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

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."

Comments

Or... let there be light!

[Anonymous Coward]

... the pirate's cameras often rely on infrared light. Several bright "invisible to the human eye" infrared lights pointed at the audience from behind the screen or even around it ought to do the trick. Just trying to cast light on the topic.

Re:Or... let there be light!

[AK Marc]

That was my fault as well, but I was thinking they should pulse them, with a frequency close to the response time of the cameras (if they are close enough to do something like this), so the camera fades in and out, like a copy of a Macrovision VHS.0

Re:What is the incentive to the uploaded?

[adolf]

There seems to be a certain measure of pride amongst some folks in having the latest movies. I know people who boast about having terabytes of new movies on their hard drive, all cams.

Myself, I find them to be unwatchable garbage -- if I wanted to see a new movie that badly, I'd go to the theater and see it. But to them, their collection of grainy cams with bad audio is a treasure.

Re:how much lost really?

[gl4ss]

it's a ploy to sell night vision goggles from a specific provider.

they found a stupid enough exec and bribed the idea to him: *boom* money.

the exec had to be stupid enough to not know actually how the bootlegs people download were recorded.

hint: not in the UK and if there's a direct audio feed then it's prooobably not a regular movie goer..

I call BS

[bugs2squash]

1. There's lots of light in a cinema, a big bright image lights up the audiences faces. I would have thought ample light to run a regular inexpensive CCTV camera pointed away from the screen toward the audience. That not just locates offenders but provides evidence too. More light can be added in the form of IR as others have noted.

2. NV goggles are expensive and having the staff roam around in them adds even more cost.

3. Once the NV goggles have the sensitivity turned right down to allow for the brightness of the screen, I would have thought that would render them not much better than human eyesight.

I imagine this is a scare tactic and nothing more, maybe there'll be a couple of sets of rented goggles moved from theater to theater and "paraded around" to scare people off.

Re:This is why I don't go to movie theatres

[Katatsumuri]

Exactly. Watching a screen copy is a punishment in itself. Unsatisfied viewers and the resulting bad reputation is the punishment for the person making and sharing the copy. If the movie industry were smarter, they would leave the screen copy sector be, and maybe use it as bad PR for piracy. Anyone who can be satisfied with screen copy quality is definitely not a movie theater customer anyway.

Re:This is why I don't go to movie theatres

[TheRaven64]

Meh. I stopped going to the cinema when the price of two tickets became more than the price of the DVD (and that's before you add snacks / drinks). I bought a projector and a reasonable surround-sound system almost a decade ago (and have replaced the bulb once). A subscription to a DVD rental service now costs significantly less than two people going to the cinema once a month. I can have friends over to watch a film without paying any more (and they can bring food / booze), I can pause it if I need to go to the toilet (or turn on subtitles if someone is hard to understand). I can drink or eat whatever I want with the film. Oh, and unlike seemingly every cinema in the UK, I don't have the equaliser settings configured to completely destroy any sane audio balance that might have been present in the original.