Indian Music Industry Launches Music Mobile Exchange To Fight Piracy
In a bid to curb music piracy, the Indian Music Industry (IMI) has launched licencing initiative called Music Mobile Exchange (MMX). Under the new initiative, mobile store owners will be issued licence for offering music downloads to cell phone users. According to IMI Secretary General Savio D’Souza, now-a-days there is a massive demand for music for mobile phones and shopkeepers often advertise downloads offers. He added that such kinds of downloading offers are very much illegal.
The shopkeepers and cyber café owners download music from the web or illegally copy it from cassettes or CDs and then transferr it to mobile phones. An average shopkeeper makes around Rs 7,500-12,500 monthly through music downloads and other music applications. Such type of practices affects the music industry badly leading to huge losses.
As per an estimate, the Indian Music Industry incur a loss of 300 crore each year due to mobile chip piracy. Now to put a lid on indiscriminate music piracy, IMI has introduced Music Mobile Exchange (MMX). While informing about the new initiative, Savio D’Souza said that to have the licence a shopkeeper will have to pay Rs 1,500 to Rs 5,000 per month per computer, depending on the kind and location of the shop.
Queries
However there are a lot of questions remain to be answered which this brief article does not address –
1. What are the penalties for the errant mobile shop owners if they fail to take up the license to distribute mobile music?
2. Have have mobile operators responded to this initiative?
3. What is the response of mobile shops on this initiative?
4. How does IMI plan to implement this initiative since the area of implementation is vast and monitoring each and every mobile shop for licenses would be an almost impossible job, but still needs to be done?
5. I feel that Rs. 1500 to 5000 is too low an amount for a license. To actually deter the shop keeper from selling music illegally, the penalties in monetary terms including licensing should be much harsher.
6. What is stopping the shop keeper to still sell music illegally in-spite of taking a license?
This article actually doesn’t give much information on the initiative, and a deeper understanding of it is required to actually get answers to the above and related queries.
Please input your views and queries. Eagerly looking forward to them.
Thanks
