Seeing double

I've currently got a shell script doing a bunch of tedious stuff for me. So while I have some CPU doing my work for me, I thought it would be a good opportunity to blag.

On Monday, Rebecca and I went to a movie theatre alone for the first time in ages. We saw the 3D showing of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (the verdict: it was okay and obvious to someone like me who had not read the book that it was a Hollywood adaptation). And during the trailers, it became apparent that a very large proportion of upcoming movies are going to be 3D. It seemed gratuitous.

Fast forward to today when I read this story on the CBC.ca website about a Montreal movie pirate who made high-quality copies of movies in movie theatres. That's when it occurred to me that maybe all this 3D movie business is actually a friendlier copy protection. I doubt a digital camera is sensitive to the polarized light used in 3D projections. And even if you could capture the 3D effect in your digital copy, if someone dropped $10K on some high-end equipment so that they could watch some downloaded movies for free:


So my prediction: More 3D movies, less piracy.