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British Movie Theater Staff To Wear Night-Vision Goggles To Combat Movie Piracy

Posted by samzenpus on from the scan-me dept.

Ewan Palmer writes: Movie theater across the UK will be required to don military-style night vision goggles in order to help crack down on movie piracy ahead of the release of potential box office smashes such as Spectre and Hunger Games. The initiative is part new measures to combat piracy as in recent years, pirates have found new and inventive ways to illegally record movies while using a smartphone to film through a popcorn box. Kieron Sharp, director general of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), said: "The bigger the film and the more anticipated it is, the higher-risk it is. We have staff on extra alert for that. James Bond is a big risk and we will be working with cinema operators and the distributors making sure we will keep that as tight as possible. We really don't want to see that recorded. They [cinema staff] are on alert to really drill down on who is in the auditorium and who might possibly be recording. They still do the sweeps around the auditoriums with the night vision glasses regardless of the film. But sometimes extra security is put in place for things like Bond."

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. This is why I don't go to movie theatres by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and only get my movies at the pirate bay. No hassles. No real spying. God loves AMERICA! The POPE is here!

    1. Re:This is why I don't go to movie theatres by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The movies pirated at theaters are usually low quality and not very interesting to watch due to all the quality issues.

      Also consider the possibility that piracy of movies at the theaters may be performed by the employees themselves whenever that happens.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:This is why I don't go to movie theatres by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The high quality pirated movies are shot by theater employees using a camera on a tripod in the projection room (so the screen isn't distorted from a perfect rectangle) with a direct audio feed (so you get only the movie soundtrack - no people talking or coughing).

      So basically all this will do is increase the quality of pirated movies by weeding out the poorly-shot cellphone movies, and give the theater staff some cool toys to play with while they're pirating the movie.

  2. how much lost really? by gmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If someone is so cheap that they will watch something recorded from a cell phone I'm guessing they will never be paying customers no matter what happens.