New rules aim to reduce the 400 million illegal mobile downloads every year.
The Japanese government is reportedly planning to crack down on mobile music piracy, via technology to detect and disrupt illegal downloads as they take place.
According to Japanese newspaper the Daily Yomiuri, the government's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry will hold a summit this month with local operators and music industry representatives to discuss the plans.
"When users download music files to their cell phones, the song's ID information will be sent from the cell phone to a computer server, which will check the information," claims the article.
"The server then judges whether the music file was distributed legitimately. If the file was copied illegally, a warning message will be sent on the user's cell phone."
If the warning is ignored, the system will apparently either halt the downloads or render the music unplayable after it has been downloaded.
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We've not heard of such a technology before, but if it works, it will be big news for record labels, who are aiming to stem the 400 million tracks that are illegally downloaded over the air to handsets every year in Japan.
