Movie Theaters Using Anti-Piracy Tools to Analyze Your Emotions
Movie Theaters Using Anti-Piracy Tools to Analyze Your Emotions
Posted 11/03/2010 at 7:52am
| by Paul Lilly
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BitTorrent news site TorrentFreak is up in arms over the anti-piracy measures some movie theaters employ, particularly an anti-camcorder solution offered by Aralia Systems, a company that specializes in monitoring services and technologies. As TorrentFreak explains it, the anti-camcorder system beams infrared light onto movie goers, which are then reflected back off camcorders and analyzed through software capable of reading people's physical reactions and emotions.
TorrentFreak went and spoke with project leader Dr. Abdul Farooq from Machine Vision Lab, who indicated that his company's number one goal is to extend the functionalities of the anti-piracy system.
"We want to devise instruments that will be capable of collecting data that can be used by cinemas to monitor audience reactions to films and adverts and also to gather data about attention and audience movement," Dr. Farooq said.
"Using 2D and 3D imaging technology we aim to do this in two ways. Obviously cinema audiences are spread out in large theater settings so we need to build instruments that can capture data for different purposes. We will use 2D cameras to detect emotion but will also collect movement data through a 3D data measurement that will capture the audience as a whole as a texture," Dr. Farooq further explained.
By analyzing people's emotions, Dr. Farooq envisions his system being used as a market research tool for the movie industry and advertisers rather than as a way to catch pirates.
"Within the cinema industry this tool will feed powerful marketing data that will inform film directors, cinema advertisers, and cinemas with useful data about what audiences enjoy and what adverts capture the most attention," Dr. Farooq added.
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mesiah
November 03, 2010 at 10:04pm
As far as being used to prevent piracy, I say it it works then go for it. I am all for unobtrusive ways to prevent piracy. I would much rather see a system like this than undergo a full pat down before entering a theater.
As for data collection. I highly doubt it would be widely used. Data like that would mainly be useful during screenings of a movie to see how crowds react to certain parts of a movie so the studio knows if they need to change something. The odds of every audience being polled in every theater around the world to collect some massive data set for a movie that is already released is pretty unlikely.
As for collecting data on people... get used to it. It happens every day in all aspects of your life. We love all the benefits that come with the extensive data collection and analysis that is done every day, but we get all up in arms when we are the ones being studied.
machew100
November 03, 2010 at 6:45pm
What a crock of $hit, there's no way I approve of this crap, big brother really will be watching once garbage like this ends up everywhere..
Stockislander
November 03, 2010 at 4:52pm
If you're a lab rat, the least they can do is not charge you for the movie.
someuid
November 03, 2010 at 3:47pm
...they will start keeping track of exactly what we are looking at on the screen at any given time.
Angelina Jolie will be able to charge double for any movie she stars in. The data will be all the leverage she needs.
bingojubes
November 03, 2010 at 3:03pm
i assume then if it reads serious people or uneasy people as cam rippers. otherwise, it boils down to placing the video recorder camera and leaving it with a friend so it doesnt pick you up for an hour and a half. come back from smoke break and collect video camera (if it hasnt been stolen by other people).
facial recognition to detect cam rippers is going to not work. maybe they need to do is develop software that detects certain shapes of video recorders and techology. peopel are easy to find, but they need to make it so it can detect certain types of technolgy, instead, like a scanner that sees stuff like watches, glasses, cellphones, etc.
But then theaters would start to have airport style security checkpoints at the main halls, checking for cameras n stuff.
Keith E. Whisman
November 03, 2010 at 2:49pm
You know they are going to use this tech to determine how perverted we are during sex scenes and use those intense scenes to shoot out advertisements. "Ooh yeah, oh baby, ahh, oh, ahhh, REMEMBER TO Drink DR.PEPPER, It's What the Doctor Ordered, Wouldn't you like to be a Doctor too!"..... There that's how it'll go down..
HaitianSensation
November 03, 2010 at 8:57am
if they could have captured the level of hate directed towards a character like, oh say Jar Jar Binks. I'm sure the program would have crashed and sat in a corner crying.
praack
November 03, 2010 at 8:54am
I have no real issue with the anti camera bit, but to use the tech to scan for body posture and emotions of the audience for marketing.
and no way to opt out? Since you are a captive audience - and it is a public space(though you paid for admission) it is probably a grey area that would need a court case to decide if it was legal to do without notification or permission
how can you even tell? it will probably drive me away from the movie theatre
I Jedi
November 03, 2010 at 10:13am
In the eye's of the law, if you decide to go out into the public world, you wave all rights to not be photographed, recorded, etc. The movie theaters should notify their customers upon entering that they will be filmed, but that would just hurt business! I am not an advocator of the way this tech. is used, but it's up to the theaters if they want to do this. I'll certainly start flipping the bird off at the general direction of these hidden cams, if they exist in my local theater.
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