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Digital Shoplifting From Bookstores?

ipandithurts writes "According to a report from Tokyo via IOL, Japanese publishers have launched a campaign to stop 'digital shoplifters.' These 'digital shoplifters' are using cellphones to photograph magazine pages in bookstores, rather than buying them. 'Digital shoplifting is becoming a big problem as camera-equipped mobile handsets are spreading fast and their quality is improving greatly,' said Kenji Takahashi, an official at the Japan Magazine Publishers Association. Will entry into a bookstore soon include a 'cell-phone patdown?'"

20 of 447 comments (clear)

  1. it gets worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    People do obnoxious things like this (man I have been waiting to slashdot them for a while).

    1. Re:it gets worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
      What's wrong with taking pictures of people's asses? This site is quite amusing.

      Wait a minute, that's my ass! And it only got a 2!

      This site is goin down!!!

  2. sounds like a big hassle by God!+Awful+2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't these people know there are bookstores where you can just go in, buy a coffee, sit around and read the magazine, then put it back on the shelf and leave?

    -a

    1. Re:sounds like a big hassle by Adam9 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Be careful. Some of these places even let you TAKE THEM HOME WITH YOU. They even let you do it with books too! And movies! And CDs! My god, they should be shut down immediately!

      Obviously, libraries are evil.

    2. Re:sounds like a big hassle by interiot · · Score: 3, Funny

      And there are sinister sister organizations that TRANSMIT CONTENT OVER THE AIRWAVES FOR FREE. If this continues, the 200 artists that are actually making money will start to starve too.

    3. Re:sounds like a big hassle by cshark · · Score: 2, Funny

      hmm, yes, my evil plan is taking shape. To allude authorities who will be looking for me in the bookstore, I will go to the library and take a picture of every book in there... with my phone! All the pictures will then be transmitted to my inbox, which has a one megabyte limit, so I will have to rotate pictures every 20 pages! I feel so sinister! Woo hahahahaha!

      --

      This signature has Super Cow Powers

  3. Bookstore security by KingArthur10 · · Score: 2, Funny

    You walk into the bookstore. Two army officers approach you with AK-47s. "Excuse me sit, could you step into the office here? Thank you. Now, you have been chosen at random to be strip-searched. This is not racial profiling. Please remove all of your clothes and bend over."

    --
    I came, I saw, She conquered.
  4. I have a disability. by incom · · Score: 5, Funny

    I suffer from lack of photographic memory, thus such devices are my aids. On a similar note, my ability to perfectly memorize movies and music is also impaired, thus I am justified in downloading MP3's and movies.

    --
    True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
  5. DRM for print? by hussar · · Score: 5, Funny

    There is clearly a requirement here for some sort of DRM for printed materials. What about something like those 3D glasses they used to hand out in theaters. Make it so you can only read the magazine with those glasses on.

    Might have some interesting side effects for Playboy magazine.

    (This is a joke - unless you want to patent this idea. Then it is prior art.)

    --

    Bureaucracy loves company.
  6. Re:That's One Thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's a brilliant idea, hell if people didn't know what's in it, they might buy MacWorld...

  7. Re:I don't see a point. by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Funny
    If you're going to stand in a bookstore, taking 500 pictures of the latest fav-novel of your choice, and *not* get caught, then you probably deserve to get away with the pictures.

    Reminds me of when I was a teenager and stopped at the mewsagent/bookshop on the way home to "browse" a few chapters of a porn novel that I was too chicken to buy. Only took a few days to get through them.

  8. Re:No one addressed this point yet: by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Store clerk to manager: "You know, I've been seeing photoflashes every 5 seconds for an hour." Manager: "Yes, it's that 13 year old with the cellphone and that copy of Playboy."

  9. Re:information ... by Anthony+Boyd · · Score: 5, Funny
    ... wants to be free

    While that tramp "Intellectual Property" just wants to be 0wn3d.

  10. You think this is bad? by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Funny
    Wait a couple years, until you can buy a high resolution camcorder that is the size of your thumb, sneak it into the movie theater, tape it to your forehead, and record the entire movie without anyone being able to tell what you're doing.


    They'll need a whole new Orwellian pseudo-crime-name for that... I suggest "digital molestation of kittens".

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  11. Nah by Cappy+Red · · Score: 2, Funny

    They just want to feel like James Bond... or Peter Graves.

    Tonight on Biography, should you choose to accept it, you must retrieve a copy of the enemy's secret plans. Though their headquarters looks like a normal bookstore, do not be fooled. Every moment you spend within those walls, their operatives will be watching you, andpaying special attention to your consealed cameras. They've already been alerted to the briefcase camera, so you'll have to make do with the cell phone model. As usual, if you or any of your team is captured in the course of this operation, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existance, as well as every having paid for "those magazines".

    *honk*

    --
    This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
  12. I have a photographic memory by pj737 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sue me.

  13. Re:Where are the "condemn the act" posts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Feel free to make a contructive post in the manner you suggested.

    Oh, sorry, did you mean *somebody else* should think?

    Ooops....

  14. Re:Hmm by badnova · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm going to bust his Trace Buster with my Trace Buster Buster!

  15. imagine by kylant · · Score: 2, Funny

    one of these days people will start recording music they hear on the radio on so called "tape recorders" which enables them to listen to the music again and again without paying for it. The industry is doomed...

  16. Re:Silly Japs... by LilMikey · · Score: 3, Funny

    If anyone ever got an entire 400-700 page book by taking a picture of it, I applaud them. They must have had an awful lot of time on their hands.

    Isn't there some kind of award for that?


    If they died in the process they'd probably be up for a Darwin.

    --
    LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto