Ringtone Biz Goes Off Tune As Piracy Creeps In

Another piracy story…but this one isn’t aimed at consumers but rather carriers. India’s music-licensing body Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) has complained about a number of things regarding mobile music…shops are selling high-end phones with ringtones included without paying royalties on the ringtones and a similar thing seems to be happening with SIM cards. PPL also wants operators to find a way to “forward-lock” their ringtones so that the files can’t be shared with friends via Bluetooth or whatever (trust me, they’re working on it), and further claims that aggregators that sell ringtones are “under reporting”, although there isn’t any evidence given in the article to back this up.
There’s also this interesting complaint: “While in some countries, operators keep only 10 per cent of the revenue, in India, it is as high as 50-60 per cent.” Picking off the top of their heads…Japan as some other country. The interesting part about this is that it shouldn’t affect the labels at all — there’s supposed to be a fixed royalty fee paid to the copyright owners and what percentage other people take is irrelevant.
Related stories:
Mobile Phones Open New Front In Music Piracy Rhetoric
@ CTIA: Qpass On Ringtone Piracy And Revenue Leakage

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