In a recent article on canada.com, the Canadian government has announced that they are working on a law that will allow them to check your MP3 players for illegal material. To me, this is ignorant, do they know how long people are going to have to wait in line for the guards to check a 80GB iPod? And, apparently, the guards will have the final say on what is copyright infringement, and what is not.
The leaked ACTA document states officials should be given the “authority to take action against infringers (i.e., authority to act without complaint by rights holders).”
Anyone found with infringing content in their possession would be open to a fine.
They may also have their device confiscated or destroyed, according to the four-page document.
The trade agreement includes “civil enforcement” measures which give security personnel the “authority to order ex parte searches” (without a lawyer present) “and other preliminary measures”.
To me, this is going a bit to far. I am all for paying for music, and fighting piracy (ARGHHH!), but this is too much.
What do you think?
2 Comments
Wow. I’m already avoiding travelling to the US like the plague (far too many invasions of privacy at the border, for me)… I’ll also avoid Canada now, even though I purchase all my music.
I just don’t like the sound of it being at the individual guard’s discretion as to whether or not my iPod gets destroyed…
Tell me about it. I plan to hide my MP3 player when I go through customs in August.
My biggest beef is that the guard has the final say on what is infringement or not… How are they supposed to know if I bought my music or not?
Do they plan on retraining all of the guards, and if so, where does that retraining get funding, and what happens in the mean time until your cities guards get trained.
I really don’t think that this will get far off the ground due to the cost involved in training the guards and hiring new guards to deal with the longer lines.