Kinect Could Charge Per Person When Playing A Movie, New Patent Makes Known

A new patent filed by Microsoft makes known the unthinkable: Kinect can actually scan a room to detect how many people are watching a movie (or playing games), and charge the account holder for the extra viewers, indicating that content you purchase someday might be limited to a certain amount of people to consume. “The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken,” reads the patent’s description, spotted by Extreme Tech.     More on the description:

[0042] At 412, a license validation is performed by comparing the user count and any view or performance limitation against that allowed by the license. If the license is satisfied, the content presentation begins at 420. If not, then at 414, the user is presented with an option to adjust the license terms. If the license is updated at 416, then the content presentation begins at 420. If not, the presentation is halted at 418.

But just because something has been patented, that doesn’t mean it’ll ever come to fruition in the real world. But with Microsoft now honed in on TV, and with Xbox One’s Kinect being so precise, this seems rather ominous.