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Ask Slashdot: Can I Cross US Borders With Legally Ripped Media?
First time accepted submitter ozspeed writes "I live in Australia where I've been enjoying the luxury of taking legally purchased music and film and ripping them for my personal enjoyment on my digital media devices; all legal and above board in my country. I'm about to move to the U.S. for a few years and wondered if I would get into trouble if I tried to bring them across the border with me. Any Slashdot been in a similar position, or have a good view of the law on this?" The U.S. has claimed broad data-snooping rights at the border (though some common sense may have broken out, too), but I've never heard of anyone hassled for this reason; have you?
Speaking from my own experience of crossing the border *a lot* I can't say I've ever seen or experienced even the slightest interest in my laptop or drives. Maybe they have more time at the land borders than they do at the airports I can't say. I haven't crossed at one of those in years but at the airports there's simply no time to deal with such things.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
they can't check.
they know they can't check.
that is not what they're looking for if they're checking your backpack.
now.. if you got loads of obviously pirated cd's - not homeburn! - but commercial asia type pirate cd's.. they'll snatch 'em if they see 'em. because that is how the customs crews are trained.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
For the record, I'm an Australian who lives in NYC. I'm very familiar with the policies of both countries.
Australia has some backwards format-shifting laws, prohibiting ripping DVDs under all circumstances for example, so it's inaccurate to pain Australia as better than the US in that regard. We can rip VHS though.
Basically, it's illegal to upload and distribute stuff, or to be making money off ripped items. If you just have stuff ripped for yourself, they are not going to care. If you're really concerned, put it all on a harddrive. If you're really, really concerned, encrypt that harddrive. If you're really, really, really, really concerned upload it and download it later. Internet speed is pretty fucking fast here.
Of course, having gone through customs numerous times with hundreds of burned DVDs, I don't think there is much cause for concern. I'd be much more worried about the UK.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
border control mostly cares about plants, animals, insects, large amounts of precious metals, illegal drugs, kiddie porn
no one cares about you carrying around ripped music and movies
i've traveled around the world and from all the nonsense you read about US law enforcement i've had less trouble at US Customs than almost anywhere in the world. including Europe.
I cross the US/Mexico border by land every day and I have had work colleagues tell me at least on two occasions that they have had their legit CDs confiscated from their cars, apparently because they were out of their jewel cases. I one case, the CDs were of dubious origin, but it shows that they do pay attention to such things and that apparently they think think they work for the RIAA rather than the HSA.
None however have told me their digital devices were inspected for illegal music, and interestingly both colleagues who were hassled were Mexican nationals. Profiling, anyone?
Frankly, unless you're on a watch list for something else, or acting completely suspicious, I can't see that they would bother you. I've made several international flights in the past 2 years, and each time I've just given over my customs declaration form, which wasn't looked at, and waved on through.
Of course, now the NSA is probably going to tip of ICE to your evil plot to bring illict digital copies of 'Men at Work' records into the US.
Not too many home connections in the US would make that feasible either, assuming we are talking about multi-terabytes of data. Upload speeds generally suck residential connections in both countries (some exceptions exist: FiOS in the US and any NBN or Telstra Velocity FTTH connection in Australia).
I wouldn't even bother with the TrueCrypt - if they discover the partition, it might just attract further checks.
If you're really worried about it, put everything on a drive and send it ahead of you via the post.
Then they'll detain you for having encrypted data on your hard drives under the supposition that only someone doing something illegal would resort to encrypting their data.
The States is a wonderful country for contradictions, Encrypt your data to protect your privacy then they use it as the basis for a suspicion of illegal activities detainment. Gather a store of food and water so that you can survive a natural disaster and be detained as a possible terrorist for hoarding food to survive the coming attack that you;re involved in. Try to not have someone looking over your shoulder so your email or online banking is kept private and be considered suspicious because you're hiding something again. Try to reduce your bank fees by using cash more often and find yourself being considered suspicious because you're trying to mask your purchases by not using debit or credit cards.
Why were you moving to the States, again?
Yours is a stupid answer. It's a legal copy of a copyrighted work, and the US does recognize the concept of legal copies of copyrighted works.
Also note that heroin is legal in the US. You just have to have a DEA license to handle it. (And there are probably rules regarding its prescription and administration - I'm neither a doctor nor an American to know these minutiae.) The question of importing it is a completely different one, just like with, say, importing food as a tourist (it's not because food is illegal).
Ezekiel 23:20
There is nothing illegal about possessing music and movies in the US, regardless of where you got them.
But is there a law against importing music and movies for personal use? That's what the poster really needs to know.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You may have to pay duties on anything that will remain in the US. If you are bringing something in and taking it with you when you leave, you do not need to declare it.
Bad analogy. There is nothing illegal in the US about owning a rip of a DVD. In fact, the law specifically states you are allowed one (1) copy for backup purposes. Unless you're downloading stuff in front of the customs officer, what is he going to do? Of course if your computer loads utorrent when started, and you have files on your HD saying stuff like "thanks for downloading warez at xxx.net site", then that might be incriminating enough - IANAL. But just having the rip? Rename it to "SomeMovie(Backup).avi" or whatever and you're 100% covered.
Using your example, it's more akin to you crossing the border while under the influence of heroin. So long as you don't act in an intoxicated/disorderly manner, there is no law against being high. The laws cover possession, distribution and sale.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I don't think carrying personal belongings counts as importing, unless the items are going to remain in the US when you leave. At least, that is what the customs declaration form says.
I was in your situation a couple of months ago. I'm an Australian who's just moved (April 2013) to the US for at least a few years, maybe longer. I also had a lot of media on me when I crossed the border (ripped or otherwise). I don't think you will have any problems unless you literally had half a suitcase filled with dodgy-looking burnt DVDs (which looks like piracy and shows up easily on Xray).
Carry your stuff in on a removable hard drive or two or on a laptop and you will just blend in with the millions of other business travellers who enter and exit the US with laptops/storage devices/other computer peripherals every week. Airports are busy places (especially in the US where they seem to be chronically under-staffed compared to Australia), and customs have bigger fish to fry. They are looking for threats to agriculture/disease/pests and illicit drugs, mostly. If you look like a regular dude with a laptop they won't hassle you at all.
And 'welcome' to the US - it can be a pretty frustrating place as a new resident (trust me on this - US systems and processes seem not to consider 'foreigner' or non-resident alien as a use case so it's a complete nightmare doing even mundane daily tasks, until you get a local drivers licence, a SSN etc. Also in most states they won't recognise your existing Australian licence as equivalent, so you'll have to do a driving test to get a local one, hooray. And they don't give a toss about your credit history either so have fun applying for a rental apartment/getting a loan/even getting approved for a contract cell phone etc.)
But bear with it. After a few months once you jump through all the bureaucratic hoops things get a lot easier. Doing stuff here (at any level of government or even within private companies) is inconsistent, arbitrary, piecemeal. But once you're set up and good to go, it's a good place to live. Though you'll want to get a VPN back to Australia to get a fix of decent TV or radio news (ABC, SBS or otherwise) - 'news' here on all networks is mind-numbingly dumbed down and locally-focused.
No.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know for a fact that heroin is used in UK hospitals. I'm not sure about the US though, I think they don't hand out too many "licenses" for it, rather preferring the other drugs like meperidine, fentanyl, morphine, etc. I'm a doctor - but not a US doctor.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well at the time I got admission to PhD program in USA I wanted to bring those ripped books along, naturally. But was deathly afraid the immigration officer would find these books, and mark me a flagrant violator of copyright, a person unworthy of admission to a great American university, and do in his best soup nazi voice, "no visa to you" and send me back. So I shipped them all using surface mail and crossed the border without any contraband.
That is how I got the U S Federal Government, to aid and abet my flagrant and willful violation of copyright and the intellectual property of the text book companies of America. The poor postal worker lugged that entire box a flight of stairs up and deposited the treasure in my doorstep, some four months later! All those books, Aircraft Performance Stability and Control by Perkins and Hage, Hale, McCormick, Atkins, Timoshenko, Nicholai, and so many other goodies are still in the bottom shelf of my office. I recently had to look one up to understand quarternions, to implement some rigid body transformation of coordinate systems!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As an American who travels with some frequency, I'm more familiar than most with how onerous airport security has gotten, and my encounters with border control at numerous other countries have left me saddened at how poorly ours tends to measure up (in terms of politeness, common sense, etc.) Likewise, the US Copyright Act needs a massive overhaul, and the statutory penalties for relatively minor violations need to be completely re-worked, if not abolished -- the current copyright enforcement regime is abhorrent to anyone with a modicum of common decency.
All of that said, this anti-America stuff is getting seriously circlejerky. You're seriously worried about getting hassled for bringing personal-use copies of legally-acquired media into the US? Seriously?? Are you actually that ignorant about US copyright law (I suppose one could be forgiven, somewhat, for trusting anonymous internet-dwellers who would have you believe the police break down people's doors to search for stolen digital media and similar nonsense) or are you just flamebaiting?
You're far more likely to be pulled aside for being a dick to customs agents -- and if you are flamebaiting, I'd put your chances at about 50/50 there -- than for a random screening to see if you were trying to import contraband. And even then, even if they pulled you aside for enhanced screening and opened up your computer and held you for hours searching through everything you had in your possession, even then you would still have nothing to fear, assuming all of the digital media you're referring to are actually personal-use copies of legally-acquired media as you state. US and Australian copyright law aren't that different.
Seriously folks, the melodrama is getting out of hand.
"thanks for downloading warez at xxx.net site" ... IANAL.
Heh heh heh he heh he heh heh heh he he heh heh he heh
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Yep.
I have some photos that I took in my decoy partition. Never been asked to decrypt it yet, but have heard 'agents' in more than one airport mention in conversation that anything encrypted raises some kind of red flag.
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the Plutocratic States of America, and to the authoritarian state for which it stands, one Nation under surveillance, wiretapped, with incarceration and police abuse for all.
Hide your music inside pictures of naked children.
Vanderhoth is dead on. Ripping a DVD is against the law in the US. The Digital Millenium Copyright act expressly forbids breaking encryption to access content. There are exceptions for security researchers. That said, DVD ripping by ordinary individuals for format shifting and back up is not prosecuted in and of itself. Share the stuff? You can get in all kinds of legal hot water. Lawsuits and prosecution.
Ripping a non-copy-protected Red Book cd that you own is perfectly legal -- provided you do not share the file. No encryption. No crime. First sale doctrine applies.
I travel to and from the US from overseas frequently. Only once in 20 years was I ever polled concerning the contents of my laptop. The US Customs agent asked me if there was any x-rated material on it. I answered truthfully that there was not. He was trolling for a demeanor hit and would have probably looked at my content for illegal porn had he not been satisfied by my confident negative answer. By the way, having even US-legal porn on the laptop can still get you in big trouble in the Middle East so be aware. Even silly rags like Maxim are trouble. Also mind what you eat, kids. Traveling to Dubai? Skip that poppy seed bagel in Sydney airport.. Really.
Bottom line, however? The posters are generally right. US Customs is not concerned about the technically illegal DVD rips on your hard drive. They probably would do nothing even if they found them. But, and here's the thing. If you are going to feel guilty and worried about that questionable content then leave it behind. You will ruin your flight. Your nerves might show as you cross the frontier and draw unwarranted attention. The fact that you even asked this question shows that this is a source of anxiety for you. You have your answer. Go in peace. Walk in beauty.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
1) Copy files onto new HDD
2) backup partition table and post online somewhere
3) wipe partition table
4) place 'blank' HDD with all your other parts.
Later, download your partition table backup and restore it. to access your files.
How brown are you?
If you get caught with fake rolex watches or other contraband, you could get in trouble. So it all depends on weather ripped music could be considered to fall into this category. And where the line is. What if you have songs illegally downloaded from P2P networks? Would that be considered contraband? If that's illegal, how do you prove your music came from an actual CD you own? It's the same kind of mp3/aac file.
Anyway, my personal suspicion is that they'll only give you trouble if they have some other "real" reason to give you trouble. If they had to arrest all tourists who have music on their laptops, they would have a lot of work on their hands.
But if you're not sure and want to play it 100% safe, save all your music on some cloud or other server, wipe it off your hard disk, then download it once you're in the US.
What if you have songs illegally downloaded from P2P networks? Would that be considered contraband? If that's illegal, how do you prove your music came from an actual CD you own?
I wouldn't prove anything. Personal copies without further redistribution are implicitly legal regardless of the source of the copy, as per article 30, subitem 1 of the Czech Copyright Act (Act No. 121/2000) and as per Czech Supreme Court ruling 5 Tdo 234/2009 which elucidated and confirms the interpretation of article 30. These conditions locally apply even to US copyrighted works, as per the Berne Convention of 1896 which is binding for all of its signatories (both the US and the Czech Republic signed it).
Ezekiel 23:20