Guilty until proven innocent

On Poilitech last week, James Reid posted a story about the excessive scurity at a movie screening: How the MPAA killed the movie theater experience: a first-hand report: “the line was moving slowly because they were asking customers to raise their arms so that they could be electronically frisked with a metal detector, and
women’s purses were being searched by uniformed security guards. Try to remember that this is Toronto, Canada we’re talking about here, not New York, Tel Aviv or London.”
I have had this same experience going to see pre-release films in New York. The concern has nothing to do with security as it does with paranoia. I can understand confiscating cell phones for the purposes of enhancing the movie going experience, but to take camera phones because someone might take a blurry picture or video of the screen? That’s really going to serve as a substitute for going to see the movie in a theater? Who is going to watch a pirated version of a movie recorded on cameraphone?
Marc Cuban’s HDNet is trying a new model that may take away a significant amount of the market for pirated DVDs– releasing the film in theaters and on DVD at the same time: The Movies today are better than ever!: “Our first movie, Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room, premiered in theaters and on HDNet Movies the very same day. Enron went on to not only get great reviews, but also become one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time.”