Mobile Shoplifting?

I hate those shock press releases that state the obvious and try to destroy a successful market.

The current winner in this field is Qpass with it's press release on "Mobile Shoplifting".

So what is "Mobile Shoplifting"? Basically it's taking advantage of the capabilities of modern mobile handsets to play a wide range of media files such as .wav and .mp3's. The user visits the ringtone or media provider's website, previews the tone and then just right clicks with their mouse to save the track to the computer. This is then transferred by data cable or bluetooth, thus providing a free ringtone.

Now, this isn't exactly rocket science, and it's something some users and all ringtone providers were aware of. However, the base of users with the skill to do this was not that widespread. As most newspapers in the UK have picked up on this over the past week so there is no harm in me covering it here now.

Qpass's research suggests that over a third of sites are insecure and allow this sort of downloading, and two thirds offer segments between 15 and 30 seconds long, i.e. a ringtone. Unsurprisingly, they offer to plug the gap by selling ringtone proiders a streaming service that is harder to rip. However, without going into details, it is possible, it just makes it that bit harder for the average user.

Of course no press release is complete without some staggering statistics, and "Ringtone Shoplifting" doesn't let us down.

Apparently, this is costing the industry 50 million a year, and after their press release they estimate losses could reach 336 million between now and 2007.

The moral of the story is that if it's out there on the web, someone will find a way to use it beyond it's original purpose. Press releases condemming piracy of content and then explaining how to do it is just irresponsible and damaging to the whole mobile content industry.