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Movie Industry Officially Bans Google Glass, Other Wearable Devices

OCTOBER 29, 2014 | 09:41AM PT
Todd Spangler
NY Digital Editor
@xpangler
Google Glass and other wearable devices are now officially off-limits in the cinema.

On Wednesday, the MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) announced an update to their joint policy to prevent film theft in theaters, prohibiting recording by users equipped with Google Glass or other wearables in theaters.

The update “was made to fully integrate wearable tech into the rules following a joint meeting of NATO and MPAA theatrical anti-piracy teams,” the lobbying orgs said. The announcement was made at ShowEast 2014, NATO’s annual industry confab in Hollywood, Fla.

The issue, while it hasn’t cropped up much, has prompted Hollywood to act. This January, a man who was wearing a Google Glass headset during a showing of “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” at an AMC Theatres location in Columbus, Ohio, was questioned by agents from the Dept. of Homeland Security about whether he was illegally recording the film.

Here is the is full statement from the groups:

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have a long history of welcoming technological advances and recognize the strong consumer interest in smart phones and wearable “intelligent” devices. As part of our continued efforts to ensure movies are not recorded in theaters, however, we maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward using any recording device while movies are being shown. 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. Individuals who fail or refuse to put the recording devices away may be asked to leave. If theater managers have indications that illegal recording activity is taking place, they will alert law enforcement authorities when appropriate, who will determine what further action should be taken.

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other recording devices, including wearable devices, must be turned off and put away at show time.

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I don't know a whole lot about Google Glass, but why would you not turn it off when the show starts?
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-30-2014, 08:10 AM:
 
Probably the same reason you wouldn't stop texting during a movie
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-30-2014, 02:17 PM:
 
I think it's rather stupid to list a specific type or brand of wearable gears. No recording whatsoever... everything is covered.

Besides that, Google Glass currently isn't even capable of recording full feature length movies. And I doubt it's really practical either, because for anything near usable results, you need to keep your head steady.

Just paranoia theater good for nothing other than giving those organizations an even worse name than they already have.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-30-2014, 06:41 PM:
 

quote: Marcel Birgelen

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I think it's rather stupid to list a specific type or brand of wearable gears. No recording whatsoever... everything is covered.

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The policy doesn't list any specific types, brands, etc. It just says ALL recording devices *INCLUDING* wearable are prohibited.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before you'll be able to start recording with your Google Glass the minute you put it on in the morning and keep recording all day, with the video being uploaded to some gargantuan server in the cloud. Such a device could easily be put on the arm-rest of the theater chair and record a whole movie.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-30-2014, 07:06 PM:
 
Most articles make it look like if it was targeted at Google Glass specifically. In my opinion, you should not even need to specifically name any device type, as they tend to evolve year after year. You can even record videos with some watches nowadays. In a few years, the first things your bionic implants can do is checking your Facebook account and sharing pictures and videos off all your important happy moments in your life...

Still, to get even a barely usable result, you would need to use some more beefy gear, like one of those GoPro Hero cams, they could probably record the whole show in FullHD or even 4K. And they're small and you don't wear them on your face .

On a rather interesting side note: many of those "professional" cam-jobs seem to have originated from cinema personnel themselves, including audio that was captured directly from the decoder...

I've done some "legal cam jobs" myself, by filming 16mm and 35mm footage off a screen as means of low-cost a/d conversion. To get something usable, you really need to do quite some tweaking, a good camera position and (semi) professional gear. Not something you could do unnoticed.

But then again, I guess my standards are a bit higher. I still don't get how anybody could seriously watch some dudes personal, feature length theater recording of a proper movie...
 

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-31-2014, 06:14 PM:
 

quote: Marcel Birgelen

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Most articles make it look like if it was targeted at Google Glass specifically. In my opinion, you should not even need to specifically name any device type, as they tend to evolve year after year.

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This is a silly comment to make.

Considering that it was Google Glass that made the most recent headlines -- and prompted NATO's statement -- it makes perfect sense that the current headlines would mention GG.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-01-2014, 05:57 AM:
 
The point being, I do think this whole NATO statement is silly to begin with. They're making themselves look like assholes. Everybody knows that recording movies in a movie theater is out of the question.

If somebody enters with a Google Glass, just gently remind him to take it off during the show. Problem solved. Treating your paying customers with some respect might help business more than treating them like potential criminals. Although you almost cannot expect anything else than finger pointing from the MPAA, NATO should be on the side of the exhibitors.
 

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 11-01-2014, 11:26 AM:
 
As prescription lens Google Glasses are already available, forcing people to remove them will eventually run afoul of Americans With Disabilities act and open the venue up to discrimination lawsuits.

Ultimately, this will be as unworkable as requiring people to put away their cell phones has been. I'm not sure why anyone would want a Google Glass copy of a movie with the shaking and movement that will occur every time the user slightly moves their head, especially when bootleg dvd's are available day and date and the legitimate dvd/bluray is available 45 days later. This just strikes me as an exercise in annoying customers more than copyright enforcement.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-01-2014, 09:32 PM:
 
I dunno....we get the NATO Camcord Source Reports every month and it's pretty amazing how many camcord movies are discovered. It seems to be a big cities / southern US phenomenon more than anything. No "hits" from anywhere in the midwest or northwest at all, but lots from California, Texas, Florida, New York, and so on. About what you would expect I guess. More people = more shenanigans.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-02-2014, 05:43 PM:
 
Do they also tell you how they arrive at those figures? .

And what are they reporting? The amount of folks caught with a camera or do they count the bootlegged versions that made it to the public?

Bootlegged versions that appear on the Internet should be pretty easy to track down to the locations they originated from and even the exact time when they were made via the forensic watermarking, at least if it originated from a digital presentation, which is quite likely nowadays.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-02-2014, 10:34 PM:
 
The report tells where the video was recorded -- city, state/country, and name of venue; how it was sourced (camcord or some other way like a screener copy), where they found the illegal video (either on the internet, via a disk on the street or wherever), the date of the recording and the time. About the only thing they don't specifically give is the name of the person who turned in the illegal video -- which is understandable.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-04-2014, 04:15 AM:
 
Is there still a serious market for physical bootlegged copies? You'd think about 95% of all piracy would involve on-line distribution nowadays.
 

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