{"id":5,"date":"2005-10-25T16:33:20","date_gmt":"2005-10-25T20:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/2005\/10\/25\/chinese-internet-mobile-phone-compani"},"modified":"2005-10-25T16:33:20","modified_gmt":"2005-10-25T20:33:20","slug":"chinese-internet-mobile-phone-companies-jointly-release-song-exclus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/2005\/10\/25\/chinese-internet-mobile-phone-companies-jointly-release-song-exclus\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Internet &amp; mobile phone companies jointly release song exclusively on mobile phones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a5'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An Internet company (Baidu.com) and a mobile provider (Hurray! Ltd.) in China have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interfax.cn\/showfeature.asp?aid=6753&amp;slug=TELECOM-WIRELESS-INTERNET-MOBILE-HURRAY-BAIDU\">joined forces to release a music single<\/a> that will only be playable on mobile phones.  The song will be available for download from the Internet, but has only been released as a rigntone.  The song, by Chinese artist Chen Hao, apparently will not be released on CD or transferable to PCs (or, presumably, playable on MP3 players), and is ostensibly protected from piracy through proprietary <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_rights_management\">Digital Rights Management<\/a> software embedded in the song.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;The single will be released and promoted on the Internet and mobile network instead of via traditional CDs so as to avoid piracy problems,&#8217; Du Hua, spokesperson from Hurray! told Interfax Monday. &#8216;The large user base of Internet and mobile phones in China will also help to better promote the song across the country.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Baidu is a major Chinese search engine which has come under fire in recent months for providing netizens with links to unauthorized content.  This is (as the article notes) clearly an attempt by Baidu to clean up its image, since copyright owners view Baidu as a contributory infringer, and this reputation has not done wonders for its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestandard.com.hk\/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=2&amp;art_id=1457&amp;sid=4582527&amp;con_type=1\">flagging US stock price<\/a>.  Notably, Hurray! believes these kinds of mobile phone\/internet company partnerships are where the Chinese music industry is headed: &#8220;&#8216;The cooperation on music downloads between mobile value-added services providers and Internet search engine operators should be a new business model in China, to settle the online copyright problem,&#8217; said Du.<\/p>\n<p>This provides another in a growing list of examples of how the difficult copyright enforcement environment in China is causing media\/entertainment companies to seek new business models and employ innovative <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_rights_management\">Digital Rights Management<\/a> schemes as they attempt to generate revenue from digital content.  It will be interesting to watch, but it&#8217;s difficult to imagine a model like this will have long-term viability without giving users more flexible options for enjoying their content.  (Hard to imagine people will be satisfied only listening to their mobile phone ring.)  In any event, if the song proves popular, it seems unlikely they&#8217;ll be able to prevent people from finding a way to make illegal copies and distributing them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Internet company (Baidu.com) and a mobile provider (Hurray! Ltd.) in China have joined forces to release a music single that will only be playable on mobile phones. The song will be available for download from the Internet, but has only been released as a rigntone. The song, by Chinese artist Chen Hao, apparently will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}