Because I don’t want Glass to distract me during the movie, I turn them off (but since my prescription lenses are on the frame, I still wear them). About an hour into the movie (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), a guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says “follow me outside immediately”. It was quite embarrassing and outside of the theater there were about 5-10 cops and mall cops. Since I didn’t catch his name in the dark of the theater, I asked to see his badge again and I asked what was the problem and I asked for my Glass back. The response was “you see all these cops you know we are legit, we are with the ‘federal service’ and you have been caught illegally taping the movie.”
I cannot begin to describe on how many levels this angers me. But as a writer, I should try…
As a geek this angers me that simply being an early adopter of new technology got this guy in trouble. The fact that at this point I cannot ever imagine wearing Google Glass myself is immaterial.
It angers me because a cop walked up to a guy in the theater who was doing nothing wrong and treated him like a criminal.
It angers me that the “crime” of making a crappy recording of a movie gets more attention than many real crimes that go on in our country all the time.
It angers me that our copyright and patent system in this country is so inexcusably out of control.
The police state mentality angers me in general.
I need to go take some blood pressure medicine now…