The Yomiuri Shimbun reports:
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and the telecom and music industries plan to jointly introduce a system to prevent cell phone users from downloading illegally distributed music files to their cell phones via the Internet, it has been learned.
The system, which could be operational as early as fiscal 2010, will be the first of its kind in the world, according to sources.
[…]
Under the envisaged system, when users download music files to their cell phones, the song’s ID information will be sent from the cell phone to a computer server, which will check the information. The server then judges whether the music file was distributed legitimately. If the file was copied illegally, a warning message will be sent on the user’s cell phone.
If a user continues to download music, the server will either terminate the downloads or render the phone incapable of playing the music after it has been downloaded.
Read more on Daily Yomiuri Online.
Art credit: “Music Fight” by Leonid Afremov, Deviant Art