Barmy new 'no laptops allowed' rule from Cineworld
In a story that is currently spreading across Twitter like some kind of dark green ooze, it has been revealed that the Cineworld cinema chain have now banned filmgoers from taking laptops into screenings, in fear that they might record the film.
Because, you know, if you wanted to make a sneaky recording of Pixar’s Up to spread all over the internet, you’d choose to do it on a cumbersome laptop as opposed to a mobile phone or a video camera that had been carefully fitted into a secret compartment inside your top hat. Wouldn’t you?
In spite of making a pirate movie with a laptop being the daftest idea since taking boxing gloves to a book signing, TV and radio broadcaster Jeremy Nicholas found himself prevented from entering a screening at his local Cineworld last night because he had his laptop with him. Staff told him he would have to leave it with them and collect it after the film, in spite of the fact that they had no kind of receipt system in place.
Wisely, Jeremy “declined the kind offer to look after my £1500 Sony Vaio that contains all my current work projects, plus some half baked book ideas.”
He and his laptop were eventually allowed in to see the film, after convincing the cinema’s child-faced manager that the Vaio didn’t actually have a camera in it.
In his blog, Jeremy adds: “I often pop in to the movies after work, so I often have the laptop with me and I wanted to check that this was definitely out from now on. He said after advice from FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Cineworld had brought in the new guidelines.”
“I asked if it would be OK to take my mobile phone into the film as that does have the capacity to record movies. He asked if I was planning to use it for that purpose. I said no. He said it would be all right then. Not the most rigorous interrogation and one that a determined bootlegger probably could have passed.”
And the movie that Jeremy saw? ‘Surrogates.’ In the man’s own words, “[POSSIBLE MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILER ALERTS!!!!!!!!!!!] about a future world where people have been replaced by robots. Everything ran smoothly for a while, but in the end it all went wrong because the robots were efficient but lacked humanity.” Hmmm, what does that remind us of?
Bitterwallet have approached Cineworld for a quote but they have yet to respond. We’ll bring you their thoughts as and when we get them.
TOPICS: Gadgets Technology
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