News

Your iPod could get you arrested at the border...

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 27 May 2008

Legislation is being planned in the name of "anti-counterfeiting" by the G8 countries which is actually a copyright enforcement treaty. It could, suggest experts, mean that you might get arrested by Immigration at US, European and other major countries, if you have an iPod or phone loaded with music.

The essence of the proposed treaty - which is expected to be ratified July this year - is that if you transfer music legally from CD to iPod or Walkman or any other device, you have to prove you own it.

"Aardvark" suggests that the treaty has been, deliberately, concealed from the world:

It seems that the provisions of this agreement are so draconian and will be so unpopular that it has been drafted in secrecy, news of its existence and imminent introduction only coming to light when details were "leaked" to Sunshine Media, the operator of the Wikileaks.org website.

In effect, it places an obligation on border authorities to check the contents of iPods, laptops, cellular phones and other media devices to ensure that they do not carry any illegally copied material.

If you've legally ripped your CD collection to your iPod or other player and travel abroad, to one of the nations signing up to the ACTA, you will have to also take some way of proving that the tracks on that device have not been copied illegally.

Just about the only way I can think of to do this is to take the original CDs with you as well. Imagine how impractical that is on an 8GB player loaded to the gills with legally ripped tracks!

Wikileaks suggests that the very name of the treaty is designed to mislead. It is called the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" - but the agreement does not cover currency fraud.

The document describing the proposal is now published (Acrobat PDF format) but, notes Wikileaks, while it was apparently provided to select lobbyists in the intellectual property industry, it was withheld from public interest organisations concerned with the subject matter of the proposed treaty.