"Some internet investigation reveals this is indeed Rogers' corporate policy, and has been for about a year now."

That is, until I decided I wanted to change my ring tone. I did not want to have a pop song as my ring tone. I did not want music at all. I just wanted to have (what some people would consider) an annoying sound clip of several Formula One cars screeching past an observer on a straightaway. I?m a big F1 fan. And I figure that ring tone will cut through any sort of background noise I?ll encounter. So I uploaded the .mp3 file to my phone via Bluetooth, and tried to set it as a ring tone. But my phone wouldn?t let me. I started to try to diagnose the problem. Does it expect a CBR .mp3 file instead of a VBR one? No. Maybe it expects a file with a lower sample rate? No. Oh I know what it is, the file is in stereo. It probably expects a mono-encoded file. Hmm, not even that helps. The phone lets me see file details for all the ring tones. One of the metadata attributes is ?Copyright?. All the ring tones had a value of ?Protected? for this attribute. My ring tone said ?None?. No way, I thought; don?t tell me they aren?t letting me use non-DRM .mp3 files for ring tones.

But sure enough, after some Internet research, I found that this was precisely the case. In mid-August, Rogers mandated that all their cell phones prevent users from utilizing non-DRM .mp3 files as ring tones. It was supposedly at the request of the music industry. But I?m sure the fact that Rogers charges $2.99 for a DRM ring tone had something to do with it.