Hollywood sends enforcers with night-vision goggles into movie theaters and puts metal detectors outside advance screening rooms, but still the industry can"t stop pirates from recording films and selling illegal copies before their theatrical debuts. The problem is that the pirates are adopting ever more sophisticated technology, using tiny camcorders in purses and digital recorders about the size of a fountain pen.
Some handheld computers "have an attachment that can record up to 122 minutes," said Jeffrey Godsick, executive vice president of marketing at 20th Century Fox. "Well, that"s a whole movie in many cases. You can take the attachment and run it through a small hole in a tie or a shirt." This is big business. The Motion Picture Association of America estimates studios lose more than $3 billion per year from piracy in various forms. So the movie industry is trying to fight back with a high-tech solution of its own.