iPhone users, apart from stalking each other in hope of finding romance, are now imminently about to be blocked from accessing video applications and the iPhone’s camera during live music and sport events, in a totalitarian move by Apple designed to inhibit copyright infringement.
A patent filed in ’09 shows how iPhones will be zapped by infa-red sensors installed at gigs and events that will use signals to disable video recording on devices held up high above the crowd during shows and sports events.
This effectively blocks recording a band playing live, which is almost criminal to music fans, since some live performances are rarely documented on video, and legendary gigs and occurrences being blocked can strip a band or artist of their chronicled history and mythology.
This patent comes as a response to the availability of live gigs online, on sites such as YouTube, and additionally the availability of bootlegged live tracks. The maddening fact about this is that over the decades that live music has become massively popular and the ‘gig’ as we know it has evolved into what it is today, many of the rarest and most precious moments of a star’s life in the eyes of the fans have been captured by amateur video footage from audience members. Taking away this ability from any music fan is tantamount to erasing history.
The controversial patent details “using the camera to capture a second image that includes an infrared signal with encoded data” would “disable a record function” or apply a compulsory watermark to the final video.