Can you sell ringtones?

I was drinking with a friend the other night and he works for this small local cell phone business, and he was asking me about selling ringtones to his customers...so I told him to do CPA, but I guess their network isn't going to make money since it's not major like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc...

So, I told him to just make a site and get people to sign up on a monthly basis, for real cheap, make the ringtones himself, have them available for download perhaps using a membership script...but I also warned my pal that that's probably illegal...not worth it, but...

Is there a safe way to do this?...Can offshore, anonymous domain registration and offshore hosting work this?...You know, with the whole copyright infringement deal...

I read through some threads and jotted down some notes, proxies, prison, etc...but wanted a more specific opinion...

Ummm I'm pretty sure the lawyers would be all over that the second a lawyer who uses this cell phone service finds out about it. He'd get a huge commission from the music industry for referring the case. I guess the good thing for consumers is that the record industry will soon own this cell phone service and supply ringtones at a nice fee.

You need to either create your own custom ringtones or cell them pay per text dating messaging or something

Yeah, I'm not sure about the lawyer deal because the cell phone company is one of those no-contract pay per month, limited calling areas...so you get a lot of people who don't have good credit and people who aren't good with paying bills on time...I guess more lower-middle class people use these services...

And yeah, my friend would be making the ringtones on his own...I just want to get paid for setting it all up ...

I think it won't be SEO'd, but him just telling people word of mouth or through his business card which I think is pretty stupid, but hey...it's his ass not mine...

Sounds like a good plan. I am looking into something similar, any idea how to handle the billing?

Are there companies that will handle charging the cell companies on your behalf for the customers?