In Spain we have a legal right called “private copy” by which anyone can make a copy (for non-commercial use) of their copyrighted content (movies, music, books, etc). To offset the supposed loss (many studies prove this “loss” to be a fallacy) we Spaniards pay the so-called “Digital canon”, a tax levied on blank media (CDs, HardDisks, printers, photocopiers, etc, etc) and managed by private monopolistic institutions called “collecting societies”, some run by supposed alcohol-consuming, whore-user, money-embezzler, tax-evading criminals (or so goes the accusations brought to a number of them by the Attorney General).

So, after packing 16 boxes full of indispensable books for the mover to take (already en-route to the USA), I decided packing also the hundreds of CDs and DVDs I own was going to be too much, so why not make a digital copy of them in an external HardDisk and take that with me? Sounds good, and it is legal, and I paid for my right to… wait a minute: in the US border the laws change, and I could be indicted for possessing the very same thing I do have a right to possess in my home country.

Solution? Leave the HardDisk back at home, connected to the net, and establish a tunneled VPN, thus streaming my content, sitting in Spain, to my home or office in NY.

Technology to the rescue! Technology will lead us to the future, away from the retards that can`t see beyond their FUD (and pocket).