Posting CDs/DVDs

I could swear I’ve seen this question before, but the archives offer nothing. The question is, will I get into trouble if I ship a box full of books and Taiwan-bought CDs and DVDs back to the US?

Some of them are legit but some of them probably aren’t. :blush:

Risky with the illegal ones. Suggest to box them seperately.

Else I won’t see a problem though you should check if any tax / import duty applies.

I can’t see you being victim of any legal trouble as you didn’t take part in the piracy of them (or did you?). I imagine if someone wanted to they might decide to hold them, but then again who can say that the Customs officer scanning your package is going to be able to distiguish real from fake anyway, much less really care that you got suckered (or not!) into buying a copied version? For the most part, unless the merchandise looks suspicious (make sure to keep powdery substances out of the box!) they will not even open the box and instead send it down the line with all the other commonly received boxes of CDs.

Taking the wise advice of the previous post’s author you just might want to ship any “illegals” seperately- just in case! And yes, if you send enough of them and cannot claim them as “gifts” under the regulations for such items (shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re shipping a lot of them) you may be charged tax on them. :imp:

I can’t see you being victim of any legal trouble as you didn’t take part in the piracy of them (or did you?).

In some countries the possession of this material is reason enough.
And custom officers are not that stupid either (well, some aren’t).

That said even by purchasing those you do take part in piracy as you indirectly support them.

Agreed, but that doesn’t mean you KNEW they were pirated when you bought them (snicker snicker). If they question it and you play dumb they’re not going to submit you to a polygraph. Don’t worry much about it.

That might work but I, aehem, “tested” some of those DVDs and found them of inferior quality.
Thus I rekon there is actually no point buying a DVD player and then feeding it poor material, at least not if you have a serious AV system to go with it.
Nowadays I stick to buying originals only, more expensive but at least I am ensured better (if not best) quality.

I heard playing dodgy dvds can really screw up a machine, so a few people I know in Taiwan have two machines, one machine for origional dvd’s, and another machine for the mainland china and night market copies. Does the playing of pirated dvds do anything to the machine?

Under the Copyright Law, Title 1, Chapter 1, Sec. 107 (fair use) and 117 (computer programs), you have the right to make a backup copy for archival purposes.

So unless you have no more than 1 copy of each tiitle, movie or software, and don’t mention the fact that you actually bought them, you should be ok.

Does the playing of pirated dvds do anything to the machine?

No, definetely not. But it may hurt your eyes and ears. :laughing:

Not the machine, but the person in front of it. You didn’t buy the DVD player to see a picture quality any VCD player could match, did you?

As stated above, the machine itself will be fine… It is almost impossible to drive the head into a position from where you can only remove it by external force.
Btw, what kind of “pirated” DVDs do you mean? Those from Mainland China, with footage taken at a cinema with a DV camera? The picture quality is even worse than VCD, not to mention the “sound”.
But even at regular shops you can get “pirated” DVDs. There are taiwanese companies who got the rights to produce VHS and/or VCD of something - and so they take the “freedom” to print DVD, using the same footage. Legally, such DVD too is “pirated” - and of bad quality anyway. But although the quality might be like VCD or even worse, people will still buy it, because the magic letters “DVD” are there on the cover…
Talking about customs: So far, I never noticed german custom officials to check for pirated media, they only check the total value of your goods and demand their (or the government’s) money - a “custom” the Taiwan custom seems to be applying these days. Looks like recently a few people’s parcels to Taiwan were heavily (and especially arbitrarily) taxed…

Customs agents like to open boxes of CDs very much and stick loads of tax on them. At least they do when they are going to Europe. Best bet is to shove them in a big bag and bring them home as a ‘personal collection’.