I will be visiting my relatives in Pattaya in December and their son has asked if I will take a hard disk with 6 months worth on TV soaps etc.. which he has recorded for them and to bring back the old one. He does this on a regular basis and has not had any problems. I'm just wondering what is the legality of this as it would be just my luck to get stopped and questioned about the HDD contents and what would be the airlines attitude to be carrying electronic parts in my suitcase?

I will be visiting my relatives in Pattaya in December and their son has asked if I will take a hard disk with 6 months worth on TV soaps etc.. which he has recorded for them and to bring back the old one. He does this on a regular basis and has not had any problems. I'm just wondering what is the legality of this as it would be just my luck to get stopped and questioned about the HDD contents and what would be the airlines attitude to be carrying electronic parts in my suitcase?

I think they are more worried about drugs than a downloaded TV show. I have 3 externals loaded with TV shows and movies that I travel around the world with and never been asked anything even when going through Dubai and they went through everything looking for drugs.

I will be visiting my relatives in Pattaya in December and their son has asked if I will take a hard disk with 6 months worth on TV soaps etc.. which he has recorded for them and to bring back the old one. He does this on a regular basis and has not had any problems. I'm just wondering what is the legality of this as it would be just my luck to get stopped and questioned about the HDD contents and what would be the airlines attitude to be carrying electronic parts in my suitcase?

They wont worry too much about soaps on a HDD, however why doesn't he just stream them over the internet...

I will be visiting my relatives in Pattaya in December and their son has asked if I will take a hard disk with 6 months worth on TV soaps etc.. which he has recorded for them and to bring back the old one. He does this on a regular basis and has not had any problems. I'm just wondering what is the legality of this as it would be just my luck to get stopped and questioned about the HDD contents and what would be the airlines attitude to be carrying electronic parts in my suitcase?

They wont worry too much about soaps on a HDD, however why doesn't he just stream them over the internet...

Thanks for those comments, I feel a little more comfortable carrying the HDD now. As for streaming it over the net their broadband connection is very poor and intermittant due to cable path and length (even a landline call is poor) and they are not very computer literate.

I carry my laptop and an external drive regularly when flying.

Never had a problem, or even a question.

Slightly off topic,

I seem to remember that the UK has sniffer dogs looking for pirated CD/DVD's that you might be taking the other way.

I don't think the government cares what-so-ever about "pirated" tv-shows. I mean it ain't exactly hard to find downloaded movies in any market/mall.

Also I'm not sure they are even allowed to demand to see what's on your hard drives? Maybe in the US (I think I remember hearing something about this somewhere) but not in most other countries they are not.

In the UK they can require you to reveal all, even if it is encrypted............

Jail time if you do not.

Not sure if the law has ever been tested.

They would still have to prove you don't own the right to watch those movies/Tv Series.

Should be no problem although once going into the US they searched all media, video tapes, SD cards, USB drives etc everything - not sure what they were looking for - but it was a good 20 minutes. Had to open computer and they took it away for a while. I had lots of TV shows and movies on media and in computer.