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 
mobile 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]