Japanese Gov’t and music labels teaming up to “disable music functions of those who listen to unauthorized music”.

Count me thoroughly impressed and disgusted by the actions that music labels and bass akwards governments will go to in the hope of preventing piracy innovation. If you thought certain “3-strikes” plans that kicked suspected, not convicted file sharers off the internet were bad enough, a new friendship forming in Japan may signal an even more daring assault on consumers’ rights. According to a report revealed by Elmundo, the Japanese government and one or several music companies are in the beginning stages of teaming up to create a technology that would disable the music functions on cellphones of users who listen to “unauthorized music”. Now, as of right now, unauthorized isn’t detailed meaning there isn’t any distinction between pirated content or content that is simply purchased through a third party in which some greedy entitlest feels they deserve a stake in. Such a technology is essentially just like a mobile version of the 3-strikes plans that are floating around the planet in various forms. Just think how quickly some greedy music label could abuse such a service.

If a cellphone manufacturer were to partner up with a certain music label and that label in turn demanded this software or DRM of sorts be installed on the handset, any user who put music content on that headset that wasn’t purchased from the label/manufacturer partnership could have that phone or in the very least music services disabled — a measure that is extremely far reaching and one of the greatest invasions of privacy I’ve seen yet!

According to Freekbits:

Details are scarce but apparently the system would consist of a central database which contains information about music which is authorized to be downloaded, and would be responsible for verifying that cellphone users weren’t downloading illicit music. Those that do would be sent warning messages…with persistent violators having the music functions on their phones disabled…

This is all in it’s early stages and again, this report is preliminary. However, I’ll definitely follow this story closely. If policies or controlling schemes such as these are enacted on mass produced devices, I will officially stop paying for anything marketed by any label. Stay tuned…

Source: Tech Dirt
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