Cinemas May Be Watching You With Night Vision Goggles

In the UK, it's part of an effort to crack down on movie piracy
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 24, 2015 5:17 PM CDT
Cinemas May Be Watching You With Night Vision Googles
Daniel Craig in "Spectre." Theater employees will be using spy gear to rival James Bonds' during screenings.   (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)

When the new 007 film Spectre hits UK theaters next month, James Bond won't be the only one with cool spy gear. The Telegraph reports theater staff equipped with "military-style night-vision goggles" will patrol screenings looking for would-be bootleggers. "The bigger the film and the more anticipated it is, the higher risk it is," says Kieron Sharp, the head of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. "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."

Smartphones are making movie pirating easier than ever, and theaters have to up their game to combat increasingly sneaky bootleggers, the Guardian reports. “They use various tricks like cutting a hole in a popcorn cup," Sharp says. "Sometimes we see a sock with a hole cut in, which they put over the phone so there is no shine to the phone.” According to the Telegraph, bootleggers now compete against each other to be the first to post movies—especially ones that appeal to young men—online. Spectre is expected to be one of the biggest films of the year and is opening in the United Kingdom at least a week earlier than anywhere else, the Guardian reports. (More bootleggers stories.)

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