Night Goggles Capture Spider-Man Movie Bootlegger

linuxwrangler writes "According to SFGate.com/AP, a teen has been arrested for attempting to bootleg the Spider-Man 2 movie, after a projectionist using night-vision goggles spotted him. The teen was escorted from the theater by security guards and turned over to police. This may be the first arrest stemming from the use of NV goggles that were previously mentioned on Slashdot."

Comments

Good job MPAA

[kamapuaa]

It's encouraging to see movie studios go after the actual perpetrators, rather than raise a blanket assumption that everybody is guilty and everybody deserves restrictions to their activity. I remember Roger Ebert complaining that a year or so ago critics were being patted down before being allowed into movie screenings.

propaganda war

[kylemonger]

It's hard to believe the movie industry is getting so excited over wretchedly poor quality bootlegs. This strikes me as being more of a propaganda war than anything else. Every time an arrest is made some movie exec gets to come out and use the words "steal" and "movie" in the same sentence, as if making copies is at all the same thing as theft. They can jump up and down and say it's theft as many times as they want but that doesn't make it so.

Unconstitutional Sentencing?

[kenjib]

"The teen could be charged under a law that went into effect Jan. 1 and makes taking a recording device into a movie theater a crime punishable by up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500."

Potentially a year in jail for videotaping a movie? He didn't distribute it yet so they can't punish him for more broad piracy issues. A year in jail for a single instance of copyright violation? Could this be argued as a violation of 8th ammendment rights?

Do they look for the camera, or the IR focus light

[RollingThunder]

If I remember right, when you look at a videocamera with something IR-sensitive, you can see the focus light that it uses to put a strong known pattern on the scene in front of it.

I wonder if they just need to glance in there, with the camera sticking out like a sore thumb, or if they actually need to see the camera itself?

This is a good move... but not for the MPAA

[zz99]

I for one welcome this move to stop the distribution of movies filmed by the audience in theathers.

This will homefully deter people from spreading poor quality bootlegs.

However, this means that the average movie spread on the internet will be of higher quality. I wonder if the MPAA really has thought this one through...

A CAM version of a movie is not a replacement for buying it. But if the only copies spread on the internet are DVD-rips, this could have a negative impact on VHS/DVD rentals and sales

So if people were encurraged to bring cameras to the theatre and shoot crappy bootlegs, the internet would be flooded by a lot of different versions of low quality files. And anyone downloading stuff would get dissapointed.

A personal note: I once watched a downloaded movie "filmed in Tilt-o-vision(tm) in front of a live theatre audience" and I woved to myself never to do that again because of the poor quality. I guess the MPAA feels the same way :)

this is nothing but BS anyways...

[Lumpy]

They are doing this simply to make it a public spectacle and sensationalize it.

we did some tests and a pair of IR floods pointed at the audience at the sides of the screen makes it impossible for a camcorder to record the film without being massively washed out and looking like hell.

the movie companies are just trying to make examples and generate public fear.

if they pulled their heads out of their asses long enough to use simple solutions like I gave above it would be "solved". but they know that most bootlegs do not come from kids in a theatre but from staff at that theatre or in their own company.

that said, I have almost finised my head mounted high intensity IR strobe made from lots of Ir led's and I cant wait to use it at a theatre to see if I get the attention of a movie police.

Oh, sorry, I misread that

[ThisIsFred]

According to SFGate.com/AP, a teen has been arrested for attempting to bootleg the Spider-Man 2 movie, after a projectionist using night-vision goggles spotted him.

I read that as protectionist initially. I guess that word made sense in the context. It's amazing that someone would volunteer his time to do this. Theaters have to pay exorbitant prices to get reels in the door. So much in fact, that there is little left over to build or maintain a comfortable environment for moviegoers, or to pay their employees. So we go and sit on bolted-down plastic lawn chairs inside a concrete bunker, and we pay some 400% (based on prices for drinks) more than street price at the concessions stand.

The margin is so small theaters can't afford to show anything but the latest reels, and they quickly drop any release that shows weak attendance. The $10 ticket price pretty much insures that moviegoers aren't going to see more than one film in a weekend, so I'm sure this makes for lots of empty seats. Theater operators have almost no room to work with prices if attendance is low, or to maximize their time with a particular reel, since the studios pretty much control it all from pre-production all the way down to DVD release.

Too bad, I'm sure that projectionist needs the money, so he'd probably strip search the crowd if the MPAA gave the order. If that was me, I'd tell them to hire and equip security at their own expense. I'd also be an ex-projectionist in short order, I imagine.