Criminals or Customers?

The Disney Corporation has found yet another way for Big Content to treat its paying customers as potential criminals: hiring security guards to use metal detectors and night vision goggles to spot members of the cinema audience who might be taping the movie. I’m sure that people do tape films, and that other people do watch them, and that some of those viewers of second/third/fourth generation copies fail to show up at the cinema to pay their dues to the Disney Corporation. I’m also pretty sure that if I find myself waiting in line twice as long because some usher has to check me over with a metal detector, then go through a metal detector again after my PDA sets it off first time round and I have to explain that no, it isn’t a digital camera (and woe betide me if I’d bought a Zire 71, which has a still camera built in, instead of a Tungsten T), I’m going to be visiting the cinema a lot less frequently.

I have a horrible feeling that the only bar to Disney insisting that cinema patrons are strip-searched on entry is that the cinema chains would balk at the prospect of losing a couple of screenings per day to the time spent strip-searching customers.