Put this one down on the “creepy” list. Of course as a company that invests heavily in R&D, Apple is bound to have a large number of patents that it never actually intends to bring to market. After all, the costs of filing one are negligible. This one however tries to shackle your smartphone camera with technology that prevents recording under specific circumstances. The use case is simple and starts when you book a seat via a concert tickets portal. Almost all shows today have restrictions against recording performances. Perhaps they want to have an official recording. Or they want to keep it off the Internet entirely. In which case, the organizers will broadcast a specific infrared signal that your phone will pick up and prevent it from recording anything.
As of now, bands and organizers have to rely upon the good behavior of people in the audience. This patent aims to take it out of the public’s hands and give the event managers the power to block any recording of their shows using iOS devices. But it’s not just concerts of course that can benefit from this technology. Movie screenings, museums etc all have prominent warnings against taking videos. One can easily see the demand for such a product.
But there’s a seamy side to this as well.
Never mind the fact that many may find it downright repulsive to have one’s own digital device prevent you as the owner from using it. It’s not a stretch to imagine that repressive governments would be delighted to use such a method and prevent protesters and human rights workers from broadcasting their atrocities. As of now, the police in many countries hold themselves back at least a little knowing that someone or the other is recording what they do. The ubiquitous availability of the smartphone has put a lot of power into people’s hands. Imagine the consequences of the government or police knowing that they can’t be recorded or broadcast to the world? There was a time like that once before the Internet became what it is. Do any of us want to return to it?
Of course it will never happen unless this kind of technology becomes commonplace on every smartphone and not just on Apple’s devices. There are enough tech watchers and commenters who will raise alarm bells well before it’s even incorporated into the iOS operating system. Doubtless this is one of those “file it and forget it” patents. It’s Apple’s bad luck that they’re so closely watched that everything they do comes under the scanner.
Still, few could deny that the thought itself is worrying. One wonders in what other ways our own devices could be crippled to work against us. Perhaps in addition to an open source mobile operating system like Android, we should have an open source hardware ecosystem as well.