OMA cellphone DRM cartel caves; lowers fees from ludicrous to laughable
We reported earlier this year on the Open Mobile Alliance's imposing of ridiculous fees to carriers for the us of their DRM technologies for preventing piracy of mobile phone content. The OMA has now responded to the cries of the GSM Association and others, and by way of displaying of what an "open" mobile alliance they are, have lowered their licensing fees by a third, to $0.65 per handset. This would make the overall cost of outfitting all the phones sold this year with OMA's DRM down from completely outrageous to merely incredibly unreasonable, seeing as how the entire expected revenues from the digital music market totals to about the same price. We sincerely hope the cell carriers see this as a sign that DRM is pretty much a bad deal for everyone involved and scrap the idea entirely… but we won't be holding our breath.
[Via Boing Boing]
