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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."

-- submitted from IRC


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

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> 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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