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ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

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Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#41

Post by ig1 »

Have a second laptop you use for travelling and treat it as unsecure. Any time a laptop is out of your control, especially when it's held by (any)government, you might as well assume it has had spyware installed on it. Plus you're at a much higher risk of theft while travelling abroad so you definitely should avoid having confidential business documents, etc. on it.

I use a netbook for travelling which gets a blanket format & reinstall before and after it goes travelling. Even then there's a risk that it might have had a hardware keylogger installed on it (this has happened to business people travelling to China in the past).

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#42

Post by mayanksinghal »

maigret wrote: post #40
newhouseb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting question is that if someone were to travel (non-commercially) across borders with a fake gucci bag, could that person could be held liable under ACTA for the case that a) they were aware of the product was counterfeit and/or b) the case in which they were unaware?

Yes. Near the French / Italian border there are targeted controls for counterfeited products. Common sense should tell you you can't get a Gucci bag for 200$, or anywhere outside of a luxury shop ;) And yes, you are also liable if you were unaware - but most people are actually aware.

- What if a person bought a fake Gucci bag for 50% of the price of original bag?

- What if it was a gift?

- What if he is not aware of the brand and thought it was just another bag?

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#43

Post by mbesto »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #38

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words. Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem. And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. I have to respectfully disagree. The amount of people (mainly Europeans) I meet who tell me they want to move to the US is still very substantial. In my experience, the perception of the American dream is still very real in a large portion of the world's eyes.

As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's media outlets, people won't know what actually happens.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#44

Post by maccylo »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #38

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words. Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem. And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.

ACTA is not only US.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#45

Post by rlpb »

yason wrote: post #13

Regardless of ACTA, I have already established a personal policy to: 1) encrypt my partitions (other than root, to make upgrades and reinstalls easier; I use LUKS) 2) copy the essential first megabytes of each LUKS partition to my server or shell account somewhere, encrypted with GPG 3) fill that space with random data 4) travel and go through customs 5) access the GPG encrypted LUKS blocks over internet, decrypt and…

> If "they" find out about my encrypted LUKS blocks, I can also ask my friend to provide half of the GPG passphrase, so that I can honestly claim I don't have the passphrase to unlock the blocks.

This won't help you legally. You may honestly claim that you don't have the passphrase, but you cannot honestly claim that you cannot decrypt the contents. You just have to call and ask your friend while you're detained at customs.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#46

Post by muuh-gnu »

mayanksinghal wrote: post #42
maigret wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Near the French / Italian border there are targeted controls for counterfeited products. Common sense should tell you you can't get a Gucci bag for 200$, or anywhere outside of a luxury shop ;) And yes, you are also liable if you were unaware - but most people are actually aware.

- What if a person bought a fake Gucci bag for 50% of the price of original bag? - What if it was a gift? - What if he is not aware of the brand and thought it was just another bag?

Who cares. IP protection trumps basic common sense and basic human rights. And even though we all have to abide by inane protectionism schemes, we should not be allowed to directly vote on them, because direct democracy would make uninformed people make impulsive decisions and possibly introduce theocracies everywhere. So to prevent theocracy, we have to prevent direct democracy, which means we cant vote on copyright, which means we have to swallow down our pride and just abide by any IP protectionism scheme the informed overlords make in agreement with the industrial stake holders. There sadly is no middle way. It is either theocracy or IP protectionism. Pick one.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#47

Post by treo »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #46
mayanksinghal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- What if a person bought a fake Gucci bag for 50% of the price of original bag? - What if it was a gift? - What if he is not aware of the brand and thought it was just another bag?

Who cares. IP protection trumps basic common sense and basic human rights. And even though we all have to abide by inane protectionism schemes, we should not be allowed to directly vote on them, because direct democracy would make uninformed people make impulsive decisions and possibly introduce theocracies everywhere. So to prevent theocracy, we have to prevent direct democracy, which means we cant vote on copyright…

The swiss have a direct democracy and are not a theocracy.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#48

Post by guard-of-terra »

mbesto wrote: post #43
guard-of-terra wrote: post #38

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words. Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem. And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. I have to respectfully disagree. The amount of people (mainly Europeans) I meet who tell me they want to move to the US is still very substantial. In my experience, the perception of the American dream is still very real in a large portion of the world's eyes. As long as America continues to present it's theater politics through it's media outlets, people won't know wh…

They want to move into USA for whatever reason, but the process is getting there isn't very fun, so I've heard. Also, sometimes people have to move into USA, instead of "want".

Also, if we're talking about software developers and startup founders, you can't bullshit this kind of people for a long period of time. They'd figure it out. Well, they did.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#49

Post by guard-of-terra »

maccylo wrote: post #44
guard-of-terra wrote: post #38

That's why nobody wants to come to USA any more. You might have to, but the experience is questionable due to American customs having no respect whatsoever for privacy or personal belongings. All your luggage are belongs to them, in other words. Compare with Europe/Schengen where that simply is not a problem. And that clumsiness and ignorance gets copied into international treaties.

ACTA is not only US.

USA is behind it, they're almost the only ones who really want it, they write it and also their world view gets into it and then imposed on the other countries.

Re: ACTA will force border searches of laptops, smartphones for pirated content

#50

Post by spindritf »

Iv wrote: post #29
scotty79 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run a company that's the rules. If you can't prove that you are licensed to use every single piece of software that you have on your computer then you can have your whole computer (or just the hard drive) confiscated and held for indefinite amount of time by the police probably long enough to technology become obsolete and your withheld data to become meaningless. At least that's how it looks in Poland. Using…

To be fair, the goal of that law is to allow arbitrary detention of computers without any kind of justification. I wonder however how they would confiscate my laptop running only free software. Well, they could always pretend it is stolen : I usually don't have the receipt of it while travelling.

> I wonder however how they would confiscate my laptop running only free software.

No one knows a priori what software you have on your laptop. They either have to take your word for it or analyse the contents of the disk -- and that's a reason to withhold your equipment.

I'm sure it would be returned. Eventually.

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