Have you ever got trouble with pirated content at border ?

[underdeath21]

For example you went into airport and they asked to look into your storage devices for pirated content?anybody here had any troubles and what are chances that border will check for pirated content??

[RobertX]

Not exactly. You can say many things for excuses for having "pirated" content. It's not against the law for just putting songs on your storage devices.

If they checked everyone for "pirated" content, that's one busy airport.

[LZA]

Agree, Just say you've made a copy of your personally purchased stach...How the fuck with they know you stole... I doubt they'll call your bluff and make you produce the original...

[joew771]

No border patrol anywhere will ever look at your laptop and see if you have downloaded movies. Not gunna happen. They only care about bombs. If you don't have a bomb, you're good to go.

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

In the U.S., they look for cracked software and porn.
If you have anything they like they keep the laptop. ‌‌ ‌‌

If you ever have to go there take a blank, new one
and use online sync in to load your OS and content,
then sync and secure wipe before leaving the country. ‌‌ ‌‌

[workerbee]

In the U.S., they look for cracked software and porn.  If you have anything they like they keep the laptop. ‌‌ ‌‌

Can you provide a source for that assertion?  I've never heard of any legal authority for confiscations of that kind, and I find it extremely difficult to believe that U.S. customs agents would bother with such minor offenses.  Maybe if child porn was discovered, but not cracked software or pirated books, music, or movies.  How would they know?

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

They have legal authority to seize anything for no reason at all
other than "suspicion" which they don't really have to articulate
to lowly peons like you and I. ‌‌ That they say so is the sole test
of the law and when pressed, can simply say they don't have to
reveal their sources or "investigative methods."

They look for child porn, definitely, but have a long reputation
for unexplained seizures against journalists, muslims and anyone
they just don't like for any reason at all, and they have special
exceptions in the law for "customs" and "border security".

As for piracy: yes, they do use it as an excuse; and then they
simply don't release the suspected "contraband" until you spend
enough money to lawyer it out of their clammy, selfish deathgrip.

If you haven't noticed, you haven't been looking or haven't been
reading news from independent, credible sources. ‌ I recommend
sites like Techdirt and The Intercept, for starters, and follow their
evidence from there to more of the same, reputable news sources.

As for what I said about using clean laptops [and tablets and phones]
this has been standard procedure for journalists [and business reps
who handle sensitive info for their employers] for over a decade:
Take hardware if you must but plan for it to be lost or stolen by feds.

[Sid]

^ is my understanding as well.

But I have no personal experience of it nor do I personally know anyone who has.

The same math applies when travelling internationally as it does to pirating in general (or to walking down the street while being black and being shot by a trigger happy US police officer, or of your child being abducted by a paedophile): although customs officials can and do fuck people up hundreds of millions of people fly annually and the probability that you will be victimised on your next flight is very very very low.

Bad things do happen to good people but nowhere near as often as scary headlines imply.

[RobertX]

Time to use GNU/Linux.

[workerbee]

Customs officials do have broad discretion, and you rightly cite criminal and national security matters.  Abuse or careless exercise of that authority is well documented and has been going on for well over a century.  Even so, there is no "legal authority to seize anything for no reason at all", and an agent's "say-so" is not "the sole test of the law".  The courts are the final arbiters.

I was specifically disputing your claim that such discretion extends to pirated content on computers.  I've never heard of a single instance of pirated content being inspected at the border or someone questioned about it, much less their computer being seized on those grounds.  That's why I asked for a source.  Moreover, your claim doesn't make sense from any number of perspectives, ranging from the technical knowledge required to simple time-management.

I might well be wrong on this but I don't think so.  And even if you could find such an instance, I'm suggesting it would be completely anomalous and unrepresentative of the normal routine of border agents.

The bottom line: nobody cares about your pirated copy of Microsoft Word.

Maybe it's time to take off the tinfoil hat.