More Discontent Over DRM Fees

ITNews: The Board of the GSM Association (GSMA) - which is the global trade association for the world's GSM operator community that serves more than 1.3 billion mobile telecommunications users - has called for an immediate review of the current licensing program proposed by MPEG LA and the companies involved in this patent pool (including ContentGuard, Intertrust, Matsushita, Philips and Sony Corporation) for use of the Open Mobile Alliance's (OMA) Digital Rights Management (DRM) 1.0 standard.

CEO and Board Member Rob Conway stated that the GSMA's Board had recognized that there was significant discontent for the terms of the licensing scheme as proposed by MPEG LA - describing the regime as "impractical, excessive and short-sighted." According to the report, members not only view the 'per device' fee, as unreasonable and excessive but they also consider the 'per transaction' fee as unworkable in the market.  The huge issue at stake here is that many frustrated mobile players just might plan to avoid using OMA DRM Standards altogether in the near future if the overall implementation is too unreasonable - which would be like letting a second cat out of the bag, since the carriers are currently enjoying what the labels wished they had - an end to end closed network that allows them to control content distribution. This would not be a good thing as we would get farther and farther away from true interoperability by proprietary DRM solutions getting implemented instead...