Kinect is tons of fun. Have you ever played Dance Central 3? Great game. But according to a newly discovered patent, the Xbox add-on is also maybe spying on you, which is totally not cool, man.


This very big brother-y piece of intellectual property—Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User—uses Kinect's camera to count the number of people in the room and in some cases, identify who they are. This "consumer detector" will charge you licensing fees based on how many bodies are present, and could even stop playback to collect on you if it detects more humans than you've paid for.

Sorry if you have a baby face, because the tech could also check on ages and cut off mature content if the system doesn't think you're old enough. God, Kinect. Such a tattletale! [USPTO via Geekwire via BetaBeat]