Apple Working On Ways To Turn Off iPhone Cameras In Certain Locations
CUPERTINO (KPIX 5) -- Apple's latest patent describes a way to block the iPhone's camera functions while at a concert, making it useless as a recording device.
iPhone users have been quick to weigh in.
"When I go to a great concert and the drum solo begins, I'm going to want to video it and see it again and again, and I think that's my right," iPhone user Virginia Grabowski said.
But Grabowski agrees that cell phones at concerts can be a problem.
"If I were the concert promoter, I certainly wouldn't want the concert shown on every social media site if I was selling tickets for it," Grabowski said.
Cell phone lights have been credited with adding to the ambiance of a show. But camera recording is often called a distraction or a rip-off of an artist.
Adele famously stopped her concert to call out a fan for recording it on a phone.
And metal vocalist Geoff Tate actually grabbed a fan's phone out of his hand and threw it back in the crowd.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment, but the company's patent would use infrared technology to temporarily disable camera functions at concert halls, museums or other places where recording is considered illegal or sensitive.
"It's very disturbing when someone proposes technology that would take the power out of the owner or user and hand it to a third party," Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
O'Brien worries the new technology could be easily corrupted.
"Where something that was designed to stop you from filming concerts can be turned around to stop you from filming police violence," O'Brien said.
Brian Epes recently used his phone to record a concert, and doesn't want to give it up.
"I want the ability to take my memories of the concert with me," Epes said.
He says if the technology makes it to the mainstream, one way around it is to do what he does - use a non-Apple phone.
