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Night Vision Goggles vs Pirates
Cormorant writes "It was reported in The Guardian that Warner Brothers has sent night vision goggles to cinemas across Britain for ushers to don and scan for camcorder pirates during the entire length of the movie [the new Harry Potter], along with watermarks and codes displayed on screen during the film. Mr Graham said "Video piracy is rife everywhere, and with the UK screening the film four days before the rest of the world, Warner was concerned the movie would end up on the internet. Warner sees the investment as negligible compared with the threat to the whole industry."
Returning as Sam Fisher, you infiltrate the theaters of the UK...
... going to spout off about how they have no right to be observing us? I mean, what gives them the right to spy on us during a movie that we paid good money to see?
It looks like I'm going to have to get some IR absorbing coating on myself and my camcorder now.
Now when the projector gets screwed up or there's no sound, there will be theater personnel on hand to notice!
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
Turn about, me Buccaneers, lest we be cast to Davey Jones' Locker! Tharr be Night Vision Goggles on yonder shore!
\Shiver me timbers etc.
I could really use some nightvision goggles to observe the night life of that hot chick next do... Uh... Of a random small group of badgers. Yes, badgers. And mushrooms.
Pirates will begin modifying their video equipment to look like these devices, thus foiling the ability of pirate scouts to spot actual pirates.
Then, one day, a movie theatre employee will kick out a blind man, suspecting him of pirating the movie.
All matter of hell and lawsuits will spew forth and in the end, only the blind people will suffer.
So, ban movie theatre pirate scouts before it's too late!
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Whoops.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
First the Web, then groups, then images, then froogle, then Gmail, and now.... NIGHT VISION!! ON 100,000 Linux boxes!!! NOW I CAN SEARCH THE WEB IN THE DARK!!! ...oh... goggles.
ZERO
Of course, there are still pirates on the seas today, and maybe people do use night vision technology to spot them, although radar's good, too.
Mod parent up!
when all you needed to take on pirates was a cutlass, a musket, and of course if you're in Bengalla and it's the Sengh Brotherhood you're dealing with, the Phantom wouldn't hurt.
(from stanthecaddy)
% Anna and George in George's car.
George: I'm a bootlegger.
Anna: You're a what?
George: I'm bootleggin' a movie, baby!
Anna: Isn't that illegal?
George: I can do hard time for this one. And community service!
Anna: Is this your FiberCon?
George: (Takes it and throws it out window) Get outta my way!
I wouldn't worry too much about the night vision goggles. Anyone smart enough to bring a camcorder into a theater is surely going to know how to defeat anyone with night vision goggles.
Magnesium flares!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
"Hey, where are you going with the goggles, man?"
...
...
"Boss told me to check for videocams in the theatre."
"Dude - fair warning, Paul Reuben is in there. I wouldn't go if I were you."
"Who? Look, I just do what the boss says. See ya in a few."
"!"
"You got a fork suitable for removing eyes around here?"
Hope WB is able to handle the 'problems' of this technology.
-Adam
Fire off a nice bright flare in the movie and watch all the ushers walk around bumping into walls and tripping over half empty popcorn buckets (the size of 10 gallon hats) as they are temporary blinded. You may not be welcomed back, but that would be something worth watching.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
In NYC, it's almost double that.
We need to get a cinema full of Slashdotters to go and take the remote control for their telly with them. When the usher comes in with the goggles everyone should descretly flash them with the IR beam.
Their reaction would probably be more entertaining than the film itself.
Philip
Signatures are broken
...and flash them right between the eyes.. I mean, these are probably of the type that just amplify the light 1000x or something :-)
P.S.: I'm not really suggesting that you should do this of course :-)
Cell phone cameras?
They were probably recording the whole thing, streaming it out over the internet in real time.
First, the guys working in the theatres who make minimum wage are not going to report anyone for pirating a movie. They aren't paid enough to care
Well, perhaps, but they might enjoy lording it over some guy.
Damned in-theater pirates... they give piracy a bad name.
OTOH, I should also point out, that this type of copy is often made from the projection booth. Good luck scanning the audience for that piracy problem.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
The fascist capitalist bolshevik corporate overlords are yet again conspiring to encroach on my freedom to record all that I see, even though i happen to be in a movie theater that is privately owned and even though that couple in front of me is totally unaware that i am filming them more than the movie and plan to distribute videos of them making out on emule; But they have no right to film me! Those communist fbi Hoover-worshipping hippies think they can just go around filming whatever they see, even me in the theater, uh, itching myself, while filming the couple in front of, i mean the movie.. oh jebus.. i mean Privacy Forever!!
Anyone making out? Record the video and distribute that instead. You could even interupt the film with a live video of them in the act.
Heh... until you have millions of people worldwide walking around unable to get a 15-digit number they don't recognize out of their heads :)
"Weird, I went to see that Harry Potter movie and now all I can think about is 2917772119442.2"
I'll just put my camera in a big cowboy hat...
If we have night vision goggles, we can see ahem...night vision "action" and as long as there was to be a video camera anyways as well as money, we point money, camera and night vision goggles to the couple snogging in the back row and make a profit upon selling it on the web...and to their parents :-)
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Phones? Laptops? Camcorders? Start looking for the ladies being banged on the back seats and then you use YOUR camcorder ;)
The next step will be to add a "record mode" to the night vision goggles to aid prosecution.
Shortly thereafter, someone in the movie industry will publish the footage. Reality cinema arrives when we pay to see this footage. Finally the loop is completed when pirates copy this footage.
> each theater might present a different number written on the wall of the trash compactor in the next release of Star Wars,
"A simple trivia contest at a local science-fiction convention ended in a violent standoff when two opposing gangs clashed over the winning answer. The gangs have yet to be identified, but the dispute seemed to have started over the misuse of a phone number, perhaps a cell number used to sell drugs to other convention attendees. One gang started shouting '3263827', while the other responded '3263838'! The only injury reported was a man whose fantasy unitard cut off circulation to his genitals. Police are investigating."
Whats next? Now that we have gmail, this could be their next big thing.
"I'd love to be on anti-pirate duty if it meant being able to walk around in night vision goggles."
Me too. But I'd just spend the time oggling the hot chicks while they couldn't see me, screw looking for pirates...
have i got u fooled
my cell phone camera pumps into the laptop for storage and i control it all via my gameboy
take that mpaa!
(Reporter): Excuse me sir, do you have a minute?
(Man with family): Sure.
(Reporter): How was the film? Does it live up to the previous releases?
(Man with family): What film is that?
(Reporter): The new Harry Potter film, of course.
(Man with family): Oh yes, we're looking forward to seeing that soon!
(Studio exec lurking off to side): Priceless!
Sigs are bad for your health.
subversive behavior = cool
pretending that being too cheap to pay for your entertainment is some sort of noble stab at the bourgeoisie = not cool
did anyone else read this as Night Vision Google? I've been on the Internet way too long.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
because I can't wait the first time that they're wearing them, and look at the movie to see 'that cool part' then scream as they effectively look at the sun. It'd be rude of them, but I'd still have to smile....
I prefer the hands on touch you only get with hired goons.
"...you'll be going to a special Hell; one reserved for child-molesters, and people who talk at the theater."
I think this would be great, but you'd want to vary it up a bit. Get a bunch of IR LEDs and a 555 timer and clock those suckers at a 10% duty cycle at maybe 24Hz (Same as the movie). Put the LEDs all over some cheap coat or what not pointing out.
Not only will you blind the guy, you can have fun doing it. Get some friends and sit around the theater and switch the things on and off every so often. I would almost pay to see a movie just to piss them off.
No, the only way to deal with pirates is to board their ship and make 'em walk the plank. Either that or hang 'em. That's always good for a lark.
Disembowelment sounds like a barrel of laughs, but then you have a big mess to clean up. Plus it's just plain unsanitary. The same goes for beheading. You get too much blood on the deck of the ship and it's just a lawsuit waiting to happen when somebody steps in it and falls and breaks a leg or something.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
I've seen screeners that had parts of the movie in black and white instead of color, to hopefully deter piracy I suppose. (I doubt it did.)
Dude, it always turns to color when she leaves Kansas and gets to Munchkin land.
Never confuse volume with power.