14 DAY TRIAL // A man’s Google Glass device was snatched from his face by an FBI agent as he was watching a movie in the theater.
According to Phandroid, this all happened at an AMC theater in Columbus, Ohio. A Google Glass Explorer member went to see “Jack Ryan,” but was rudely taken out of the theater an hour into the movie.
The man was questioned for about three hours under the suspicion that he was illegally recording the movie simply because he was wearing Glass.
However, the man had powered off his device in advance and he was wearing the prescription version, which means that he most likely couldn’t see anything without them.
While it’s true that it’s not advisable to bring recording devices into movie theaters, especially with all the measures taken by movie studios to counter illegal recordings, wearing Glass into the room is pretty much the same thing as taking your smartphone with you, which no one objects to.
The man was interrogated for hours before he was eventually left alone. He was compensated with 2 free movie tickets for his troubles, but that’s unlikely to make things better for him.
From now on, he said that he would ask for his lawyer first if anyone ever “shoves a badge in his face” and if he got a ticket, he would fight it in court.
It’s not uncommon for Google Glass wearers to be treated in this manner. After all, it wasn’t a long time ago that a driver was ticketed for wearing her device. However, a court recently pronounced it legal to wear Glass while driving in California, but not to use it.
This new incident makes it obvious, however, that ahead of the Google Glass launch programmed for some time this year, some rules need to be set down for its usage so that authorities and overzealous movie theater employees don’t put other people in this type of embarrassing situation again.