pacificlectic : concert reviews & eclectic music news

Most people take spontaneous photo and videos these days with their iPhones or other smartphones.  What happens when you’re at a concert and you pull out your phone and suddenly recording doesn’t work, because the iPhone thinks that you don’t have the proper permissions to take video…

via dvice

Apple has filed a patent that could help combat the latter, though still hinder the former. That is: a patent that protects intellectual property rights, but treats everyone like a potential pirate, rather than a valued customer.

The patent deals with making the iPhone sensitive to infrared signals, the kind that could let the device know that it’s somewhere where filming and photography aren’t welcome. A movie theater, for instance, shoots out these IR beams to interact with hearing aids for the impaired, and a museum or art gallery could put up receivers to let phones know they aren’t welcome.

These “IR signals” could easily be used to block photography or video recording anywhere— including rallies, protests and by the police.  While I’d gladly accept the casualty of people not being able to flip out their iPhone in front of me at a concert, the tactic of blocking film & photos at rallies, protests, etc seems very scary to me.

More science/tech talk about it HERE at PatentlyApple.

~Dan – np: Marc Ribot – Rootless Cosmopolitans