UK Copyright Group Tells Cinemas to Ban Laptops

Sockatume writes "Cinema chain Cineworld now has a policy banning anyone from carrying a laptop into a theatre, even if it is not used. The management claims that this is an anti-piracy move on the advice of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, the much-mocked source of all kinds of dubious anti-piracy statements. When it was pointed out that the laptop had no camera, the management made a temporary exception. For customers, the message is clear: leave your laptop in the car. For pirates, the message is clear: there is more money to be made slinking around cinema car parks looking for laptop bags."

Re:Just "blind" the cameras

[Animaether]

Well they don't really need to send a blinding light at the camera.. they can just project (near-)IR light from the projection booth, make it vary randomly in intensity, and all but the most well-equipped cameras (with a *very* decent IR blocker that can at least block the frequency used by the theatre; no, the standard IR blocker does not cover this, as pointing a TV remote at your camera will show) record utter junk.

It's even a relatively cheap solution; certainly cheaper than having personnel run around with nightvision goggles trying to catch people, or checking people's bags and banning cameras, etc.

But in the end, it still only takes 1 person - a projectionist not adhering to policy, a print shop that has a mysterious 'leak', a review board member wanting some extra crash - to get a transfer to a format that distribution groups can use, and the whole world will have access in no time.

Re:Bionic eyes

[rufty_tufty]

Not true, your eye doesn't look at the whole picture the whole time. And what someone else looks at at in a particular scene (the hero's face) might be very different from what i am looking at (the heroines breasts). So you'd be bound to reconstruct the image incorrectly

Re:Movies

[Zerth]

On a big movie, a theater usually gets more like 10% for the first week or two.

Only smaller theaters get completely raped, but that's because they have to compete for reels with the chains, frequently they won't even get the movie on release(especially if their broker hates them).

You might be able to get a better deal(say the 30% you could get on an "average" movie), but usually it involves also taking a movie the studios expect to bomb and showing it a certain number of times, which ties up a projector that could be showing a good movie.

Re:Just "blind" the cameras

[ImNotAtWork]

Actually you could flood the theatre with IR and have a legitimate reason. Disney's venues have Hearing Assistance headphones that receive IR signals. If you look up at various locations you will see black boxes with little clear nubs all over it.