Eleven employees from cinemas across the UK have been presented with awards totalling £2,900 for their efforts in preventing illegal recordings (so called ‘camcordings’) taking place. Heightened vigilance and night vision devices were used, especially when digital recording kits are not easy to spot.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) operate a training, prevention and reward scheme for all UK cinemas. Illegal recordings of films are the primary source for pirate copies worldwide. “Recordings are uploaded to the internet and made available within hours to millions of people. Film piracy in the UK alone costs legitimate businesses over half a billion pounds a year and directly threatens the jobs of tens of thousands of people who work across the film sector,” says FACT.

FACT works closely with cinema operators to ensure that staff are trained to detect and prevent such recordings, as well as assisting in raising awareness with police on this issue so they are able to assist when called to an incident.

Nine camcording incidents were signaled; the police attended all of them. Two incidents led to arrests, seven incidents led to police cautions at the scene, two led to formal cautions in custody.

At a specially-convened ceremony at Paramount Pictures, London, awards were presented to Calum Bartoli (Empire Newcastle), Dolly Bhatti (Vue Birmingham), Kerry Burkes, Oliver Colls, Jenny Geary and Chelsea Gordon (Cineworld Bexleyheath), MD-Minhazur Chowdhury, Amine Menadli and Carl Lewis (Cineworld Wood Green), Liam Slater (Cineworld Ashton) and Gina Hawkins (Odeon Numeaton).

Each individual received a cheque for several hundred pounds - in many cases matched by a similar amount from their employing company.

Story filed 21.04.11