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Comment by eps | Hacker News Reader

Won't work, not for stopping leaks.

Moreover, by asking people to put their phone under a lock, the venue implies that they view every attendee as a thief. That sure as hell won't go down well with some and they will find a way to record and post to YouTube purely out of spite.

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As the article says, Mumford & Sons and Hannibal Burress have already been using the system. It should be easy for you to show that people have leaked videos from shows where the pouches were used.

That would only prove that it haven't happened yet, not that it can't happen, and with the motivations the parent describes.

That might be, but it changes the game for security guards. You go from "17,000 people trying to film" to "a few dozen troublemakers trying to film", which is actually manageable.

Now it's 17,000 people you have to try and get your anti-cellphone device back from. Given that they have some sort of proximity sensor and powered lock, they can't afford to lose hundreds/thousands a night to people who forget to turn them in.

At scale (which is what you have very quickly, considering each shows brings huge numbers), those sensors get cheap enough that you just factor them in even at 0% return rates. They won't cost more than $20 each; put half the cost on tickets and half on losses and you're good. To operations the size of Chappelle's, good-quality leaked video is worth millions.

Besides, why would they lose so many? Like 3d glasses, the novelty goes away very quickly.

As a viewer of live shows, if this decreases my chance of having my view blocked by some asshole who has decided to view the whole show through a grainy 3x5in window instead of experiencing life, I'm all for it. When I go to this sort of thing, I try not to bring my phone anyway.

We already assume every airline customer is a terrorist, so this isn't that big of a stretch.

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