Automatic Scanning for Cameras in Theaters

An anonymous reader writes "A Florida firm claims to have found a solution for the movie industry to prevent bootlegging in theaters. Tom's Hardware carries a story about Trakstar, which demonstrated its 'PirateEye' technology in a Hollywood movie theater to journalists and movie industry representatives: The technology uses light impulses to detect video recording devices. A second component is an audio watermarking system."

Comments

Very Bad Idea™

[Pan T. Hose]

First of all, detection of a recording device is impossible as long as the recorder does not send anything, just like it's impossible to detect any kind of passive eavesdropping, notwithstanding the quantum cryptography where by the very definition of measurement any observation is inherently active. Second of all, I fail to see how is it going to help "scan" for cameras set by the cinema operators themselves, for no one records a movie for serious bootleg operations using his camera phone in a crowd for Christ's sake. Third of all, I refuse to go to amy cinema which "uses light impulses" which can be potentially damaging to my poor eye sight, nor will I risk an epileptic attack. In short, they propose a dangerous technical solution to the social problem addressing not the right people which they should address in the first place. In order to introduce said pointless and dumb technology, they are going to raise the proces even further, making people even less likely to pay for a movie. In other words, it's a Very Bad Idea.(TM)