You know those warnings at the beginning of movies that say you can’t use a DVD for anything other than personal use? Technically, you aren’t supposed to hold big parties to allow everyone to watch a movie you’ve purchased, because it discourages them from purchasing the DVD themselves. Of course, there’s no real way to enforce this, so that warning goes mostly unnoticed by the movie watching public.
However, Microsoft has recently patented a technology that can police the number of users watching a piece of media. It uses the Kinect to detect the number of bodies in a room. If the number of bodies in the room exceeds the permitted amount, the media would shut off.
There are a number of other limitations this technology could impose including “a number of user views, a number of user views over time, a number of simultaneous user views, views tied to user identities, views limited to user age or any variation or combination thereof, all tied to the number of actual content consumers allowed to view the content.” If you exceed the number of allowed viewers, you will then be asked to purchase a new license for the media that you are viewing.
While this new technology has awesome applications in the area of parental controls, it’s just annoying everywhere else. It’s good for the Kinect to realize your five-year-old is trying to watch a bloody and violent horror movie, but if the Kinect actually tries to shut off a movie because too many people are in the room, you could just disconnect it.
Of course, this technology may be integrated into future consoles that have motion sensing devices built-in, but even then you might as well just play the movie on your computer or on a DVD player without a motion tracking device. Or you could just tape a picture of one guy in a room in front of your Kinect to fool it.
Worst case scenario: this actually may drive people to pirate media more than they usually would, just so they can show it to their friends. I know I don’t want to spend extra cash just to introduce my friends to Breaking Bad .
Source: US Patent & Trademark Office