Neodynium Neodym Magnets illegal?

[dAYTONA]

Hi Guys,

I have a friend who deals in magnets, and he wants to go and sell them in france/holland and I wanted to ask, if anyone knows if they are illegal to have/sell in these countries...

Has anyone heard any stories in the news of people getting locked up, etc...

for those that dont know, these are very strong magnets, which have many uses....

[Yonzie]

They are in many speakers (in the tweeter that needs a strong small magnet)... Why would they be illegal...?

[Darkstar]

What Daytona is probably thinking about are those magnet thingies that are said to give some power if conneted to a fuel line. From what I've heard, they make a better order among the fuel atoms, so that it burns more efficiently, thus making more HP. I haven't heard of it being illegal, though.

[dAYTONA]

No Darkstar... not talking about that.

But your right Yonzie, they are used in speakers, harddrives, etc...

BUT, the word is, that if you place one next to your water meter, the water meter slows down... as does the gas meter... and I'm not talking about cars here..

I was just wondering if they are illegal, as they are being used for things other than what they were initially made for.

[Yonzie]

dAYTONA Wrote:I was just wondering if they are illegal, as they are being used for things other than what they were initially made for.

Well... You can buy "gold cards" and card writers to make cards for your satellite TV reciever so...
As long as it's just magnets and they're not sold as "Cheat the water plant and save money!!! magnets" everything should be fine.
It's like selling guns in the US... They are used for attacking and defending. As long as the seller only advertises them for defense, his ass is clear. If some gun-seller made an ad like "Buy a gun, make money robbing banks", it would obviously be illegal.
The "gold cards" have thousands of possible uses (even if only one is popular), and as long as the seller doesn't advertise it as useful for cheating the satellite companies, everything is good.

The Peer-to-peer filesharing networks is kinda the same, but it is a much more complex situation, so let's save that for another time ;-)

[dAYTONA]

well thats what I would think, but he doesn't want to get in trouble/arrested... he can do that locally ;-)

apparantly, people even use them while going to petrol stations... putting them against the pump at some spot, and all they pay is for 20 litres, while their 50 litre fuel tank fills up.....

[Ivan141]

How much for one of those magnets?

[Yonzie]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/770f/

[dAYTONA]

those there are quite small... the ones my friend sells, are 55mm x 25mm and larger ... and if you get two which join together, seperating them takes quite some effort ;-)