MUSIC fans might soon have their iPods searched by Customs officers at airport checks and face jail if a large amount of pirated music is found on them. The push for the unprecedented searches of travellers’ laptops and MP3 players has been revealed in a leaked discussion paper relating to a treaty being negotiated by the Federal Government. It suggests criminal sanctions for infringements on a commercial scale. That meant innocent pop and rock fans with huge song libraries could unwittingly be hit with jail for commercial piracy, according to Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos.
“It talks about (sanctions for) commercial infringements does that mean one, 10, 20 or 1000 songs?
“It could be that people get sent to jail for being in possession of commercial-scale quantities of copied music.”
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith’s office has confirmed the Government was a part of negotiations for the international agreement, but Australia had not signed nor agreed to any aspect. Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said: “Searching into people’s iPods is out of order. “We don’t need to suffer draconian regimes to protect intellectual property.”US music labels are keen for their government to sign up other countries to the zero-tolerance stance.
A significant part of my job is data recovery, and clients music has become the largest block of data the customer wants to recover. I usually keep the data on my recovery computer for a week or two until I am sure they are satisfied. So my question is, does that make me an accomplice?
Well, folks, it looks like we are going to need encryption end to end. Who ever makes that easy will make a fortune.
McCullough,
In a word? Yes. Homeland Security is on the way….
*KNOCK KNOCK*
i’ve often wondered that my self….as well as full backups i do….am i liable for anything illegal i have backed up for someone else….i too usually hold on to it for a while just to make sure….
3,
What I would do is give the client a value add… Restore their data and give then an EXTERNAL drive with another copy of their data and explain that once you hand over that extra drive you will no longer have restored data on your own machine. In fact, you might find that some clients would NOT want you to keep their data around “just in case”. I certainly wouldn’t want you to…
@#1: It may be done for other reasons than greed… Try open source free (in all senses of that word) Truecrypt. Encrypt the whole drive, double encrypt for plausible denialability or just protect your music/videos in the indistinguishable encrypted file.
To original poster: your quandry will soon be cleared up… You’ll be required to report what you have found… 🙂
How is this not unreasonable search and seizure? Where’s the probable cause? I think this is so paper thin that the ACLU and EFF lawyers would be just salivating waiting to challenge this.
Where’s the probable cause to search? Of course the way to take care of this is have a utility that will format your ipod before you go through customs. Then you can resynch it to your home machine. 🙂
How do they know that you don’t have ervery CD on your bookshelf, do they expect you to carry around hundreds of CDs?
WTF
#6 – That is exactly the question that I would like answered. Beyond the obvious probable cause and 4th amendment issues, will burden of proof be placed upon the searchers or the owner of the device?
I have music from CDs that were thrown out due to scratches, etc. years ago…I don’t have every receipt for every CD I ever purchased.
I agree with #6 this seems insane how do they tell if it is pirated or you just ripped it?
I sang a copyrighted song in the shower today! Can I be arrested? fined?
What about all of the stuff I’ve bought at the itunes store?
Let the mayhem begin!
I can’t see how it’d work …. like others have said, there is no way of knowing if a copy is legal or not….
“I usually keep the data on my recovery computer for a week or two until I am sure they are satisfied. So my question is, does that make me an accomplice?”
It very well might. Just encrypt it so they can’t tell what it is.
Hey, no fair!!! I thought the G Dubbya run US is supposed to be the evil Fascist state!?!?!
What I want to know is how they can tell if a song is pirated or not. I have a 160gig ipod with my entire music collection (100,000+ songs) on my ipod at all times. All of it is ripped from CD’s I own, from iTunes, or from Amazon. There is no way to tell on the Ipod what the source of the music is from. I use it to compile playlists for events I DJ. Is there any way to protect myself when traveling? Other that bringing along a big book of receipts?
I burn my own Cds for travel I own the originals on vinyl and CD.I guess that makes me guilty.
I can’t believe that Apple isn’t getting in on this, otherwise, there will be boxes of iPods before you go through security like bottled water and lighters.
I’ll just bring my old Nomad Jukebox 3. Customs/TSA won’t even know what it is much less how to see what’s on it.
Hey, the RIAA and MPAA will lobby for ONE SONG OR VIDEO to draw 10 YEARS AND A $250,000 FINE !!! Sort of like those POOR BASTARDS WHO GOT JAIL TIME FOR ONE JOINT !!!
ok, after reading the article this is from an Austrailian paper about something being considered down under.
However I would still think that it would get rulled way out of bounds and be subject to challenging.
Well that’s one sure way to kill the airline business. I’d never fly unless I absolutely had to. I’d drive or take the train. How many business people would buy tickets for terrible service and an invasion of all your personal electronics. My camera can hold mp3’s, would they search through all my wife’s and my holiday photos?
When you enter a country through customs, unreasonable search and seizure rules do not apply. EVERYTHING can be searched. Its always been that way. For the record I think this is bullshit and is just the government cowtowing to the interests of the RIAA, but don’t go slinging 4th amendment or ACLU crap out there when it does not and never did apply to customs.
It simply comes down to the burden of proof. Just because I have 30 gig of music on my Zune, will I be targeted as a commercial pirate and be forced to account for all of my songs?
The whole thing seems kind of silly to me.
Maybe they are just floating a really stupid idea, expecting it to get shot down so the next not so crazy idea does not seem so crazy.?
Don
Americans travelling to Canada have no fear .
It will take Canada Customs 8 to 10 years tl learn what an iPod is
Oh gosh, gee wiz, a major inconvenience at best. Add to that the delays that a serious enforcement of this would entail, and well, somehow I doubt the ultra powerful lobby behind this BS can pull it off. So screw ’em. Get the impression that some assholes will never get it. Intellectual property is unenforceable period. Parties over, get over it and move on. If they’d spend half as much on coming up with creative new ways to market a product, as they do on lawyers and political influence they’d see that computers and the network are their best venue, not their worst enemy.
Yet another reason to drive a car and …
Hmmm …
Might this be the real reason to raise oil prices, to force people to fly and be subject to searches and cataloging by the government?
Check the article carefully:
The plan is for Australia, NOT the US.
There’s only a reference to US music companies, not the US implementing this plan.
Yeah, right silly Aussies, still the same ‘interests’ are involved. Perhaps this is part of a larger plan… Who knows maybe someday just carrying around digital media makes you a suspicious character, and why stop there, why not criminalize all computers that aren’t properly liscensed and monitored. Ridiculous you say? The ‘interests’ involved will stop at nothing to protect their profits, and unfortunately we live in a world where our civil liberties are for sale to the highest bidder.
OK,
I want to see a BOOK/list of all the songs, albums, artists, that are SUPPOSED to be illegal to carry around…
I want to see a person take IMPROPERLY named music across the border. ALL the favorites.. only need a couple hundred.. I want the arrest me, and I GET TO SUE.
I would love to record a bunch of HOME BASED GROUPS, and have a couple of hundred music recordings, ALL PRIVATELY DONE, and sang by HOME groups.. I WANT THEM TO STOP ME…And tell me these are ILLEGAL.
I WANT TO ERASE 1+…
For those that didn’t notice…
THIS isn’t LAW, its being passed under a BACKDOOR.
It’s being passed as part of a TRADE AGREEMENT, with other countries.
WE WONT TRADE with the country unless they SIGN this into the trade agreement.
This seems to be an American idea and the search was to be as you are leaving or entering to make the music people dance.
Since they seem to think everything on a machine is stolen I’m not sure how you defend yourself but if the security people say decript it you decript it or you aren’t going anywhere.
I do know that some music is water marked.
Anything you got off a torrent may well have been marked in such a way as to prove it is stolen.
Some time back Tekzilla got into a mess with a “security company” that was messing around with torrents.
I also understand that you are guilty until proven innocent.
Maybe the best thing is not to carry anything that can cause a problem. This would include any sort of privilaged information. Just store it on line and download what you need.
Do remember this is a police state planet and personal freedom and privacy are dead.
You can thank George Bush for a lot of this after all he does have to defend democracy by destroying it.
As for the rest. Both parties compete to see who can make the most selling out the most people.
Was it Franklin who said that those who would trade security for freedom deserve to be neither safe nor free? Something like that and this describes America today to a T.
When the law abiding citizens are spending about as much time worrying about the feds as the criminals because everybody either is or can expect to be treated as a criminal we are bleep.