Those who travel by plane may have to face longer security delays, thanks to a new international copyright treaty secretly proposing an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that would allow customs officers to check media players, laptops, storage media and mobile phones for pirated material. Basically, this ACTA is aimed at seriously targeting the distribution of unlicensed content.
This information has been leaked by Wikileaks that received documents detailing the extent of the treaty which has been setup between the US, EU, Canada, Japan and Australia. According to this Canada report, the agreement is structured similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the exception that this will introduce rules & regulations that deal with copyright laws and home copying.
Going by the leaked info, suggestions include removing the distinction between those who profit from piracy and those who do not, which will result in tougher penalties for those who do not profit from copyright infringement. Custom offices will be given the power to confiscate and destroy anything they believe to be pirated as well as be able to fine the owner and confiscate their equipment. Finally, ISPs could be forced without court order to hand over customer details if an intellectual property owner believes the customer may be infringing their copyright.
To make matters worse, as it is often quite difficult to tell whether files have actually been pirated or obtained legally, it will be the officers that will be responsible for determining what is and is not copyright infringing content. So a consumer could still be fined and possibly have their equipment confiscated if security officers finds what they believe is pirated material, even if the person does not have a single piece of infringing content on their equipment.
Further information can be read in this RTÉ report and this lengthy Canada.com article.
