No one wants the theater-recorded copies anymore

Oct 30, 2014 09:04 GMT  ·  By

The Motion Picture Association of America has teamed up with the National Association of Theater Owners and announced an update to their joint policy to prevent film theft in theaters by banning Google Glass.

“The world was so much nicer before all this technology was invented,” seems to be the go-to phrase for Hollywood studios desperate to keep into the old ways to protect their interests.

Yet, in the press release, NATO and the MPAA claim they have a long history of welcoming technological advances and recognize the strong consumer interest in smartphones and wearable “intelligent” devices.

“As part of our continued efforts to ensure movies are not recorded in theaters, however, we maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward using any recording device while movies are being shown,” the policy states.

Therefore, all phones must be silenced and other recording devices, including wearable devices, must be turned off and put away at show time. Just like in all other occasions, if theater managers have indications that there’s any illegal recording activity taking place, law enforcement will be called in for further actions.

Welcome to the new world!

As much as the MPAA hunts down pirates and complains left and right about the piracy phenomenon and how much money they’re losing because of it, they should have noticed by now that the world has, for the most part, moved away from copies recorded in theaters, with bad sound, bad visuals and the random tall person down the row standing up to take over half the screen.

While it’s true that some still bother making such recordings, and others bother downloading such copies, recent data has shown that most illegal downloads take place on better copies, with pirates waiting patiently for a proper version to hit the Internet. This usually happens around the time when the DVDs and BluRay copies are about to get launched, or when a DVD screener gets leaked by someone inside the studios.

Therefore, the big risk isn’t having someone record a bad copy with their smartphones, with their pair of Google Glass or another similar device.

Furthermore, the battery life on Google Glass is so low that it couldn’t even be used to record a full movie, not to mention the fact that any small head movement would result in an extremely bad copy. The same can be said about smartphones. Gone are the days of the digital camcorder hidden under a jacket.

The update in rules will simply make many people across the United States uncomfortable when going to the movies, especially since there are plenty who use Glass with prescription lenses.