Or allow studios to block playback if more than x people are present, unless you fork over for a "broadcast" license...
And, to keep it out of the public sphere it has to be kept out of the private sphere lest people get used to the ideas and let it leak into the public sphere without protest.
I was just intrigued by the perceptions around this - people often have an instinctive strongly negative response to the idea of pervasive face recognition but I'm not sure they would feel as unnerved by the presence of a wifi network with this sort of "surveillance" traffic running through it. Maybe they would.
[1] http://theconversation.com/now-advertising-billboards-can-re...
Let me give you an example: technology like glass has made possible to sit behind people homes and look inside. You can even automate it with cameras. This is not done because there is no technology to allow it but because it is felt unethical.
In addition general population ignorance in something does not mean that more qualified people can not propose measures against unethical actions of small group of individuals. These measures can be then formed into another invention called law and applied by another invention called law enforcement.
Edit: or notice more carefully important marker. I am sorry about my comment. I was wrong.
* Using wifi in a movie theatre to build a Google Analytics equivalent for movie studios. Total heartbeat and respiration data for every individual "user session" across all screenings. Devices like Roku could do this too and sell the data to Netflix.
* Amazon Echo could notice your heartrate is becoming elevated due to the start of flu - Amazon stages your go-to remedies in the nearest DC and pushes appropriate ads on the site.
* In store movement tracking. Why bother with phone beacons and hassle-some devices randomising their MAC addresses when you could just power up a wifi blanket and track bodies with precision.
I guess the lab setting of the above research wouldn't apply to these situations - but I imagine with more research and some specialised equipment a movie theatre could be made conducive to this kind of tracking? Would there be legal implications? Wifi is everywhere already...