If there’s one thing we all hate, it’s when technology companies try to make you pay for something twice. Rogers’ latest music phones are designed to push you towards buying their ringtones —?even if you’ve already bought legal, digital copies of the songs they’re trying to sell you.

A couple of years back, your faithful columnist received a Sony Ericsson W810i, one of Sony’s new Walkman devices that functioned as an MP3 player as well as a cellphone, to try out and keep. It had its problems — slow-as-molasses data transfers from computer to phone, for a start — but it was generally a fine gadget, and when it died an untimely death deep inside a washing machine, I decided to upgrade to the newer model, the W580i (pictured). That’s when I found out that Rogers had themselves discovered the joys of Digital Rights Management (DRM), the bane of the music consumer’s existence.

I have numerous MP3s on my phone — some paid for, some legally downloaded for free. But unlike with the W810i, which allowed me to designate any of them as ringtones, when I try to do it with the W580i, the phone won’t allow it, regardless of the size or origin of the MP3. However, when I downloaded Rogers’ free ringtone (currently a Roz Bell track), it played without a glitch.
When asked about the issue, Rogers claimed that the DRM is part of their “commitment to curb illegal downloading.” (The fact that MP3s can be purchased from entities other than the Rogers Music Store evidently had never occurred to them.) If you’re tech savvy, you can probably figure out how to convert the files into DRM-free .WAV files; but who wants to do that with every single MP3 they’d maybe like to use as a ringtone? Even though the technology clearly allows users to play whatever files they like, you’ll need to figure out how to convert that MP3 you bought on Zunior, or the one you recorded of your last karaoke triumph, before you can hear it coming out of your new, shiny yet sadly crippled new gadget. Sigh.

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