Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Japanese bookstores desperate to stop 'digital shoplifting' with cellphones

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 19:52:45 -0400

Japanese bookstores desperate to stop 'digital shoplifting' with cellphones
Mon Jun 30, 3:23 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese publishers said Monday they will launch a
campaign this week to stop digital shoplifters -- people who visit bookstores
to photograph magazine pages with their cellphones rather than make a
purchase.

Digital shoplifting is becoming a big problem as
camera-equipped mobile handsets are spreading
fast and their quality is improving greatly, said
Kenji Takahashi, an official at the Japan
Magazine Publishers Association.

Starting Tuesday, bookstores across the nation
will put up posters urging magazine readers to
"refrain from recording information with
camera-mounted cellphones and other devices."

The association has printed 30,000 posters for the campaign, which will last
until August 20 in cooperation with bookstores and the Telecommunications
Carriers Association.

There are 20,000 bookstores in Japan. Small operators are already hit hard
by conventional theft and hundreds of them close down every year due to
financial difficulties, Takahashi said.

"Given the enormous speed of business closures, we cannot overlook this
information-lifting with cellphones," he said.

He said it was unclear if digital shoplifting is tantamount to a crime as the
copyright law only covers use of information for commercial purposes.

A major operator of a national chain of bookstores has spotted the practice
but found it difficult to prevent, officials said.

"The problem is it is hard for floor staff to tell if customers are just making
phone calls or taking pictures," a management planning official said.

People with picture-snapping phones are common-place in Japan, which
leads the world in this area of technology.

Yuriko Yamakawa, a 29-year-old employee at an beauty salon, said she
had never digital shoplifted with her camera phone "because it would be a
nuisance to bookstores."

"But I have taken pictures of a hair-style catalogue to show to a hairdresser
as the whole catalogue book was heavy," she said while walking through
Tokyo's prime shopping district of Ginza.

"I also photograph clothes to consult friends about what to buy... or to tell
them; 'This is the dress I'm planning to wear for the wedding party,'" she
admitted.

Kazuo Uehara, a 19-year-old student, said digital shoplifting was wrong but
"those who do it think very lightly of it."

The Telecommunications Carriers Association also "recognises the need to
improve people's mobile phone manners," an official said, as handsets
become more advanced with new functions ranging from Internet access to
sending and receiving e-mails and taking pictures.

The latest advertisement by the association, published in newspapers on
Sunday, urged users not to write e-mails while walking.

There were 76.73 million mobile phone subscriptions at the end of May,
according to the latest data from the telecoms association.

J-Phone Co. Ltd., controlled by British-based telecoms giant Vodafone,
launched the world's first picture-taking handsets in November 2000.

More than half of mobile handsets shipped in the year to March were
estimated to be camera phones.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030630/tc_afp/japan_telecom_society_030630072332

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