Canada to check travellers for pirated music/videos at borders

Rb wrote: »

Just goes to show how much power these companies have I suppose.

If we get a YES vote for Lisbon we will soon have an anti counterfeiting squad set up by the Euro Police authorities.They will know exactly who has illegal MP3s on a player because either it will be a multimedia mobile phone like the Nokia 95 or a wifi based Ipod or mp3 player. The service providers will have track of what you have or else It will transmit a signal as you pass any portal scanner where there will be authorities ready to arrest you :eek:

JC 2K3 wrote: »

No... Just no.


Anyway, how are they going to check every MP3 player for pirate music? And how can they tell if it's pirate or not?

Quite easily, demand a receipt or proof of purchase. I can imagine a purchased MP3 or Itune would have some kind of a digitally encoded receipt. Its up to you to prove you purchased it. An inspector could run a programme that could scan out illegal tracks in seconds from your collection.

I am a DJ myself and If I were to use MP3s I would have to be very careful that I carry hard copies, ie origional CD's. PPI or INFACT can demand to audit any collection of music for counterfeits and have carried out raids in the entertainment industry.

You are allowed use copied MP3s only provided you have the original. Ireland is still years behind in policing MP3's used by DJs, Most inspectors are still looking for bootleg cds in night clubs. but it wont be long before laptops used by DJs will have to be registered. In Holland its a e10'000 fine for playing illegal music commercially.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

1. There are millions of MP3 players already in existence and none have support for this digital receipt of which you speak, are you suggesting that we make all existing MP3 players illegal?
2. Even if there were a digital receipt system in place, it would be cracked - just like every other copy protection attempt..

The whole Digital game hit the music and movie industry by storm, they were not expecting it.
basically they tried shutting the gate after the horse had left. They were still marketing CDs for 20 quid while many kids in school were downloading and swapping hard drives of hundreds of gigs of MPs. It is only relatively recently they are getting very tough on it and making examples of people

JC 2K3 wrote: »

AFAIK, DJing is different though. Don't you need a special licence for all the music you play or something?.

If I play in a venue its up to thr Pub or venue to hold an IMRO licence that will cover a DJ for the night. Most pubs and nightclubs would have it.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

We're not really talking about music being played commercially here, but people's personal MP3 collections.

I don’t know what way things will go but having a hard drive full of illegal music is like having a lump of dope, if its for yourself and you get caught you would probably get a slap on the hand, if you were caught with more than one hard drive of the same music you could technically be seen as dealing, same goes for uploading. It will be the torrent sites that they will really clamp down on. Already there is new laws coming in that your service provider can rat on you if they suspect you are breaching copyright laws.

There is a fine for having an illegal copy of a cd/dvd for personal use could be imposed if you were caught buying cds/dvds from the travellers at a market, more than likely the authorities would confiscate what you have and ask you where you got them. The fine for intent to supply (Dealing) is a different thing.