Crossing the Border? Be Advised, You are Guilty of Copyright Violation and Your iPod, Laptop, etc will be Destroyed
Jun 1st, 2008 by Brian A. Thomas
Canada is cracking down on copyright violations. If you have content the border guards so much as suspect of content on your iPod, laptop, cell phone, etc violating copyright, they can destroy it. The Yahoo! news story that reports this, seems to indicate that the whole iPod or Laptop itself will be destroyed, not just the suspected content.
There is no mention that guards will be given any special training to decide what is illegal or legal content.
All the real security concerns we may have about border crossings, and they are worried about searching people’s iPods and the like for copyright violations. This is more asinine than the drug war where we worry about putting somebody smoking an herb that God commands in the Bible to be used in jail than murderers rapists and thieves. It’s like the police said, “Why worry about spending manpower on stopping murderers and rapists, or keeping them in jail when we can put a non-violent drug user in jail.” So now Canada’s border patrol is like, “Why worry about terrorists or other threats to national security, we need to worry about copyright violators.”
The US and most of Europe are in on this deal as well.
On the good news side, it seems an upcoming G8 summit will shelve the idea for now.
