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New System to Counter Photo and Video Devices

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the movie-studios-rejoice dept.

Incongruity writes "News.com is reporting that a team from Georgia Tech has developed and demoed a system that actively searches for and effectively blinds cameras and camcorders within a 10 meter radius." From the article: "In this system, a device bathes the region in front of it with infrared light. When an intense retroreflection indicates the presence of a digital camera lens, the device then fires a localized beam of light directly at that point. Thus, the picture gets washed out."

5 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I can just see it now... by LurkerXXX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Better yet, protection from police speed cameras.

  2. Re:overengineered by RapmasterT · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This would probably cost more however. The typical installation I'm imagining would have a 1/2 disco ball mounted above or below the screen, throwing a bath of IR all over the place.
    that's not a bad idea actually. It could be very effective for concerns about videotaping new movie releases for piracy. set up a disco ball and a high powered IR spotlight. The crowd couldn't see anything, but cameras would get that moving starfield pattern across everthing making the recording unusable. It wouldn't prevent taping, but the result would be horrible to try to watch.

    you better patent that quick...

  3. Re:Am I Wrong? by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Did you forget all the Mark I Eyeballs in the bank? Unless you want to try breaking in when the bank is closed, with all the cash locked in vaults and alarms all around. Also, I really shouldn't be helping you out but I doubt you'll make it very far anyway - there's a very low tech solution, used for centuries which they call masks. Sometimes people want to find an absurdly complex and technological solutions to simple problems.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Re:theater by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    mpaa wouldn't love it straight..

    but companies selling snake oil to mpaa definetely will love this. it doesn't matter if it works or not for them either, it's not like random movie goers made versions that end up the net anyways but they could still sell 10k worth of equipment that does absolutely nothing as mandatory to every cinema there is, equipment that would not save mpaa one penny but would cost them tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. that's how mpaa and cinemas are REALLY losing money, by paying to people who sell them snakeoil to fix their "problem". like riaa is losing money by buying "copy protection" tech that doesn't really work at all nor could it ever increase their revenues even if it did.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Re:I thought the same thing... by flyingsquid · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Technology for accidentally blinding people is lame. So why not work on deliberately blinding people?

    The military already has lasers designed to temporarily blind you. Could you hook those up to some kind of eye-recognition software that would allow the laser to automatically target people's eyes? Could be useful in a firefight or ambush, although you would need some way to keep it from targeting your own troops.