A new international intellectual property agreement is in the works people! You didn’t know? Oh that’s right they didn’t tell us. Here is an article on it :http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=ae997868-220b-4dae-bf4f-47f6fc96ce5e&p=1
At first the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was proposed to hinder large scale piracy for profit, however, now it seems that this document and its consequent enforcement could bode bad for travelers. As you may, or may not know, in Canada the border patrol already checks laptops and similar items for child pornography, but now this scrutiny is extended to one of the most common items while traveling, IPods and mp3 players. The government must be nuts to want to try and check peoples personal media devices. I would love to see the look of the border patrols face when he realizes that iPods have ridiculous storage space, for example my iPod can hold up to 60 GB of data, that is roughly equivalent to 50 000 songs depending on length and quality. How impractical would it be to ask a border guard to look through my 50 000 song collection and determine which songs are illegal, because apparently the officer checking is at liberty to decide what is considered infringement (I hope they at least release some form of guideline for the poor officers). The agreement is said to possibly alter the status quo of ISPs holding out for their customers, as of now there must be reasonable suspicion and a court order to access ISP info for individuals, but all that might change. Anti piracy laws are important as intellectual property becomes more and more of a commodity in our modern civilization. Then why is it that this agreement is being formulated behind closed doors?, and also kept relatively secret from the people. For us Canadians in particular the people don’t even need to be asked in this matter, since it is a federal trade agreement, we the people have no say! It is preposterous that such an important matter will not be run by the people for approval. Even if it was just ongoing information about the establishment process to keep us up to date, it would be a big step towards fair democracy. This agreement could prove tricky an turbulent for Canadian politics since once this international agreement is signed it will be hard for Canada to back out (as outline in the article above), so the Canadian government could be putting itself between a rock and a hard spot, namely the Canadian people and the other nations abiding by the ACTA. The ironic thing in this situation is that a few details of the ACTA were obtained by a leak that fortunately found its way to the internet, possibly the most concerned audience. This leak in a way is intellectual property theft, (even thought this agreement is probably not copy written).
What do you think of the fact that the Canadian people don’t need to be asked on this matter?
What do you think about the way this agreement is being formulated?
How effective do you think this agreement will be at eradicating piracy?
7 comments:
First of all, I had no idea that the border services officers were even allowed to check laptops! Personally, I believe allowing the government so much control over citizens' personal property is ridiculous. I understand that child pornography is a serious issue, but I do not believe that the border services officials will catch that many child pornographers crossing the border.
Personally, I believe the government already has too much power and continues to reduce people's privacy rights. Not only would checking personal media devices at the border cause unnecessary delays, it would be very expensive. Instead of trying to catch a lucky break at the border, our government should be more focussed on supporting police services and investigations where actual evidence/suspicion must be present.
All in all, I thank you for bringing this article to our attention as obviously it is not meant to be. Our government better start sharing their plans with the people who elected them instead of hiding them and consequently having them exposed eventually. We voted for parties to represent our population and make decisions based on our needs and wants...not to make decisions in their own best interest. Pretty soon I see Canadians demanding a new policy/law that forces governments to publicize ALL decisions they make (no matter how big or small) because Canadians have a right to know what decisions the leaders of their country are making on their behalf.
The obvious problem with this is how border patrol will ever be able to determine if the audio files on an iPod or other media devices are pirated material. I own an iPod, which holds approximately 30GB of files, and while I am not software engineer, I know of no possible way to check the properties of the audio files on the device. How can border patrol possibly be expected to make such calls?
Furthermore, why should border patrol focus on this issue at all? They should be checking suspicious vehicles for weapons and contraband, not confiscating a 12 year old's iPod because it doesn't have an album image next to the Billy Talent song file.
I agree with the other two comments. Border patrol officers already have enough on their plates to deal with weapons and contraband - they definitely do not need to be going through people's iPods. With so many things going on at the boarder I don't see how officers will be able to check iPods unless they dramatically increase their staff to ensure that traffic stays at a steady pace. In, addition new laws specific to this issue will have to be generated in order to deal with offenders.
Don't get me wrong, I am glad that they are cracking down on intellectual property offenders. I just think they should be focusing more so on making music engines such as Limewire and Kazaa illegal and monitoring that on an increasing basis.
This will affect anyone wanting to cross the border so shouldn't citizens have the right to know how this is going to affect them?
The fact that they are trying to pass this piece of legislation so secretly is very undemocratic.
While reading this post I could not believe what the government is trying to do now. I completely agree with the other 3 comments above. But How are the border patrols able to determine if whatever we have on our devices pirated or if it is actually legit. What happens if they accuse someone of having a pirated copy of something when it actually is legit? What is going to happen then?
Another issue that I have is that we tend to put private documents or pictures and other date on our devices I don't think that people would feel okay with letting random border patrols to view these files. Isn't that infringing on our rights.
I am sure that the reason that this issue had not become public quickly was that they didn't want people to start reacting until the decision was finalized. Which I believe is wrong. I understand that there are many issues currently with people illegally downloading files but that doesn't give the government the right to invade our privacy and view our private files. That's just causing more problems for both us and them.
I don't know how the government even thought that people would be even a tad bit okay with allowing others to infringe our privacy rights.
There are so many other problems in the world like terrorism and people stabbing and shooting others and the government is spending their time secretly planning on how they are going to catch people by looking at their laptops, ipods and mp3 devices. Are you serious? Can the government not use their time wisely and perhaps find solutions to all the killings that are happening instead?
But really thank you for bringing this article to our attention because I am sure that not many people even knew about the laptop issue.
The secret to not getting checked at the border is to take an excessive amount of tech with you. :) On my trip home from my last co-op semester (I worked in Seattle), I had with me: two laptops (I bought one when I was there), an Xbox360, Wii, DS, PSP and an iPod. You should have seen the look on the security guard's face. :) He checked the Xbox, but wasn't arsed to do anything about the rest of them. :)
Back on topic then ... the problem with all these DRM laws is that they're made by people who don't have a clue about how all this works. Most of the music on my iPod is ripped from music CDs I legally own, but it's impossible to tell them from to the ones that I've downloaded. How in the world are these laws going to be enforced if the best we can do is make an "educated guess" at what is legal and what isn't?
The other issue is actually finding the media. Honestly, hiding data on your computer/iPod is really quite trivial. If someone was serious about taking illegal media across the border, security at the airport wouldn't be an issue. The number of ways to encrypt data in a inconspicuous way is huge.
-Mo
yeah i was pretty stumped too. when planning laws there should be something like a staff of advisors to point out obvious flaws like the ones you have all outline. I understand that our politicians can't be proficient in everything but what they can do is get people who are. The government sets up committees all the time but lack the capacity to get a few consultants for the practical matters? rediculose.
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