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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."
and only get my movies at the pirate bay. No hassles. No real spying. God loves AMERICA! The POPE is here!
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.
What I don't get is how the cinema staff could be sure that it's a camera that is in the popcorn box. Suppose there's a man sitting there in the cinema. He has a box of popcorn on his lap, but he isn't eating any of the popcorn, and he's holding the box with one hand on each side. The cinema staff use their night vision goggles to pick him out of the crowd as a suspect. They confront the man, and ask him to open the popcorn box. He complies, and all they see is popcorn. Still convinced that he's up to no good, one of the cinema staff puts a hand into the box, and starts moving the popcorn around, searching for the camera the staff are sure is in the popcorn box. But after shifting around the popcorn, this staff member doesn't find a camera at all. Instead, all he finds is the poor cinemagoer's cock and balls, which for some inexplicable reason have been stuck through a hole in the bottom of the popcorn box. Not immediately realising what was going on, the cinema staff member's hand thoroughly fondles the poor cinemagoer's cock and balls. As you can imagine, this is a pretty awkward situation for both the cinemagoer and the cinema staff to be in!
spoiler alert.
... of disappearing night vision goggles and some very happy teenage boys.
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
i live in the uk and my local cineworld did this briefly about 5 years ago after a commandment from on high. The staff found it embarrasing and stupid and i remember seeing them wandering in with the goggles on and staring at us for a few seconds then walking off again. They only did it for a couple of weeks.
This isn't new, and it isn't really a sustained procedure of audience monitoring. It's a publicity stunt to make people think they're being watched - make a giant fuss about how they're watching everyone in the dark and hopefully that will scare them into not filming the screen.
They do it long enough to make people aware of it then stop again. Then in another 5 years make a big hoo-haa and break out the night vision goggles again for a couple of weeks.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons