This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

You could call it one of the biggest crimes of the new century: Cell phone carriers not only unleashed Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" as a ringtone but are charging people more than two bucks for the privilege of annoying others with it.

Ringtones, even though despised by many as exasperating aural intrusions, have evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide.

In the U.S. alone, consumers will pay $550 million for ringtones in 2007, according to Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), the performing rights organization that represents 6 1/2 million songs. That's a 709 percent increase from 2003.

That's a lot of money to pay for something many people think should be free.

The desire to make ringtones for free is at the heart of a battle between hackers of the new ÂiPhone who are creating programs to do just that and Apple, which is trying to appease the music industry and phone carriers by charging 99 cents for every new ringtone made.

Music makers and phone carriers believe it should be illegal for consumers to create ringtones because it infringes on their ability to make money.

But the law isn't clear about that, said University of Utah professor Lee Hollaar, who helped draft the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which updated copyright law to include digital works.

The question, he said, is whether the Fair Use provision of copyright law - which allows copying a song for your own use like a CD for your car - could be applied to ringtones.

"Many feel it provides a defense for fair use, but nothing is absolute," he said. "This defense is less available when you're simply doing it to save money."

Andrew Welch, president of Ambrosia Software in Rochester, N.Y., which makes a program that creates free ringtones for Apple's iPhone, calls the ringtone industry a "racket."

He argues that if you purchase a song from iTunes, you should legally be entitled to make a ringtone from that song. Otherwise, he said, people conceivably could be charged a fee every time they make a copy of a song for each music or mobile device they own. He says that's not fair.

"I do think there will be a point where people say, 'This is silly,' and I've reached that point," he said.

When Apple released its ÂiPhone last June, people naturally thought they could take a song from iTunes and convert it into a ringtone. One half of the iPhone, after all, is an iPod.

Not so. That's because Apple later added a feature in which users could make ringtones for 99 cents. That's 99 cents to purchase the song from iTunes and another 99 cents to convert it to a 30-second ringtone. And only selected songs can be converted.

"The reason they didn't [let people make them for free] is because in part ringtones are a cash cow for the carrier and the record labels," Welch said. "And Apple didn't want to ruin its relationship with the labels."

Consequently, a handful of software developers like Ambrosia and hackers have been challenging Apple by creating software that circumvents the iPhone security so users can create their own ringtones for free.

Ambrosia's software, called iToner, has been a popular choice since it came out a few months after the iPhone. Bust Apple recently upgraded the internal software in its phone in part to disable iToner and others like it. Now, a newer version of iToner can bypass the latest security measures, and other hackers are looking for ways around them, too.

Jared Allen, a 31-year-old computer store manager in Salt Lake County, has never paid for a ringtone in his life, and he's not about to.

He uses a program called SendSong that allows consumers to take any song in the iPhone and instantly convert it to a ringtone. He's waiting for a new version that will work with the phone's upgraded security (the new version of SendSong became available shortly after we talked with Allen).

"The record labels' point of view is it's a different kind of license for you to use the ringtones, so they think you should pay a second time," Allen said. "A lot of people wouldn't have a problem with it if they thought some of that money was actually going to the artist making the music."