17 employees from cinemas across the UK have been presented with awards totalling over £7,000 for their efforts in preventing illegal recordings taking place. 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.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (‘FACT’) operates a training, prevention and reward scheme for UK cinemas funded and supported by Film Distributors’ Association (‘FDA’).
FACT works closely with cinema operators to ensure that staff are trained to detect and prevent recordings, as well as assisting in raising awareness with police on this issue so they are able to assist when called to an incident. Night vision devices supplied by FDA form part of the best practice deterrence, as digital recording equipment is not easy to spot.
The FACT/FDA programme has engaged the support and co-operation of exhibitors UK-wide. It has achieved great success in reducing the number of recordings taken from UK cinemas, making the UK one of the most secure environments for releasing movies.
Kieron Sharp, FACT Director General, said that the actions of those present had prevented the recording of films and that those recordings would then have been uploaded to the internet and made available to millions of people globally, harming the livelihoods of industry employees as well as the prospects of the films.
Awards were presented to:
Empire Slough – Salimah Azim Adatia
Empire Slough – Muhammad Imran Wattoo
Cineworld Aberdeen Queen’s Link – Spencer Owen
Vue North Finchley – Rachel Hewer
Odeon Bournemouth – Destiny Okoh
Empire Newcastle – Victoria Landale
Cineworld Leigh – Stephanie Mortimore
Cineworld Leigh – Kevin King
Cineworld Wandsworth – Parthiban Subburaj
Cineworld Wandsworth – Siddharthayappan Rajkumar
Vue Wood Green – Grishma Bam
Empire Newcastle – Danielle Carver
Odeon Manchester – Richard Brammer
Odeon Manchester – Paul Bannister
Cineworld Weymouth – Gemma Humphreys
Cineworld Boldon – Paul Whale
Odeon Blackpool – Rebecca Cartwright
