Time Restriction on Reproducing MP3 Phone Files

MP3 phone sales will become full-scale as a conflict between copyright groups and mobile phone companies on whether to restrict the usage of MP3 phone or not is resolved.

The Ministry of Information and Communication announced on March 2nd that it agreed to impose a two month time limit of 72 hours (three days) in which phonogram right groups such as the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP) and mobile phone related businesses such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, KFT and SK Telecom can reproduce MP3 files using a MP3 phone without the copyright holders` permission.

Another controversy is expected as the KAPP announced that "we will ask for the same measurement on the matter of MP3 file appliances such as MP3 players, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and smart phones."

--What is an MP3 phone?

A MP3 phone is a mobile phone that has an MP3 player function. Mobile phones have already absorbed the roles of digital camera, camcorder (camera=video recorder) and personal mobile terminal; it has its eyes set on the role of MP3 player as well.

LG Electronics released its MP3 phone “LP3000” to the market for the first time last month, and Samsung also plans to showcase its MP3 phone “V4200” soon. The expected price is around 0.5m won (around 400 dollars).

Those phones can store 15 to 20 MP3 music files and have lots of flash memory: around 100MB.

There is the sense that the MP3 phones will be a hit because of the fact that LG Telecom and KTF have secured approximately 50,000 and 10,000 subscribers, respectively.

There is a function to stop replay of particular songs after a fixed permitted time in cases of files that are being played without copyright certification.

--Continuing controversy

The reason why copyright groups react sensitively to the advent of MP3 phones is because of the distribution power of mobile phones.

Groups like the KAPP worry about decreased music sales and an increase in the amount of illegal music copying if mobile phones include built-in MP3 functions.

Domestic mobile phone sales (200m average a month) far exceed MP3 player sales (13m).

The team leader of Jeong Se-hee of Danawa, a consumer site, anticipated that "a MP3 phone will make inroads into the low-priced MP3 player market defined as players that have a capacity of 256MB or less."

However, consumers are opposed to any functional restrictions by saying, "It will become impossible to listen to a CD when a fair price was paid for it after changing it into MP3 files."

It will depend on the result of after-negotiations to determine whether the established restriction on replay time will be removed or whether the functional restriction will be reinforced with measures such as restrictions on MP3 sound quality.

Although the standard Internet music file and MP3 file capacity is only one-tenth that of general audio CD files, they are mainly used to distribute illegal copies of commercial discs through the internet because sound quality is near-CD.

Tae-Han Kim freewill@donga.com