TorrentFreak

This week Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group FACT revealed that the Film Distributors Association had handed out cash rewards to more than a dozen cinema workers who managed to sniff out so-called movie ‘cammers’ in UK cinemas. But despite every case being reported to the police – some involving Skyfall and The Hobbit – authorities could do little in response. Not a single cammer was charged or prosecuted.

The elimination of camcorder movie piracy has been high on the agenda of movie studios for many years, particularly so during the last decade. Many approaches have been tried and there are signs that in the past 5 years the problem has significantly reduced. The latest anti-cam system claims to be the most unobtrusive yet, negating the need for bag searches, cell phone confiscations or the employment of security guards.

Earlier this year convicted movie cammer Timothy Epifan filed a lawsuit against Somerset County police and the MPAA for arresting him with deadly force and breaking his leg. The case is still ongoing, but Epifan has struck a deal with the Hollywood group meaning that the MPAA has been dropped from the lawsuit.

A 32-year-old man from Salisbury, England, pleaded guilty to several movie piracy related charges last Friday. The man, going by the nickname SilentNinja, admitted to camming several movies at a local cinema as well as distributing films that ended up on The Pirate Bay.

A man from Scotland has become the first in the country to be convicted of an offense related to the unauthorized recording of movies in a cinema. The 25-year-old recorded several films with a mobile phone secured within a Heath Robinson-style cloth enclosure and, crucially, got caught uploading them to the Internet for profit.

While the rest of the world enjoys the latest theatrical releases, for the foreseeable future the Hungarian public will be subjected to a Hollywood-enforced time delay and a ban on midnight screenings. The action is in response to the discovery that a string of cammed blockbusters turning up on the Internet originated from cinemas in Hungary.

Camcording pirates pose a serious threat to the profits of Hollywood, according to the MPAA at least. In order to stop the cammers in their tracks, theater owners have been equipped with night-vision goggles. That’s not all though, the latest Hollywood blockbusters may soon come with watermarked audio that can pinpoint a pirate’s seat number.