Canadian Politicians Negotiate to Join ACTA, Will Criminalize CD Copies, iPods at Bor

[gimark]

This is a disturbing situation. Murphy's law, give someone the power and they probably will abuse it. If they look through one persons laptop or digital data out of every thousand trying to cross the border, thats one too many in my mind. There would need to be some hugely suspicious curcumstances to warrant to cause such a search. I would certainly be angry to have to wait at the border while the border guards looked through my private information that I keep on my laptop.

[MacJunky]

Do they manually look or use a search program to look for music files, movies, etc? Windows' search software(XP's anyway) is @#*%ing slow(probably slower than a manual clicking around) and going through even a single 250GB HD is absurdly painful. For Mac OS searching is like.. *snaps fingers* so I would not be too concerned about that side of things. We are talking less than 5 seconds to report 14,586 audio files here :P Granted, almost all are from games but meh.

I wonder if anyone has thought of allowing them to remove the HD, cloning it then giving it all back to you to keep the lines short? They could then upload the copy to a main server and other people would look through everything then punish you if they found anything?
I don't like that idea at all but I can't help but wonder if someone had considered it. Knowing humans, probably.

[thenewguy001]

This is idiotic in so many ways. You can so easily cirumvent this search and seizure.

1. set up a ftp server on your home pc. cross the border and then repopulate your favorite music device

2. put the content on a separate partition on your laptop hd and then delete the partition. cross the border and then restore the partition

3. put everything on a usb flash drive and hide it somewhere

4. etc... i could go on and on

[Pilot_dc]

That's more than the average user is capable of. Most ppl on this board could do it without a second thought. Not so much in the case of most people I know...

[DurkaDurka]

So, will be be compelled to hand over our personal passwords to the border guards so they can access our data on pc's etc?

[b1lk1]

My gosh, if you don't want it seen keep it off your hard drive! How tough is that? You know it is technically illegal to put music on your PC no matter the source in the US, so when in the US you live by their rules! Being angry over this is foolish. This is yet ANOTHER reason for piracy to be ended once and for all. You can all snicker that piracy cannot be stopped, but these huge corporations will get it stopped eventually, even if it means highly regulated internet. Think that can't happen? You are only fooling yourselves. A little self policing by people to stop stealing stuff and things like this wouldn't happen.

[tyreman]

Uh border guards currently have very broad legally backed up powers all ready.
They can literallly leave you crying by the side of the road.
They won't need any warrant.
They automatically possess them.

[RiTarDid]

How much of a meathead is the bordercop? that's where the line will be drawn....
some cops pull you over and let you off with warnings, other ones demand to search your vehicle...there's no rhyme or reason for it; we just give law enforcement (including bordercops) way too much power to decide for themselves.

And as for comments like "piracy will eventually be stopped....." and "regulated internet"....
The internet is a collection of servers....they can not (and will never be able to) regulate "the internet"...even if they successfully monitor or intercept massive amounts of traffic, we will always be setting up new servers on new networks. If you think it can be stopped, I think you're fooling yourself.

[Pilot_dc]

It's pretty alarming that they can look at any of the data you have stored too. What about my privacy?

[thenewguy001]

Just make sure your laptop is packed with

-tubgirl, goatse, and animal/gay/fat/midget/grandma porn pictures, with a particularly nasty one for the desktop background
-videos of animal/gay/fat/midget/grandma porn
-mp3s full of fax/modem screech noises at max volume

if not protection by obscurity, use protection by obscenity