Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
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Customs officials in the U.K. hope one day the dogs will only signal when there are large collections of discs, which would more likely include illegally copied movies. ... Trainers say the dogs have been notifying customs agents of packages with discs in them. The packages have been opened but so far no pirated movies have been found.
So... customs officials open packages with DVDs in them, and are planning, perhaps, to check the contents of each of them? (Wow, incredible invasion of privacy there.) Do they check the first 30 seconds of each disc to find out if it starts up a pirated movie? Or actually inspect all the contents, taking half an hour or so to check every disc? Or maybe they're just looking at the labels, and if it says "Vacation Photos - Paris" in sharpie then it's assumed not to be pirated, but if it's got a printed cover of a movie, it's assumed to be pirated.
If they find what they believe to be "pirated DVDs"--how do they confirm that? They're not authorized agents of the copyright owner; they can't sue for infringement. They have no way to verify if John Q Traveller is a bootleg importer or an agent of Warner Bros, bringing home a stash of unauthorized movies from foreign countries back to Hollywood to distribute to various media techies so they can confirm what methods are used to make the discs.
And yes, if JQT is carrying 5,000 DVDs of Avatar, it's likely he's not working for WB. But if he's got 200 of them--he may be doing research on the bootleg dvd industry, and wants enough extras to try doing different things to them. The question of "is this person allowed to carry this many copies" isn't something a customs person is authorized to figure out, except for the range of "is he trying to sneak in goods intended for sale without paying the right taxes for them?"
But of course they're not going to find a lot of discs being imported. Discs are bulky; data is not. Easier for someone to upload a DVD's worth of content to Dropbox or another online storage place, zipped with a password so it's not available for casual download, and then download it when they get home. Burning DVDs costs more here but avoids the whole problem of getting salable goods past customs officials.