.mobi (also known informally as dotMobi) is a top-level domain approved by ICANN and managed by the mTLD global registry dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web. It is financially backed and sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, Orascom Telecom, GSM Association , Hutchison Whampoa, Syniverse Technologies, and VISA, with an executive from each company having a seat on mTLD's board of directors.^[1][2][3]

Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. It may also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. For digital protection of software and hardware devices not specifically related to protection of digital media, see copy protection.

The use of digital rights management has been controversial. Advocates argue it is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams.^[1] Opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation, maintain that the use of the word "rights" is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term digital restrictions management.^[2] Their position is essentially that copyright holders are attempting to restrict use of copyrighted material in ways not included in the statutory, common law, or Constitutional grant of exclusive commercial use to them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other opponents, also consider DRM schemes to be anti-competitive practices.^[3]

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal. (The remaining fee-based parts, new owner Rupert Murdoch announced, will be "really special ... and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive." This calls to mind one version of Stewart Brand's original aphorism from 1984: "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive ... That tension will not go away.")

At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately. In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional. He sold millions of razors to the Army at a steep discount, hoping the habits soldiers developed at war would carry over to peacetime. He sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows. The freebies helped to sell those products, but the tactic helped Gillette even more. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades. A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets.

IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide, with a membership comprising some 1400 record companies in 73 countries and affiliated industry associations in 48 countries. IFPI's mission is to promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music in all markets where its members operate.

Kazaa recently modified the software in an effort to curb piracy

File-sharing site Kazaa will become a legal music download service following a series of high profile legal battles.

The peer-to-peer network has also agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry.

The announcement follows the release of a music industry report that says more than 20 billion music tracks have been downloaded illegally in the last year.

File sharing and music piracy are key factors in the recent decline in record sales, according to the music business.

"We have won another battle in an ongoing war," said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). "We move forward with a spring in our step."

The bruised and bloodied music industry appears finally to be winning its battle to force Internet providers to act over illegal downloading, after years of seeing its wishes fall largely on deaf ears.

4th April 2006

London, 4th April 2006

In the second of a series of occasional interviews with key players in the entertainment industry, the BBC News website speaks to Brad Duea, president of online music service Napster.

The last two years have seen the virtual transformation of the global music industry due to physical and online piracy, falling sales of CDs, and the rise of legal downloads and portable music players such as the iPod.

But the impact has been as great on consumers, who have seen the way they can buy and use music change just as radically.

No company represents that shift in the music industry better than Napster.

Once a byword for piracy, it is now a firm at the vanguard of online services.

There are still people fearful of a cannibalistic effect of digital on their cash cow plastic retail business Brad Duea, Napster

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales