News

"Too easy to copy" multimedia messages on 3G phones

An almost certainly vain attempt to copy-protect multimedia messages (MMS) transmitted over mobile phones should be urgently abandoned by the mobile data industry, according to technology solutions company, Beep Science. But it does foresee massive copying by "message forwarding" technology.

Mobile telcos are still dreaming of another golden egg-layer to replace the goose that died when voice calls got too cheap to sustain their incomes; and after the success of texting, or SMS, they are now pinning their hopes on multimedia messaging.

Beep, however, thinks that the dream could become a nightmare for media owners. Jan Rune Hetle, CEO, Beep Science, said: "Some operators we have spoken to are grappling with Digital Rights Management (DRM) as a means to protecting content, but this currently involves over complicated client-side software leaving the user with a WAP-like experience - something the operators wish to avoid at all costs."

The problem arises because the mobile phone networks actually make more money from non-copyright distribution from user to user, than they do by centrally distributed data which carries royalty payments.

Hetle said that "superdistribution" like Napster, where popular content spreads like wild fire from one user to another, "represents an opportunity for operators and the providers of content but it is currently a threat to potential revenue streams."

Some observers have assumed that since it has proved possible to make real money out of selling ring tones over the phone network, without piracy occurring, something similar will work with more complex multimedia. Hetle thinks not. He thinks simple copy protection would be a disaster.

"Simple forward lock, as currently found with ring tones and logos, simply won't work for the MMS market. Constraining the user's ability to forward MMS merely means that impulse revenue generation is wasted. What is needed is a solution which addresses these challenges." added Hetle.

Beep Sciences is promoting an alternate solution which solves the operator's problem of copyright control and forward billing issues - the Content Policy System (CPS).

The solution enables the operator to act as a billing collector for MMS content and ensures that copyright restrictions are dictated by the content and service providers. MMS content can be charged for when end-users order or download content over MMS - but also, when users forward and further superdistribute the chargeable content.

The assumption is that users will accept an extra royalty charge to themselves for "publishing" in this way, over and above what they pay for sending the MMS in the first place - or that the recipients might be happy to pay for receiving it. The royalty charge might be concealed from the users, in theory.

Beep quotes research from Frost and Sullivan, showing that "Premium MMS content is expected to produce global revenues of 31 billion Euros by 2006" but that the mobile industry stands to lose in excess of four billion Euros a year in revenue if it does not protect third party MMS content.

Hetle's prediction is that if copyright owners don't get this forwarding revenue, they won't make their material available to the networks.

He may well be right, of course; but what looks to be equally plausible, is that the ones who hold back may simply lose out on what is, essentially, extra revenue from existing copyright property. For example, film trailers might be a good type of MMS content; some users might be prepared to pay for the download, but most will see this as publicity for the film - as would the film makers.

Versioning means that as long as one medium covers its production cost, it may well boost sales of other media versions; and the way to avoid copying may be just to flood the market with initial publicity, hoping to hit the trend-setters, and accepting that they'll forward the material to friends whom they hope to impress.

Unless the operators can clearly foresee extra revenues from carrying "commercial" material rather than user-generated MMS, they'll have a hard time working out which way to go. The problem is that nobody yet knows how the bulk of MMS material will be originated.

A lot of it is going to be user-generated, from web-cams. Some of that may indeed be highly pornographic! Some of it may be pulled, illegally, off the Internet. And some of it may be downloaded from phone company portals.

A pilot project is already under way at Telenor.

If operators can't distinguish between the two types of traffic, they would be under pressure from copyright owners to just charge universally higher rates for MMS transmission, to cover the royalty issues. Given the aggressive competition already seen on SMS pricing, they'll be hard put to it to decide whether they make more by agreeing to carry commercial clips, or by charging customers extra and paying the royalties. If it turns out that Disney clips - or whatever - are enormously popular, they'll want to have them.

But if it also turns out that phone owners can distribute these anyway, phone operators will be reluctant to pay for the "loss" suffered by the media companies.

Full text of Beep's announcement can be found on their web site.