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Media pirates beware, handsets under fire

Categories: Announcements, iPhone, Security
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 2:35 PM

In an age where a shoe-bomb is as real a threat as a screaming baby on a trans-continental flight, customs officials are exploring ever wider freedoms in passenger baggage checks.

New customs policies are being hashed out that would hold passengers liable for any pirated media, including music and videos, stored in their portable electronic devices. And, with the growing popularity of combining your personal media play and Customs piratemobile phone in to one converged device, it stands to reason that iPhones of the future might be subject to airport security checks.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has apparently confirmed that they have been part of international negotiations – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – regarding media pirating. The negotiations seek to levy criminal sanctions against those infringing copyrights on a commercial scale.

The US is one of the key countries pushing this anti-piracy agreement on an international scale. With the music industry scrambling to keep revenues up in an ever advancing world of techno-piracy, it looks like the international traveler could be the next target.

[Via: HeraldSun]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • newtype2011

    …and how would they be able to regulate this? How in the world will they know what people have purchased, and what people have simply downloaded from say, a P2P program?

    This is getting insane -