Slashdot Mirror


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."

1 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What is the incentive to the uploaded? by adolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.