I-Pod Searches At Airports

[Legba]

.news.com.au

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.

[AndyAmine.]

Another pathetic excuse to invade our privacy and I'm sure they will avert their eyes from all they other info in your laptop while they are looking for pirated files.

Hmm, whats that 'Extraction.txt' file about sir?

ANOTHER good reason to use PGP!

Just like the drug dogs, their signal for a positive hit is to sit down next to the person/bag but I have no doubt the dogs have been trained other words or subtle gestures as a command to 'sit' as well, so the handler can always get a search going when they are 'suspicious' of a person whether the dog can smell drugs or not.

[El Presidente Hillbillios]

I think it's typical for "the man" to concentrate efforts on catching people moving between borders with pirated music, No doubt will it inconvenience the general public (How long will it take to check just one 80g ipod let alone a plane full of em)... But that doesn't matter because big business could be loosing money...

I bet they don't look for anything that is really damaging to the community (like Kiddy porn) being imported in an electronic format. Big business doesn't stand too loose money doing that

Man that pi**es me off... what about putting some resources into something useful for a change..

Sorry for the rant, Hillbilly

[Yawning Man]

Sounds very 1984. How would they be able to tell whether or not the music had been pirated? Maybe they should target people/companies creating the programs that allow us to pirate music instead of throwing us in jail. *sigh* idiots

cheers

[chilli]

How would they be able to tell whether or not the music had been pirated?

I'm wondering this too, especially seeing as so many people buy their music online, or rip their own CD's.

[Jesus On Peyote]

Thats also what i was going to ask, i mean Apple makes alot of money by selling music in mP3 format with their Istore or whatever its called.. sounds like stupidity has hit a new level to me.

[misteek]

what bullshit! this makes me very mad . when will they put resources into something worhtwhile! oh well as long as people are making money...

i have heard that its actually illegal to copy your old records and what nots to cd's. anyone know if this is true?

[alkatrope]

Pretty bullshit, I too wonder how they'd plan to prove it.

[Vertmorpheus]

Hold you at great expense while they send monkeys to dismantle your house, menace your other half and eat your pets, look thru all your CD's and make a list of anything that you don't own a legit hardcopy of, then sit around for ages working out what you have and haven't paid for with those fairly anonymous itunes cards, then take all that information to the relevant companies to work out which ones want to get upset about it and which ones don't, by which time you're just really hungry in a cell somewhere and willing to admit to anything just to get some Macdonalds and to halt the cavity searches.

Can't see it happening, but then, it sounds just like the kind of mess someone would like to start.

Wonder if it applies to just Ipods, or generic brands too, or mobile phones with mp3 capabilities, or just anything that can store any kind of data at all. Going to take a long time checking every last phone, player, memory stick, laptop, blood sugar computer, kids toy and calculator. Scuse me sir, are they those groovy nikes/breast implants/earbuds that have a tiny player in them? Miss, does this digital dildo have any kind of RAM? Care to fire it up for the boys here?

or maybe JUST ipods... because it'd be so much harder to build a 22/stungun/pepper spray/chemical agent into a mobile phone

As long as they don't start reading the books people carry about, then they might get really worried. Giving them a hundred question verbal test on social issues, religious ideals and interpersonal conduct... make them eat a ham and vegemite sandwich, or something.

customs seem to operate in complete ignorance of... civilised customs?

Units, for sure.

VM

Edited July 28, 2008 by Vertmorpheus

[Lachy]

I wouldn't worry too much about them implementing this one... I think a program like this would fall into the "too hard" basket for prosecutors fairly quickly.

However, I definitely have concerns about the privacy implications of this. I can't help but think that this is a backdoor effort to search personal digital media storage devices for purposes beyond simple copyright enforcement.

[ThunderIdeal]

guys i don't have any recent memory of paying for music but i'm pretty sure when you buy mp3's you get a kind of electronic license to possess it.

[nabraxas]

It's important to note that this is an international agreement, not something thought up in Australia.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. The agreement is being secretly negotiated by the governments of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico.[1][2] If adopted at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008, the treaty would establish an international coalition against copyright infringement, imposing strong, top-down enforcement of copyright laws in developed nations. The proposed agreement would allow border officials to search laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for copyright-infringing content. It would also impose new cooperation requirements upon Internet service providers (ISPs), including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, and restrict the use of online privacy tools. The proposal specifies a plan to encourage developing nations to accept the legal regime, as well.

The European Commission, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and other government agencies have acknowledged participating in ACTA negotiations, but they have refused to release drafts of the treaty or to discuss specific terms under discussion in the negotiations. Public interest advocates in Canada filed an access to information request but received only a document stating the title of the agreement, with everything else blacked out.[2] On May 22, 2008, a discussion paper about the proposed agreement was uploaded to Wikileaks, and newspaper reports about the secret negotiations quickly followed.[3][4][2][5]

ACTA is part of a broader "forum shifting" strategy employed by the trade representatives of the U.S., E.C., Japan, and other supporters of rigid intellectual property enforcement: similar terms and provisions currently appear in the World Customs Organization draft SECURE treaty.[6]

Provisions

Border searches

Newspaper reports indicate that the proposed agreement would empower security officials at airports and other international borders to conduct random ex officio searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or "ripped" music and movies. Travelers with infringing content would be subject to a fine and may have their devices confiscated or destroyed.[2][5]

ISP cooperation

The leaked document includes a provision to force Internet service providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant, making it easier for the record industry to sue music file sharers and for officials to shut down non-commercial BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay.[7]

Enforcement

ACTA would create its own governing body outside existing international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.[2][8]

Interpretation

It has been argued[9] that the main thrust of ACTA is to provide safe harbor for service providers so that they may not hesitate to provide information about infringers; this may be used, for instance, to quickly identify and stop infringers once their identities are confirmed by their providers.

Similarly, it provides for criminalization of copyright infringement, granting law enforcement the powers to perform criminal investigation, arrests and pursue criminal citations or prosecution of suspects who may have infringed on copyright.

More pressingly, being an international treaty, it allows for these provisions—usually administered through public legislation and subject to judiciary oversight—to be pushed through via closed negotiations among members of the executive bodies of the signatories, and once it is ratified, using trade incentives and the like to persuade other nations to adopt its terms without much scope for negotiation.

Support

The RIAA supports the agreement, and has given input and suggestions to the creation of ACTA. [10]

Criticism

The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes ACTA, calling for more public spotlight on the proposed treaty.[11] A British study found that iPods owned by persons 14-24 today contain an average of more than 840 tracks downloaded on file-sharing networks, nearly fifty percent of all music possessed by this segment. The same study also found that 95% of individuals falling under this category have copied music in some way.[12] Thus, some critics argue that ACTA directly incriminates the ordinary consumer activity.[13][14][15]

Additionally the Free Software Foundation has posted their "Speak out against ACTA". The FSF states that the ACTA threatens free software.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterf...Trade_Agreement