SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In August, Milwaukee's Lake Park saw swarms of Pokémon Go players, some of whom trampled and trashed the area, making a general nuisance of themselves. Not everyone behaved badly, as John Dargle, Jr, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Parks, Recreation & Culture, acknowledged in a letter [PDF] at the time. But a subset of thoughtless gamers created enough of a burden that Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman proposed an ordinance [PDF] to require augmented reality game makers to obtain a permit to use county parks in their apps.
The ordinance was approved and took effect in January. It has become a solution waiting for a problem – according to a spokesperson for Milwaukee County, no game maker has bothered to apply for a permit since then.
[...] Nonetheless, in April, Candy Lab, a maker of augmented reality games based in Nevada, filed a lawsuit "out of genuine fear and apprehension that this ordinance, conceptually and as written, poses a mortal threat not only to Candy Lab AR's new location-based augmented reality game, but also to its entire business model, and, indeed, to the emerging medium of augmented reality as a whole."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:11AM (1 child)
I understand what folks are saying: attract lots of people to a public place, and this can become a problem. However, I think a lot of this is missing the point.
Consider navigation aids, which have been around for a long time now. Things like TomTom. These place a layer over a real map, the same as VR games like Pokeman Go and Ingress. It has happened - pretty often - that the "shortest" or "fastest" route leads through a neighborhood that the city never intended as a thoroughfare, especially at rush hour. Without the help of the navigation aid, most people would never have used those routes.
So these ordinary roads turn into public nuisances, because of computer apps. As far as I know, it never occurred to anyone to sue the makers of those apps. Instead, cities realized that this was their responsibility, and altered the rules on those roads to reflect their intended use. There is a one-mile stretch of road that goes in front of my house, and the town has put a speed limit of 20mph on the whole length. That reflects the fact that the road is residential, has three schools on it, and is not intended for through traffic. Navigation apps get updated, suddenly the road isn't so "fast" anymore, problem (mostly) solved. If individual drivers speed through anyway, well, the town gets to write them a fat ticket - holding the individuals responsible for their individual behavior.
It's really no different with games. If Ingress puts a portal in a park, and people go there and drop trash - ticket them for littering, just like any other park visitor. If too many people are showing up on a spot not designed for that many, then signpost or restrict the area to prevent crowds. The fact that crowds were never a problem before? That doesn't change the fact that the area was inadequately marked and/or restricted - literally anything could have caused a crowd: a school rally, a political speech, a private party, anything. It's a public area, and it is open for public use.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:36PM
Navigation apps can also use real-time traffic data in order to influence user decisions about which route to take. And using Google Maps to find a bus route can give you a different route based on having to wait 20 minutes at a certain bus stop vs. only 5 minutes at a stop that is a 2 minute walk away.
The effect of navigation apps taking traffic data into account could be to distribute traffic over more roads, reducing congestion a bit but causing certain roads to be more heavily traveled. So the completely opaque [kurzweilai.net] and allegedly algorithmic processes [fastcompany.com] that influence the movement of millions of people can absolutely affect town planning and public maintenance of roads.
At the end of the day, there are just going to be unexpected events that complicate these matters. Back to parks, what if it isn't an augmented reality app that draws crowds in? Maybe someone makes a YouTube video about some flowers [latimes.com]. Or makes a dank meme about some weird rock [blogspot.com] on park property. Suddenly you have thousands of unwanted visitors to the public park. Do you sue somebody? Unlikely.
Having said all that, we haven't seen the limits of the damage these apps could do. What if, at the height of Pokemon Go's popularity, Niantic had designated one location per U.S. state as a "designated free Pokemon trade zone and Mewtwo catch area". Nothing algorithmic, all hand picked. Suddenly you have tens of thousands of people driving for hours to skulk near the locations. You have a spike in murders near the locations. Maybe some noise complaints and drug dealing. Perhaps there would be an easier case for suing the software company. Here's a better one: free Poke-resurrection at only one place in the United States... Arlington National Cemetery! Let's make this case Pokemon Go federal!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]