It has generally been considered "unsociable" to wear Google Glass in many public places, but the film and theater industry is taking an official step to ban moviegoers from using Google Glass inside the theater.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) announced an update to their policy banning the use of Google Glass and other wearable devices inside the cinema. This is in addition to their policy that cell phones must be silenced or turned off during the screening of the film.
In their announcement, the MPAA says the groups have "a long history of welcoming technological advances" and recognize that consumers have a strong interest in smart wearable devices. However, in their efforts to combat piracy and prevent moviegoers from recording movies using their wearables, the groups have added wearables to their list of banned devices.
"We maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward using any recording device while movies are being shown," says the MPAA in a blog post. "As has been our long-standing policy, all phones must be silenced and other recording devices, including wearable devices, must be turned off and put away at show time."
The MPAA also says that persons who are unwilling to remove their wearables may be asked to leave the theater. If theater owners suspect that video recording is going on, they may also ask law enforcement to take over. Under the law, moviegoers may be imprisoned for up to three years for recording a movie, even on their first offense.
Kate Bedingfield, vice president of corporate communication at MPAA, emphasizes that the new policy applies to all wearable devices, not just Google Glass. She also says that individual theaters are not required to enforce the policy and may do so at their own discretion. However, Bedingfield says the updated policy naturally follows from the idea that all devices must be turned off and put away during the movie.
But theaters face practical problems enforcing the policy, which also doesn't take into account certain restrictions of the technology. For instance, a user may want to use his Google Glass inside the theater to view an annotated version of the film. In one real-life example, an Ohio man wearing his Google Glass with prescription lenses was thrown out of a theater in the middle of the movie after being suspected of recording the film. It took authorities more than three hours of questioning to ensure the man and his wife were not violating anti-piracy laws.
Moreover, the policy ignores the fact that Google Glass and most other wearables are not much of a threat, since users can only record up to less than an hour of video, and with poor resolution at that, before the battery runs out.
