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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Red Digital Cinema: Corporate Espionage or Run-of-the-Mill Theft?

The Orange County offices of Red Digital Cinema were broken into on September 24th; among the things taken was a prototype of Red's first digital cinema camera, expected to hit the market in 2007. The OC Register has the story:

    The list price for RED ONE cameras is $17,500, compared with $100,000 for competitors' models. Initial production of the camera is scheduled for early 2007, according to the company's Web site.

    A Red Digital employee arrived at work shortly after noon Sept. 24 to find the office's front window smashed and hundreds of thousands of dollars in camera and computer equipment missing, [a sheriff's spokesman] said.

    A prototype for RED ONE, computer files relating to the camera's imaging sensor and four other pocket camera prototypes were among the missing items, Amormino said. A 50-inch plasma television, a 30-inch monitor, an Agenieux camera lens, an HBX 200 camera and several laptops were also stolen.

    The total property loss was $332,200.

    Sheriff's investigators are trying to determine whether Red Digital was the victim of industrial espionage or run-of-the-mill thieves. Several other neighborhood businesses have had their windows smashed and property stolen in recent weeks, investigators said...

My bet is that this was your standard break-in... but the possibility that it may have been a rival trying to spy on Red has more PR value, of course.

2 Comments:

  • from what I can tell, smells more like targeted theft - brand new computers were left alone, the items taken seem unusually targetted towards the value of the intel that could be gleaned. Of course, I hadn't heard about other breakins in the area, so that lessens the likelihood of corporate espionage.

    But it sure smelled suspicious when it happened - see this thread:

    http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=548725#post548725

    I dunno the real story - my own conjecture is here:

    http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/09/red-news-red-one-shipping-in-april-and.html

    -mike

    By Blogger Mike Curtis, at 4:11 PM  

  • While I still can't get my head around the fact that there was no alarm system and security cameras....

    The thing about corporate espionage (which I had to read a good deal about for a project once) is that the information is usually siphoned through several layers so that maybe all they end person really wanted to know was who is making the snesor and there was a bounty on that information. The HBX could just be a bonus for the theif. You think someone might let it slip that they'd pay 25,000 to know who is making this sensor?

    Or... just a random break in where they grabbed anything which seemed interesting as fast as they could.

    Glad it didn't slow progress.

    By Blogger The Unknown Filmmaker, at 7:11 PM  

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