China Mobile secures over 10,000 MMS subscribers, debate over privacy aroused
Nov 12 2002
China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in China, announced more than 10,000 subscribers to its multimedia messaging service (MMS) within a month since the service was officially launched on October 9.
The MMS-supported mobile phones, which enables users to take pictures with an embedded camera and immediately send them out, are predicted to be a boost to manufacturers as users move away from simple text messages.
However, the anticipated popularity of MMS is creating an unexpected debate over privacy. Questions have been put forward such as "What if people use the tiny camera for spying?" and "Is it a violation of privacy if the picture is sent to many users?" Law experts agreed that people's image rights or privacy might be violated with the new technology. "I will feel uncomfortable knowing that there is a possibility of someone taking my picture when I am walking on the street," said Zhang Lei, a 25-year old trade company secretary.
MMS has been called a "killer application" by both mobile operators and mobile phone vendors, hoping that it will lead to a boost in MMS-mobile phone sales. China Mobile also predicts that MMS will boost subscription to its 2.5G GPRS service, and GPRS mobile phones will be mainstream products on the Chinese market next year. But it agreed that the MMS service could not achieve huge growth in the short term, because it is still in its promotional period and is far from being mature.
MMS supporters hold different opinions on the privacy issue. "Privacy is not protected in public spaces. So legally, no privacy is infringed unless the photo taken in the public is publicized for commercial user," Hou Jian of Fudan University's Law School was quoted by Shanghai Ribao as saying. Xu Lujing, communication officer of Nokia (China), Shanghai Branch, on the other hand, claimed that the file size of pictures taken by MMS-supported mobile phones is only approximately 20 Kb, making it difficult for high quality publication or reproduction.
thefeature.com
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.0067% subscriber penetration in 1 month...
On pace for .08% subscriber penetration on a yearly basis...
On pace to achieve 1% subscriber penetration in 12 years... |
