Originally published December 14 2005
Antipiracy companies to sign a deal for cell phones
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The licensing deal will propose a reduction in tariff standards and make legally acquired songs and films similarly protected on a range of devices. This would allow carriers to start selling media online and compete with internet stores.
The licensing deal is expected to kick start a long-anticipated open standard for the protection of digital entertainment such as music, film and video on cell phones, offering more choice to consumers without the lock-in of a proprietary system.
"The beginning of 2006, that's what we're expecting," said Larry Horn, vice president of licensing at MPEG LA.
The industry group represents the key patent holders of digital rights management, or DRM, software used in the open standard proposed by the Open Mobile Alliance.
An agreement would mark the end of a drawn-out disagreement over licensing terms.
Telecommunications carriers said that the MPEG LA group charged too much money for the antipiracy technology, which is essential to protect music and film against unlimited copying and sharing.
MPEG LA proposed a reduced tariff in April of $0.65 per cell phone and an annual $0.25 per service per subscriber.
Operators and handset makers still found that too expensive, pointing out that the joint license payments would exceed the total revenue from digital entertainment at the moment.
Horn said that the license agreement with operators and consumer technology companies would "pretty closely" resemble the April proposals.
If the OMA standard were in place, telecoms carriers could start selling entertainment online, competing with Internet media stores such as Apple Computer's iTunes and Sony's Connect but offering more interoperability.
The OMA standard is designed in such a way that legally acquired songs and films are protected similarly on a range of devices, including handsets, music players and TVs, without limiting consumers to the products of a single vendor.
Japan's Sony and Dutch Philips Electronics are among the companies that license their DRM technology through the MPEG LA group.
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