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Apple Patents a Way To Keep People From Filming At Concerts and Movie Theaters (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has patented a system that prohibits smartphone users from taking photos and videos at concerts, movie theaters and other events where people tend to ignore such restrictions. The patent has been award to Apple today and was first spotted by Patently Apple. QZ reports: "It outlines a system which would allow venues to use an infrared emitter to remotely disable the camera function on smartphones. According to the patent, infrared beams could be picked up by the camera, and interpreted by the smartphone as a command to block the user from taking any photos or videos of whatever they're seeing. The patent also outlines ways that infrared blasters could actually improve someone's experience at a venue. For example, the beams could be used to send information to museum-goers by pointing a smartphone camera at a blaster placed next to a piece of art." The report also mentions that the patent could in theory be used to help police limit smartphone filming of acts of brutality, or help a government shut off filming in certain locations. Last week, SlashGear reported that Alicia Keys is the latest musician to ban cellphones at her events.
Now the cops can abuse people and you can't film them doing it!
placed strategically over that sensor.
Thank you very much.
That's a really interesting idea from Apple.
Because last I checked, the iPhone camera since the iPhone 4 has an IR filter on it and can't see IR light. Found this out at the Science Museum when there was a display of the visible spectrum and it told you to take out your phone and look at it via the camera.
Surprise! iPhones can't see the IR lights, but other phone cameras could.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Even if the sensor is embedded into the camera itself (which it would be), you just need a filter in front of the lens that will not pass i/r as it is not usable light for the CCD anyway.
It's called the "Some Guys Give You a Wicked Beating" (tm) reactionary system.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Didn't we do this with stoplights at some point?
Didn't they have to pass laws banning normal people from having the devices that changed the lights?
I mean, how hard would it be to modify one of these to send out the camera-disabling signal?
https://www.adafruit.com/produ...
AppleSafe?
I don't know of any filter that blocks out the entire infrared spectrum (which does include a portion of nearly visible light - you can see a dim flicker in some remote controls in the dark). Most filters reduce it greatly but still allow some to pass through. You can test this by pointing an IR emitter at a CCD sensor and then placing the filter in front - reduced but still visible.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You're misunderstanding; it won't be a separate sensor, it'll be the camera itself, picking up a pattern transmitted by IR emitters in the area, and interpreted from the cameras' data stream. You'd have to cover the camera itself.
Naturally this would be leveraged and abused by law enforcement all over the world. This is an example of technology that needs to be outlawed. Apple is crossing a line if they actually incorporate this technology into their products, especially if they do not provide an immutable way for the owner of the phone to disable the function.
If concert promoters want to prevent filming or photographing of concerts then they just need to tell people to leave their phones in their cars or at home and confiscate them if they're smuggled in, returning them after the concert.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
How hard would it be to put on each police car?
I buy it, I own, I do what I want with it unless that breaks a law.
Making a device that lets other, non-governmental people stop me from using it is not a service, it's a theft.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Let me be the first to say, "FUCK YOU!" to any artist that does this.
I'll never attend your concert or buy your music. I'll go out of my way to pirate it if I like it, but you'll never get a fucking dime from me.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Yes. It's like a QR code that you can't see
Would this work with standalone digital cameras?
How about analog film cameras? I know airport scanners can affect high-ISO film, but I don't if those scanners user IR or some other wavelength.
Its good to know that Apple is spending their R&D effort toward making enhancements that the customers want; as opposed to the features the products wants.
And yes I said exactly what I meant.
They assume I want to buy a crippled phone that can be disabled remotely by someone that isn't me.
This is a "just stick, no carrot" kind of deal. Thanks but no thanks.
Apple Patents a Way To Keep People From Filming At Concerts and Movie Theaters
I'm not sure but this may be the first time I've ever seen Slashdot properly headline a story about patents. Usually the headline would be something like this:
"Apple Patents Keeping People From Filming At Concerts and Movie Theaters" ... which would then result in two hundred comments of people bringing up irrelevant examples of other approaches to dealing with the problem citing 'prior art' along with heaps of moaning about how broadly general the patent they didn't read is.
So was this an accident? I mean, the inflammatory clickbait headline does generate more revenue...
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Use the same tech to rob banks and other places maybe even tolls and red light cams.
Can we not do anything for ourselves anymore. Must every creation or augmentation be about controlling or "protecting" us or protecting someone else from us?!? Within 30 seconds of reading this, I already had a mental list of a dozen ways this could be abused. All of which out-weight any possible value this could add to anyone. Is their nothing left in our lives that we can exert some modicum of control over? What's next? Must my kitchen utensils be internet enabled so they can verify with faties.gov that what I'm attempting to eat is allowed. Come on people....
I could make a device that discreetly clips onto my jacket or on a cap that sends out the IR signal continuously to stop cameras that are pointed at me.
Or maybe similar devices on my car that sends the signal to stop cameras from recording pictures or video of my car.
I'll become invisible!
I was under the impression IR was used for focusing?
I'm not advocating this technology... but if you read up on what Alicia Keys is doing at her concerts they are putting phones in little bags that can only be opened after the concert by the staff. That means you can't use your phone _at all_ during a concert.
Technology like this would allow you to use your phone during the concert... just without being able to take pictures.
So, if you're in the business of pirating movies by filming them at movie theaters, why would you buy an iPhone? Why not simply by an Android or some other phone or camera? What incentive would there be for companies like Samsung or others to license this technology from Apple in the first place?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You apple heads paid them royally to control you. I suggest you give them more money so they can take more of your rights away. So funny.
By the time this patent idea is implemented, most of the iphone users will be on an IR-capable device.
Hey why not use this same system to allow the screen and/or sounds to be disabled in movie theaters. How about infrared for police to unlock your phone or decrypt items. Why stop there the device has WiFi and Bluetooth let's use that too. How about I don't buy something designed where someone else can control it with infrared or any other method in contradiction of my wishes.
s/©//g
TV remote filters are the opposite, they block out visible light and allow IR to pass (if they blocked IR, they would fail to work). Developed film can be used as an IR pass through filter.
For the application in this article, something like this would be appropriate:
http://www.hoyafilter.com/hoya...
To prevent grandmothers from sharing baby pics on their cellphones before the lights go down and the trailers start playing. Very annoying.
MY PHONE should obey MY instructions. If I say take of picture of something it should do so, not ask some third party not me if its alright.
What I do with the phone is my responsibility.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
For what it's worth, this patent was discussed five years ago on Slashdot. The earliest date for this idea of Apple's appears to be December 2, 2009.
Tape is your friend, just ask Facebook's owner
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Devil's Advocate: Apple could have filed it to be proactive and keep it out of everyone else's hands.
Good-bye
For those who actually looked at the patent, it does not use a separate sensor. It looks for the IR signal in the image to being photographed. So go ahead and put black tape over the camera lens. The system still works! Unless you're into photographing the backside of black tape. Very clever, Apple. Hopefully other phone and camera manufacturers won't bother to license it.
Amazing how a company can be so careless. If they decide to put this on their phones it will be the end of iphone. I hate when people film at concerts as they will never watch it again, but some people want to do this. You want to take photos with your friends at a show? Forget that.
As a teacher, I'd like to see Apple or Google patent a way to use a phone as only a calculator or run in a sandbox -- call it classroom mode. I don't think they'll do it because Apple & Google would end up selling less chromebooks and iPads for COWS(Computer On Wheel) carts to schools. Just my $ 0.02
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
Pretty easy to counter it though, IR lens filters will become very popular.
the removal of the headphone jack.
Put up a sign stating that cellphones observed during the concert will be confiscated
That does not make it legal to confiscate anything that I legally own.
The only thing that a venue can do is ask me to leave. If I refuse, they can call the cops for trespassing, but that's about it.
observers violating those terms deserve some kind of negative reinforcement
Which will be limited to being thrown out.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
This is an Apple patented feature so I guess the question is will they charge a licensing fee that other vendors are willing to pay and will other phone maker use a full spectrum camera so it works? If they are unwilling to add a full spectrum camera or pay the licensing fee it will only effect iPhone users which make up about 45% of the market. (If a quick Google search is to be believed.)
Let some one use your computer and they will use it for the day. Give or sell some one a computer and you will be tech s
... is to hire Hell's Angles as your security
Nice to see they're still working on it, but not exactly new...
https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...
Log in or piss off.
For that to work it would have to be some sort of software that picks this up during use. Which in theory would only be proprietary to Apple software + phones. Simply removing/disabling this software by Apple, installing another camera app would by pass it. Or calmly toss your iFone for an Android who won't care what you film.
They need to invent away to stop people from making vertical videos. That would benefit mankind.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Like 5 years ild news
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Actually I'm confused, because most cameras already filter UV and IR frequencies.
No, they don't.
Open up your camera app on your phone, point any remote at it, and hold down a button.
Sales of IR camera filters skyrocket!
for many people the idea of their network of friends/followers seeing where they are and what they're recording is more important. Not entirely sure why as I don't have that need myself. I enjoy sharing things occasionally, but not at the level that hampers experiencing things myself.
Apple has sold out humanity to lizard like aliens who lack appreciation for wasting power on cloaking fields 24x7 just to avoid being documented by every Dick, Jane, and with a camera phone in their pocket.
IR cut filter over the lens.... BOOM defeated 100%.
Dear apple, you are really losing your edge...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, they don't.
Technically they do, otherwise synthetic fabrics would come out purple (see "Infrared / Ultraviolet pollution" half way down the page). They're just not 100% effective so a little IR gets through, and depends on the camera as some are worse than others.
invokes this method as a means to be "off the record" so their bullshit racist/liberal/globalist/conservative/SJW comments don't end up on Youtube.
Thanks Apple. Cool and fair as always. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Now go buy the new and improved I-Phone, the "I-Phone 1984+Orwell 2b"
(beatings sold separately, but if you sign up for our handy "lifestyle monitoring service", we will throw them in at a reduced cost! What a deal!)
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Companies patent features that will encourage use of their products. Implementing this would cause users to avoid upgrading their iPhones, or to go Android, so no.
Put black electrical tape over the sensor.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Infrared energy is not RF energy...therefore it's not governed by the FCC. Yes...light is part of the EM spectrum...and it has a wave property...but it's also got photons and just behaves differently. Infrared headphones are easier to make since they don't require FCC approval; but they're also a bit more limited. Any system that's going to be using IR for communication will likely be using a different wavelength. The IR they use for this will likely be close to visible light range; as Apple really prides themselves on the camera and not filtering IR makes for lousier pictures when your sensor responds to it. Then again...the filter may be effective for ambient IR only. That's provided they're using the actual cameras and not some idle IR port. Running the camera all the time in the background would be very wasteful energy wise.
But, but...it's a sign, see? A SIGN! Don't you know that signs are mystic talismans you can put up on your property to magically grant yourself the legal power to do anything written on the sign!?
You can't get into the venue in the first place without putting a $500 authorization (or "hold") on your credit card. If you're thrown out, they capture the authorization.
And if the reasons for getting thrown out are fraudulent, you can file a credit card chargeback. At that point, they could sue you, assuming they would actually want to bring the issue to court.
You must be talking about the Stazi, if I am picking up on your inference correctly? The tools of oppression are many and varied, the people you are talking about are too insular and afraid to look at such things. Worse that there is no hope for cowards, that they destroy hope for all.
I can't say if the majority of /.rs believe that, but I do know that there are some people here that are very aware of the things that you speak of. The inference of this technology is very clear - 'we can film you - but you can't film us'. The state wants the power to allow law enforcement to be thugs to keep people in a state of fear as it is a tool of oppression. We were all blind for a long time, however now that we all have cameras, we can all see the activities of the state and confront its representatives with the evidence.
You are right about there being no refuge and the only thing that I have seen in recent time to balance that is that everyone and anyone can be a random witness at any time and the kind of thuggery you are speaking of can be recorded as evidence and used to challenge that states version of events. This kind of important advancement is not merely a 'power to the people' kind of thing, it's an evolution of society as a whole to force the state to live up to the professional standards they profess to be maintaining.
It also show how poisonous the music industry is and that the consequences of their 'Digital Restrictions Management' has had a much broader effect in the general community than any of us could have imagined and as such, inevitable that such technology would be invented. Whilst I have no doubt that there will be some sort of hack to overcome any implementation of it, that means nothing to the general population. The new (superior) model of witnessing state violence is being challenged with the premise of blinding a society who eyes have just been opened. We will have to watch how this development unfolds very carefully indeed.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And what if you dont have a credit card because your application was declined for some reason?
The same way you bought the ticket to the show or reserved the hotel room: use a debit card with at least $500 of available balance.
Apple has patents for all kinds of things, many of them purely defensive, many of them for products and features that never get implemented. I myself remember floating this idea around a dinner table with a few friends at least eight years ago, but our version of it was generalized: Bluetooth beacons that broadcast a "usage policy" around themselves.
Not just useful for concerts. Imagine a beacon in a movie theater that automatically shuts off the screen and ringer of any cellphone inside it. No more dickheads texting their bros in the middle of your $16.00 movie outing. "But oh no, what if there's an emergency?" The phone still vibrates. Just walk outside the doors and it will light up again.
Imagine a beacon in a classroom that shuts off all cellphone usage of any kind while the class is in session. No more concerns about cheating, no more playing Plants Vs Zombies instead of listening to the lecture. You wanna pass a note to a friend? Get a pencil and paper and do it old-skool ... that is, if you still know how to write.
Then you get your two-way beacons. They listen for IDs. Want to take the subway somewhere? Just walk on, and walk off. You don't even need to take anything out of your pocket. The film Minority Report teased a similar thing with retina scanners, but with this system you wouldn't even need to look at anything. No turnstiles. Beacons in restaurant tables. Everyone who sat down pays a fragment of the bill. You only take a phone out if you want to divide it some non-standard way. Beacons in the intersections. Pass through an intersection too fast and your insurance company knows you're a liability before you do.
This is the future of 'convenience'. Hopefully since Apple seems to give a damn about user privacy, they will be very careful in how they choose to apply this patent.
As we all know, the moment they roll out something like this, people will first have an alternative phone or recording device that simply does not have the camera-inhibiting code in it. The next step will be wide-spread jail-breaking of devices that have been "infected" with this stuff.
Sure, the performers want it, the galleries would like it and Law Enforcement (and other clandestine operatives) might feel it necessary for the protection of it's collective members, but the fact remains: People will record stuff even if they're told they can't, and more heavily when they feel they are being repressed in any way. Any attempt to block their perceived "right" to record things will be met with resistance and even violence.
Frankly, any camera-based recording of a concert is not going to have decent enough quality to compete with a properly produced commercial release any way, so it's a fairly moot point.
Besides, if Sci-Fi is to be believed, there will be a back-and-forth of camera-blocking tech, and more sophisticated recording devices, so this is just going to be another curious series of events to keep us all entertained as it all rolls out.
Good luck with putting that hat on the snowball, there Apple. I am sure it will have much greater longevity in hell.
Great, now "artists" can lip-sync and we cant record the evidence :(
Here is prior art from 2008.
Shachar
(I dismiss wifi and bluetooth outright, since users needs it deactivated for battery and security reasons)
Let's imagine the camera is a USB peripheral and thus runs its own CPU and software (firmware).
For the sake of the argument there are enough milliwatts of processing to detect the kill pulse. Maybe it could even be rather simplistic.
You're toast, then.
It's as if someone tricked you with a keyboard whose CPU acts as a keylogger (even a PS/2 keyboard is not immune and has a small computer that runs the leds etc.). Besides obvious security shenanigans, it could figure out you're typing some word, such as "hitler" and then send alt+f4 followed by enter, or keyboard's sleep key, or hotkey to lock workstation etc.
The workaround is to not use that keyboard.
Half way between pure software and such conspiracy theory, the camera plugs right into Apple's SoC which is a collection of CPUs. There's the image processor, and there is now the "motion processor" whose job is to collect sensor data crap when the main CPUs are sleeping. It's marketed as a way for a sleeping phone to listen on the mic.
Not so impossible to have some relatively unknown piece of firmware doing things.
As soon as this becomes integrated in iPhones, I'm starting a company selling do-not-film-me hats, pins, ski-masks and other accessories for anyone who doesn't want to be filmed. Also for sale, IR filters for iphones - both stick-on and cases with IR filters that block the "do not film" IR signals.
A tech that would prevent people from using cell phones in movie theatres is sorely needed. ... if used at all: Apple has tonnes of patents that they don't use.
But it would not do any good if it would only prevent filming, and knowing Apple: it would be restricted to Apple devices only
It should have been a part of the cell phone radio protocols from the start and mandatory.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
And, the consumer then does not have to attend a concert where harassment such as this is occurring. Saving themselves more money and losing a fan of the idiot performing.
If concert promoters want to prevent filming or photographing of concerts then they just need to tell people to leave their phones in their cars or at home and confiscate them if they're smuggled in, returning them after the concert.
As I pointed out recently, it's one thing for Alica Keys to be a jerk about this when she's playing a place that seats about 700-800 people and something else to do so in a much bigger venue. Can you imagine confiscating phones in a venue that holds 14,000 or more people? Last year I went to a Rolling Stones concert at a stadium and while I'm too lazy to look up the exact number, I bet that around 50,000 people attended it with me. How can you possibly confiscate so many phones and then get them back to the owners later without mixups?
Maybe artists like Keys need to just decide if they want to go through life viewing their fans as enemies or not and whether doing so is a really good business decision. I can promise you that the Rolling Stones are not concerned with some dude in the upper deck making a low quality video recording of a live concert for his own use when they make huge money off ticket sales and tour merchandise. If others artists choose to view their fans as enemies and thieves because they want to take pictures and record videos, I don't really see a happy outcome from that. But I could be wrong. Prince was about as fan unfriendly as they come and while the days of him regularly playing basketball arenas were over by the time he died, he could still occasionally sell them out.
They do have an IR filter on them. It's an easy test because while the rear-facing camera (the "good" one that faces away from the display) has the IR filter, the front facing one doesn't, so you can compare IR brightness captured with the front-facing and rear-facing camera.
For whatever reason, Apple put an IR filter onto the rear-facing camera. I agree, it's pretty dumb and a UV filter would make more sense. Maybe it's also a UV filter, I don't know how you'd test that.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
So they are sticking a feature on their devices which will be a disservice to their customers?
I suspect that while some customers may be familiar with this being on their phone, most may not realize what it means until it stops them from something they need to document.
I would hate to be on their customer service staff for this. You think customers screaming about how their internet service being down (keeping them from watching their porn--err...documentaries) is bad, wait until their loved one's once in a life time event is not recorded because this stopped them.
So, there will be pirate beacons for sale in the future (or created by DIY geeks) to avoid being photographed or screwing with crowded public events?
Thanks apple I guess I will use Android phones from now on....
Paul E. Bahre
can we kickstarter a project to pay every restaurant and fastfood outlet to install one of these just to get rid of all the pictures of people's meals posted everywhere?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Apple has patented a thing, they haven't made a thing. Let's be mad when they actually make a bad thing based on a patented thing. They hold a lot of patents for things that never see the light of day, and they like to keep their bases covered. It's dubious at best that they'd actually implement this when they're also attempting to make it so nobody except you is allowed to access your data--not even the authorities. It seems like they're willing to die on that hill; I doubt they're willing to die on this one, even if the patent exists.
You can't get into the venue in the first place without putting a $500 authorization (or "hold") on your credit card.
Citation needed. I've been to a bunch of concerts and never seen anything like this. Of course, I don't go to stupid teenage pop concerts, so maybe they do things differently.
Oh, wait. Prior art. Apple Corp 2016. Bah!
Why can't they just use passive-SSIDs instead of infrared? A simple idea for a similar situation (where phones needed to be automatically put in silent mode as in a church or a hospital) is detailed below (and at https://gist.github.com/tariqm...) [Starts] People are generally caring. When in a gathering, especially indoor gatherings, there is often a need to put the cellular phones on silent mode (with or without vibration mode on, depending on users preference). Despite the good intentions, people often forget to put their phone sets on mute only to realize when the ringtone suddenly disrupts an otherwise serious, somber or respectful activity (such as a board meeting, a serious discussion, a funeral or a ritual/prayer) and causes a) disruption to the event and embarrasses the phone users. With most of the modern phone features, a solution to this problem is possible which will enable phone users to display their sincerity to the requests of phones silence being made by the hosts to the gatherings by automating this process. Over a period of time, this could become an international norm. The feature is being summarily called 'Honoring Silence Requests' This is a feature that Nokia can be proud of in the area of sensible social responsibility features that come as part and parcel of Nokia phones and reflects the innovative image of Nokia. The phones that will carry this feature will have wifi access. For this feature to be used, the wifi service layer must be activated on the handset. Upon activation of the feature, the phone set will scan available wifi hotspots periodically. The event/conference/meeting hosts will need to add a preset text string at the end of the SSID of their existing wifi router/access point (say, NK-HSRF-999000). So a wifi hotspot which was previously named, let's say, 'BoardRoom Nokia' will now say 'BoardRoom Nokia - NK-HSRF-999000'. When the phone user with HSR feature on enters this area, it will detect the wifi network and the preset trailing text in the SSID. Irrespective of the fact whether the user connects to this SSID or not, the phone will immediately go into silence (with or without vibration) mode. There is no need of any additional hardware to be put in by the hosts or the phone user to implement this feature. All components are already present. The solution is non disruptive to existing functions of the phone sets and the meeting are hosts. The activated HSR feature will only activate the silence mode once it receives a fairly strong (say, 80%) strong wifi signal. This will ensure that silence requests set by wifi hotspots that just happen to be nearby are not considered as valid requests and the feature is only used as intended. [Ends]
It's an essential invention. I, for my own part, must shamefully admit that I always purchase recordings of songs from gigs recorded on iphones instead of buying albums etc. The quality is fucking great, particularly the audio. So I can see why they want to do this. Most of us get our music from gig recordings now and it's fucking scandalous.
People are clearly just going to concerts just so they can film some of it and make millions selling the footage. It's a fucking disgrace.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Rental of cars and hotel rooms often involves such an authorization as a deposit. I'm not aware either of any concerts that require a deposit. The idea in context was supposed to be that a concert promoter attempts to confiscate the phones of those who violate the cell phone policy written on the ticket, and when that is found not to legally fly, the next concert will require such a deposit.
Probably not the first to point this out but I got tire of scrolling so...
This was first discussed right here on /. in 2006 and was implemented with varying levels of success.
https://slashdot.org/story/06/...
Peace of mind isn't at all superficial to technical work, it's the whole thing.
Most of the time I've recorded something at a concert and uploaded it to Youtube, Google's (over-enthusiastic) algorithms have picked up on some 30 second section of audio.. then the owners have just monetized my video. So they get free promotion AND a revenue stream.
I'd argue recording a public performance like that is far more about preserving the people that attended's memories and the history of the event for the fans (as opposed to say, movie theatres where the source of the experience there is exactly the same as later home releases..)
I've discovered so many bands through finding fan footage of them it's unreal.. they will be stabbing themselves in the back.
Apple should be focused on making loud audio recording less prone to distortion and low light recording better (stuck with tiny lenses, then use the telescope array thing with multiple lenses to improve picture quality etc.)
Not true. You do remember that CCDs were originally developed for astronomical (and spy satellite) use, not for consumer products? IR sensitivity just wasn't considered a problem when the technology was invented, and it has only been seen as a problem as use has spread outside the design criteria into consumer use where there is a premium on producing "natural" images, with a colour balance comparable to the human eye. So people have been gluing IR filters onto CCD chips for the recent half of the technology's history, for this "human friendly" imaging.
Remember the repeated wailing and gnashing of teeth as NASA "fiddled with the colour balance" of the early images from the recent crop (herd? rove?) of Mars landers? That was a consequence of taking chips optimised for science (including lots of IR sensitivity), and trying to correct them to give an image as a human eye would see. I think that extra filters were added to (one of) the Curiosity cameras (the MastCam?) precisely to address this PR failing.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You used the word "just". I take it that you've never had to deal with the safe storage of tens of thousands of small valuable items for tens of thousands of customers. Here's something appropriate : lockers of 150h x 163w x 360d (mm), banks of 40 lockers. So you'd need 250 banks - for around a million quid. And you've got to deal with getting people to load their shit into these, remember to take the key ; not lose the key, then retrieve their shit at the end of the gig. Where you're going to place them ... depends on your venue. What you're going to do about people who forget where their locker is ... is your problem. What you're going to do about customers who forget to reclaim their goods ... is your problem. What do you do with the 501st customer who forgot to leave their phone at home before walking (or taking the bus) to the venue - when you've only got 500 lockers ...
There's a lot of stuff in your "just". I don't think you've thought through the logistics of your proposal.
I met the issue at heliports where people weren't allowed to take phones out to the oil rig - all our people were stone cold sober when they came back, and there were still several cases a day of someone forgetting to take their phone home with them. Why were phones not allowed? Because there had been cases of phones interfering with flight avionics, and also of phone batteries getting impacted in the baggage hold and smoldering. So for at least three years, taking a mobile phone onto the helicopter was banned. Flat out - no discussion - banned. But equally, since many people had to be flying for a full day to get to or from the heliport, they were expected to turn up to the heliport with a phone that they couldn't take to work with them.
Really, the "sealed pouch" solution someone else mentioned upthread - "yonder" or something like that - is the only practical solution. And they're probably going to lose 5 to 10% of their "pouches" at every event (they'l factor that into the cost, of course). I'm moderately surprised that there aren't any for sale on ebaY, and I'd be really surprised if that remained the case.
You know - I'm now almost intrigued enough about the construction to actually go to a gig for the first time in 20-odd years, just to steal one and figure out the closing mechanism. If the idea lasts long enough to come to this side of the Atlantic.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"