If I read that right....then they'll have the right to search my MP3 player, and I'll have to prove that I purchased those tracks...?
and its worse in the USA: didnt the RIAA try to get it so that ripping MP3 was copywrite breach?

damn, I'm glad I use Truecrypt

The US is getting more obtuse about such things by the day--there was recently some discussion about having customs officials having the right to search your laptop.

yup. the would ask you to sign into it, or they would just confiscate it.

they were also imaging the HDDs.

Truecrypt, anyone?

remember, Citizen; Have your Papers out and ready!

"prove it".

judging by the average security guard, they are not going to recognise .ogg, .FLAC, or .BAT...so save your MP3's, write a .bat to rename them as .oggs, when you want to play them, run the .bat, and huzzah! *** you,RIAA!
or, you know,  just bloody use .ogg and .flac. smaller, and higher quality

This kind of crap doesn't ride in on the back of social programs -- it's all about "protecting us from terrorists,"

By "our" do you mean the United States? If so, you are very likely wrong.

Yes, the only "our" that matters.

McCain won't do it. Hillary would. Obama Might. I admit, I know less about Obama than I should. The Senate is not in post 9/11 unilaterality' anymore, so something this big could not slip past them so easily. The house.. Who cares about them. What's your impression?

SO MUCH THIS IT HURTS

..Because of our sense of humor?

So this is all supposed to be secret, or at least kept hush hush and with minimal time on open-doors deliberation. Have any substantial people stepped up acknowledging the ACTA? I looked at the document and it doesn't have 1 name on it.

I must be missing something here - how can downloaded music be terrorising us? People would be less likely to use P2P networks if they could find what they want in the music store or on the net. Instead of using so many draconian measures, there is a need to find a way to supply the unmet demand.

It doesnt.

Basically, the US is currently restricting a lot of things, becoming quite draconian, under the guise of "protection from the terrorists". unfortunately, they are doing it wrong. as Gareth said, you just upload an image of the hard drive, and redownload it; or you can get TrueCrypt, and make an invisible partition.

basically, the TSA are a bunch of thieving morons.

No; when you purchase something from iTunes, you are in effect purchasing a license to use that media, in that format.

they are thinking of it like this; Say I buy a game for the 360; say I then want to play that on my PC instead of on my xbox, for whatever reason; I can't just download it in another format, I have to go buy it in another format.

Ergo; when you buy a CD, you are buying a license to play that media, from that medium. if you transfer that media to another medium (or a container, in the case of MP3/OGG/whatever) you are (according to them) breaking copyright laws..

does that clarify things?

Because the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America), which is the organisation trying to push this through, hasn't gotten its way.

yet.

as was mentioned at the beginning of the thread, this sort of crap already happens with laptops when you cross over a US boundry.

and as was also mentioned; thank god for truecrypt.

Read the article; We're in on it too.

if they are the ones who "own" the crappyright, then yes.

Don't forget; Money is something those douchebags have in great abundance. And you'll never be short a corrupt politician or two...