Mobile poses threat to content industry - Illegal downloads will cause heavy losses by 2010

By Jayant Mishra @ Friday, July 18, 2008 11:59 AM

Section - Telecoms/Digital Content

Indian mobile content and music providers are in a huff, with the industry expecting to lose between $151 million and $186 million a year by 2010 because of the sharing of cell phone content by mobile users and illegal downloads via various web sites.

India boasts around 270 million mobile users, with approximately 30 per cent of these using devices that are capable of transferring and downloading music.

Revenue generated from the sale of cellphone-oriented ringtones, wallpapers, songs and videos in the country accounts to $116 million. Of the total business, almost half is accounted for by shops and websites that don’t even honour the copyright of the merchandise being sold, depriving the original artists, reports Mumbai Mirror.

CEO of mobile content developer Mauj Telecom Manoj Dawane said the web today is flooded with websites that maintain content for free in order to attract advertisers. 'But putting contents for free results in losses for us,' he said.

Savio D’Souza, secretary-general of the Indian Music Industry (IMI), an association fighting against music piracy, said users sharing content over their Bluetooth-enabled handsets is illegal, and comes under the provisions of the Copyright Act’s sections 51, 52A, 63, 65 and 68A in Indian law. “People who transfer songs and ringtones are liable for punishment under the same act,” he said. X

IMI has started approaching mobile makers, like Nokia, to take corrective measures to stop sharing of copyright content on the handsets.