OZschwitz: Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices

In response to an increase in pirated movie recordings coming out of Australia, the copyright police are patrolling cinemas with night vision devices - and it's not just commercial pirates they're after.

Movie studios are providing the scopes to cinema ushers across the country and training them in how to spot people illegally taping films using camcorders and even mobile phones.

After Village Roadshow successfully implemented the technology to prevent pirated copies of The Dark Knight making their way on to the internet, 20th Century Fox has adopted it for Baz Luhrmann's Australia, which opens today.

Neil Gane, director of operations at the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), said the night vision scopes would be deployed at the majority of the 304 Australian cinemas screening the movie.

He said the film industry had become concerned over the past few months as "a number of big name movies that were the first to appear on the internet have been forensically matched to cinemas in Australia".

He would not name the movies, citing ongoing investigations, but said that, for a number of years, movie studios had been adding "unique forensic markers" to film prints distributed to theatres, allowing them to trace any leaks back to a specific location.

For Australia's release, financial rewards of $200 will be provided to cinema staff for catching pirates, who will be ushered out of the cinema or referred to police, depending on the seriousness of their offence.

But Gane said the industry was not only looking for the commercial pirates who sell their illegal camcorder recordings on DVD. Even those filming short clips as a keepsake on their mobile phones would be targeted.

"The anti-camcorder strategy is to prevent any person from making an illegal copy of a movie from within a cinema. This would include people making keepsakes or trophy copies on their cell phone or any other recording device," he said.

"It would be up to police to decide whether there would be enough evidence to charge the individual."

Under the Copyright Act, the maximum penalty for those found with a device for making an infringing copy is $13,200.

In November last year, Sydneysider Jose Duarte, 23, was fined $1000 for filming The Simpsons Movie on his mobile phone and uploading the footage to the internet. AFACT said it was the first illegal copy of the movie to be intercepted anywhere in the world.

LNK

OZschwitz: Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices

OZschwitz: Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices

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