Wikileads

Remove your coat. Take off your shoes. If your belt, earrings, watch or necklace are made of metal, take them off, too. Get your laptop out of your briefcase. Put all liquids in a small, clear plastic bag. Your skin is a bit too dark, your clothes a bit too shabby. Step over here and we will check you separately. We selected you randomly, of course.

As if airport security isn’t invasive enough, imagine adding to the list of annoyances random searches of files on your iPod and computer.

That’s what was proposed in a secret multilateral trade agreement recently released by Wikileaks. It’s called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and trade representatives were hoping to formalize it at the G-8 summit this July.

Its purpose: to ferret out illegal music downloads and other types of Internet piracy and impose fines on people caught trafficking media they did not pay for.

But this agreement, if enacted, would be useless. There is no difference between an mp3 file downloaded illegally and am mp3 file legally copied from a CD or DVD that you own. No difference at all.

So to defend yourself, all you would have to do is tell airport security that you have a huge CD collection. Rights holders should love you, you could say, because even though pirated music is free and convenient and easy to come by, you are the sucker who’s still paying $17 a pop for full albums. Unlike the unruly masses who flagrantly flaunt all standards of law and decency, you respect the Man. It matters not that the respect is far from mutual.

ACTA is another ill-conceived attempt to maintain a status quo that died when Internet file-sharing was born. Come on, politicians and rights holders. It’s time to face the facts. Evolve, already!