of mobile phones capable of carrying hundreds of easily transferable songs has opened a new front in a war against piracy. Illegal downloading has already cost the British music industry £650m in the past two years.
Technology known as Bluetooth allows songs to be transferred between handsets at the touch of a button - but only one at a time. A greater threat stems from the falling price and expanding capacity of removable memory cards which allow hundreds of songs to be transferred simply by sharing the card. Both techniques are being used by schoolchildren.
The chief executive of a company planning to sell mobile phone downloads said the piracy problem caused by mobiles could be worse than that caused by the internet. Martin Higginson, the chief executive of Monstermob, told Music Week: "If piracy on the internet was a tidal wave, this is going to be a tsunami."
... Steve Mayall of industry analyst MusicAlly, said: "The difference with phones is that you can swap songs without a computer. That's the kind of file sharing the music industry should be worried about."
The fears come as the digital music booms. This year UK single track legal downloads increased tenfold to 10m."
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