On my way to Japan once, the moving marquee above the customs area at the airport warned passengers about the transfer of material in violation of copyright laws. I’ve heard of people that have had pirated CDs and DVDs they’ve bought overseas confiscated at borders and I’m sure this what they were talking about. Clearly, the larger smuggling rings are operating illegally and prosecuted.
But I’m curious to know if any one of the tens of million filesharers has been picked up at a border for an iPod filled with contraband? To me, it seems almost unimaginable. Even the people I know coming into the states with illegally pressed DVDs got little more than a finger wagged at them by the US customs officials (and they got to keep the 100 or so DVDs!).
Fact is, wrong or not, sharing music is not the same as stealing in the minds of most people who don’t work at the RIAA. The RIAA realizes this and that is their biggest problem. This is why we see "Don’t Copy that Floppy" and copyright education campaigns for kids.
The reason people aren’t worried crossing borders with pirated music may be because it’s not enforced. However, the reason folks don’t even consider declaring it in the first place is because they don’t see music, and intellectual goods for that matter, as something that has value in the same way that a Rolex or a leather jacket does. They don’t see unrestricted trade in "restricted" information as unethical.
The RIAA scare tactics in the rash of suits over the last couple years have scared some people off the P2P networks but the real fight, in my mind, is not over P2P but over the way that people conceive of their relationship to information in a much more general sense. The experience of everyone with an iPod at the border is a sign of how far the RIAA and their gang have to go.