Apple Patents Tech to Stop iPhones Filming in Venues 391
An anonymous reader writes "A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera."
Worry when the government starts mandating it (Score:5, Interesting)
The police will love it once this is mandated by law in all phones!
Back in the day when we all whined that Microsoft was evil, we had *NO IDEA* what evil really was.
Re:Deja Vue (Score:2, Interesting)
For that matter, do we really need another round of people who don't like company X attacking company X for filing a patent on something they object to, pretending not to understand that tech companies never implement 90% of what they patent? Seriously, remember those articles about Apple patenting OS-level advertising that locked people out of their computers until they watched it? Seen any Macs or iOS devices doing that lately?
Re:Deja Vue (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the application for patenting it on all cameras maybe got turned down. It seems like trying to patent anything but the sun gets approved, but maybe some government official realized that if Apple has the exclusive rights to this valuable censorship technology, that could prevent it from being rolled out. Maybe Steve Jobs would say "Okay, you've made it mandatory that all cameras have this in them, so now I have a monopoly on the whole camera market. You'll now have to pay $1000 for a legally-approved 4 megapixel compact camera." So everyone would just buy unapproved cameras and their dastardly plans would be ruined. Thus, the government had the broader patent application denied.
I consider this to be the most likely explanation. You can spout off about slashdot editors being careless, but we both know this is clearly the fallout of a fight between two forces of evil.
Re:The real counter measure (Score:2, Interesting)
But 5 million others will, and if something of public interest is going on, say police brutality, and they try to record it with their camera phone, but it's been disabled, say, by police IR equipment, that kind of affects us all, doesn't it?
Don't worry about it, it's not like we live in an iPhone-only society. The recent police shooting in Florida that made the news after it was filmed and the photographer was arrested was filmed using an HTC Evo, not an iPhone. There are enough people with non-Apple smartphones that make it so that anything that Apple does does not have the wide-ranging impact that everyone fears. Apple is just limiting its own customers, not everyone else. For now, anyway.
Re:Back on topic... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, customer.. you will take it up the butt because that's what the MAFIAA wants.
Isn't it also the fact that BluRay players need extra CPU power just because it has to decrypt the disc content, and probably re-encrypt it for the HDMI stream, which your display unit then needs to have CPU power to decrypt? Geez, I wonder who's paying for all that hardware?
Yeah... yet another confirmation Apple is working for the evil assholes.
Re:Back on topic... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, and exactly WHY as a iPhone customer, would I want such 'feature' on my phone?? Rather limiting I'd say.
Exactly so. What a huge sales disincentive.
Far be it from me to suggest Apple is doing something altruistic, but let me toss this out there:
Were they doing us all a favor by locking up this technology so that venues couldn't deploy it and/or demand it on all smart phones?
Seems vaguely possible, since without wide adoption in all handsets, this technology is useless, and won't be deployed anywhere. A patent is actually counter productive in the eyes of the venues and rights holders, as it limits the ability to deploy this.
Apple themselves would have little incentive to add yet another cripple feature in their phones considering that the competition would add no such thing. Unless Apple lobbied for smartphone exclusion zones, with the iPhone given a pass there would be no market incentive for this feature.
So why patent something that would be a huge sales disincentive if actually deployed?
Some middle eastern countries are cracking down on photos in public places, but I doubt they have a big enough market for this.
It makes no sense.
Police (Score:4, Interesting)
So, instead of police busting up iPhones when they shoot someone down in their car, they'll just flash your phone with some twisted Men in Black device?
Yet ANOTHER reason I'll never go back to an iPhone.