High-tech hunt for Potter pirates
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LONDON, England -- Cinemas in Britain are resorting to extreme measures in a bid to stamp out piracy that costs the movie industry billions of dollars a year.
In what is believed to be a UK movie industry first, ushers are being issued with night-vision goggles to ensure that cinemagoers are not secretly recording the new Harry Potter film.
The devices are being distributed to cinemas along with the film, which went on general release in Britain Monday.
One manager said his cinema had already sold 6,500 tickets of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," the third movie based on books from the hit series by J.K. Rowling.
Jamie Graham, who runs the Vue Complex in Ellesmere Port, northern England, said: "It is an incredible response and makes you realize why the distributors are so keen to protect the film from pirates.
"I have been working in the cinema industry for 10 years and I have never heard of anything like this before," Graham told the Press Association.
"Our ushers are using the goggles in every screening to check nobody is making any illegal recordings. If anybody is caught they will be reported to the police."
Night-vision goggles have been used for at least two years in the U.S. where movie piracy is considered a major threat.
The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that it costs Hollywood at least $2.5 billion annually in lost sales of tickets, DVDs and videotapes.
Association President Jack Valenti has said that because of piracy, the film industry faces "Armageddon."
"Organized, violent international criminals are getting rich from the high-gain, low-risk business of stealing America's copyrighted works," Valenti testified at a U.S. congressional hearing in March 2003.
