Mobile Anti-Piracy Royalties Cut After Complaints

Reuters: The squeaky wheel gets the grease: "A group of technology firms has slashed the royalties they want to charge for essential anti-piracy systems after pressure from mobile phone companies, the group said on Wednesday." MPEG LA -- the consortium which owns all the patents necessary to develop software based on the digital rights management standard proposed by the Open Mobile Alliance -- now plans to charge $0.65 per handset and $0.25 per mobile phone subscriber per year, down from $1 per handset and 1c per song. This is still a significant amount, but is no longer pegged to the number of times the DRM technology is used, which is good...it allows companies to offer "all you can eat" subscription services without worrying that the DRM fees will put them in the red. The cut in prices comes after mobile carriers indicated they would look at alternative means of protecting content files, perhaps leading to a fragmented DRM situation with incompatible files...

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--GSMA Threatens Review of DRM Standards
--Association Says Proposed Handset DRM Fees Are Too Expensive
--OMA Denies Mobile DRM Pricing Claims