Might need to be careful in your next trip overseas!
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,2605...5014090,00.html

You'd think that Customs Officials would be better employed searching for guns and drugs and things that actually may cause harm or is of significant value, such as stolen artwork, etc., rather than criminalising people with pirated music

def !!!! x

Some of that music is evil you know.............like that rock and roll, it corrupts the kids, so my mum told me

I really cant imagine that most customs officers would bother with this. Just cos they can technically do this, doesnt mean they'd actually waste their time with it

You could just hide the iPod instead. Like in a suitcase or something. "Lead-lined bags anyone?"

If they realised you'd gone out of your way to hide it, they'd defo do you for it if you had loads

And does that mean they can search your laptop too if you take it on hols?

Coz I'm thinking they'd have to go through ALL files to find the one you'd put all your music in and called the file "Stamp collection index" or something.

Oh yeah they can look at anything in your possession. But i really dont think they'd bother with this and it would have to be a hell of a lot of pirated songs anyway. Thousands or millions i should imagine. And they'd really have better things to be getting on with. I mean, even a couple of pirated dvds doesnt take their interest so..

Well customs will just have to ask the local authority as regards who's doing what soon.

If the daft bat across the road who works for the local authority find out what we've been saying about her...I'm just sooo screwed

How do they know its downloaded. I got a sony MP3 walkman, and have converted tracks from a purchased CD into MP3s. How do they tell the difference?

I've been googling how they'd find out and i cant find an answer I should imagine theres a code within the file? but i dunno. I actually thought though that putting your bought cd files onto an mp3 player was ok these days in the uk but according to this article, its not, and loads of MP's break this law anyway.

I just read a thread on another forum about this and some of their responses were ridiculous. Someone said to just mail your hard drive or mp3 player abroad to your destination and then they wont see it. Rubbish Customs check mail too. Someone else said to "push your player really far down into your bag so they dont see it." Oh dear

I also found this article on how to avoid getting caught using illegal downloads. Sounds pretty useful

It’s all a bit silly if you ask me, what about mobile phones, laptops etc the different devices you can store MP3s on are quite large. Record and film companies moan all the time that they are losing money, but they’re also losing a battle. If all the internet providers suddenly conformed to regulation and cut off everyone who downloads, then they would lose far more money than Madonna’s record producer.

We’re all given the impression that downloaders are people who have half a dozen or so hard drives connected up to their computer, downloading stuff that they flog on a Sunday at the car boot sale. Not so, I grant that there are a minority of people that do this, I bet a lot of people these days know a knock off Nigel or two. I reckon a majority of people are occasional downloaders: ‘Oh I missed that episode of Heroes last night and since it’s a US TV Series it won’t be available on I-Player, so I’ll download it or get off a mate at work’

Back in the er..hum.. olden days of the 20th Century when the video recorder was the latest thing, it was illegal to tape off the telly, but like today’s downloading laws it wasn’t set in stone. And on a Sunday afternoon when the top 40 music chart came on there used to be a power surge from all the tape recorders being switched on.

If downloading was such a terrible crime then there would be no such thing as broadband, and the technology on the market today wouldn’t be available in Currys. Every now and then the music and film industry cries about being ripped off: boo hoo.

I have said this a million times now, I love watching films, but I hate pirates, because no pirate film will match watching a special FX bonanza on a 30 foot cinema screen. Flat screen TV’s can only go so big, the average living room is only about 16 foot in length. Although the cinema could do with being a bit cheaper.

Hmm i just wonder,why do they just stop the tranferring of information by Bluetooth as well?
And the internet.

And stop sharing folders on MSN...

Or the internet.

Meta data tags....
To give you an example, the music broadcasting Forum I used to be on at first let you play any mp3.
Then as the strict laws of the RIAA in the us clamped down on them you could no longer use mp3 files (Like old napster ones as they had not Meta data tags
The new ruls to conform with the RIAA for Mercora was to insist that the songs were properly digitally tagged
with the artist, name of song, etc.

...So songs I had that had no tags would no longer play.
To make this all :Dandy and Happy for all I had to meta data tag my songs so they would be legal.
....

some songs just showed up a bit wrong on my play list, but would now play again because of this tagging system


Artist = Ya I ripped this off the net
Song = sorry guess you will hear it
Date= my imaginative reply and a wrong date

Now as long as the songs were Tagged right they would play and for each time they were listened to Mercora payed a fee to this organization for the use of the song being broadcasted.

Now some of the music I have I have written recorded produced etc. and Mercora would pay this fee each and every time one of my songs was listened to.

Do you think I ever saw one penny of this money as the Artist who wrote the music?
...answer is ....NO!