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posted by takyon on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the full-life-consequences dept.

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."

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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday June 11 2017, @01:41AM (4 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Sunday June 11 2017, @01:41AM (#523646)

    On the one hand, yes, it's a public space, so the public can go there subject to reasonable restrictions (e.g. many public parks are officially closed from something like 11 PM to 6 AM). Since the players have a right to walk through the park, they have a right to play Pokemon Go or some other AR game walking through the park.

    On the other hand, a city that was used to having, say, 10,000 people visit a park over the course of a year all of a sudden has 30,000 people visiting that same park, there's going to be an extra cost to the city in park maintenance. Somebody has to pay that cost. Since the makers of the AR game are the ones making money from those extra 20,000 visitors, there's a reasonable argument that they should be the ones paying the costs.

    So I could see a court reasonably going either way on this.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 11 2017, @02:04AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday June 11 2017, @02:04AM (#523652) Journal

    Presumably most of the park goers would be locals or maybe tourists. Both could be made to cover the costs by increasing local sales tax by a half-cent per dollar.

    Is a city going to be able to get an injunction against AngryCrush Co. to stop it from selling augmented reality apps on Google Play/Apple Store? I doubt it. This will be unenforceable in the long run. If 1,000 people independently show up at the park for an unofficial and possibly randomly generated AR event, the only way to stop them will be to gun them down.

    With any luck, people will realize that exercise and socialization are bullshit, and the Parks and Recreation department over in Milwaukee will be saved. They'll put their phones in Galaxy Gear/Cardboard holders instead and engage in anti-social and pseudo-social VR.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @02:06AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @02:06AM (#523654)

    Plant durian trees in the park.

    its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @05:30AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @05:30AM (#523699)

      But can it only be smelled by millennials?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:36AM (#523682)

    Since the makers of the AR game are the ones making money from those extra 20,000 visitors, there's a reasonable argument that they should be the ones paying the costs.

    The game makers are not making money because people are going to the park. This free game is basically a map application with virtual "critters" that pop up randomly anywhere the player happens to be and can be "captured". The fact that players wander into a park is no different than the players walking into the street or into a mall parking lot or into a corn field.

    The game does not guide them to any specific location. The players are basically holding a virtual divining rod that responds to these randomly appearing characters/tokens.