Court Blocks Wisconsin Augmented Reality Permit Law From Being Enforced

from the augmented-legality dept

You will recall that earlier this year we discussed a lawsuit brought by the makers of a mobile augmented reality game entitled Texas Rope 'Em against the city of Milwaukee over an ordinance it had put in place requiring game developers to obtain a permit to function within the city. Aside from the $1,000 permit fee the ordinance put in place, the requirements to obtain the permit were both odious and laughably non-applicable to the makers of mobile games such as Texas Rope 'Em. Examples of these requirements include plans for garbage collection left by players, plans for on-site security to protect players, and estimates of "crowd sizes." For makers of augmented reality apps, none of these requirements make any sense. When the developer of the game, Candy Lab, cried foul over First Amendment concerns, Milwaukee County replied that the game maker is not entitled to First Amendment rights, arguing that the game wasn't expressive enough to warrant them.

Well, in the opening round of the legal action, Candy Lab is a heavy winner. The court has enjoined the city from enforcing the law until the outcome of the trial, while also including language in the order that makes it fairly clear where the court is going to rule on the First Amendment question.

Plaintiff has a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of its claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation of the First Amendment. Plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm if Defendants are permitted to enforce Section 47.03(3) of the Milwaukee County Code of General Ordinances, adopted in Resolution 16-637.

Now, the trial has been set for next Spring, but fortunately that timeline won't keep Candy Lab from doing its business in Milwaukee with the injunction now in place. Frankly, I'd be somewhat surprised if that trial ever occurs, given the courts clear indication that it sees the law as a First Amendment violation, or at least that Candy Lab is likely to win on the merits of that assertion.

Still, it's troubling that Milwaukee would have tried to put this lab into place to begin with. Frankly, where permitting schemes are often times revenue generators for municipalities, the requirements for the permit in this case seem almost perfectly designed to simply keep augmented reality apps out of the city entirely. Why? It's not like other cities in America, both larger and smaller than Milwaukee, have suffered significant headaches or damage as a result of the now panoply of AR games on the market.

And the claim that an AR game isn't speech-y enough to warrant free speech rights? That's just silly.

Filed Under: augmented reality, permits, pokemon go, property rights, texas rope 'em, wisconsin
Companies: candy lab

Game Maker Sues Milwaukee Over Permit Requirement To Make Augmented Reality Games

from the virtually-real dept

One of the great stories in unintentional consequences in technology in the past few years has been Pokemon Go. The augmented reality game application has resulted in all kinds of legal action and consequences, including New York declaring playing it to be a sex offender parole violation, lawsuits stemming from players of the game wandering onto private property and annoying the residents there, and even the DOD releasing guidelines for safe Pokemon hunting.

What Milwaukee did in the wake of this legal activity made less of a media splash, but that appears to be changing. The Midwest city decided to add a city ordinance requiring a permit from any augmented reality game makers that made use of locations within the city. The ordinance reads:

Virtual and location-based augmented reality games are not permitted in Milwaukee County Parks except in those areas designated with a permit for such use by the Director of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Culture. Permits shall be required before any company may introduce a location-based augmented reality game into the Parks, effective January 1, 2017. The permitting application process is further described on DPRC’s website for companies that create and promote such games. That process shall include an internal review by the DPRC to determine the appropriateness of the application based on site selection, protection of rare flora and fauna, personal safety, and the intensity of game activities on park lands. Game activity shall only occur during standard park hours, unless otherwise authorized by the DPRC Director, who has the authority to designate special events and activities within the Parks outside of the standard operational hours.

If that seems overly broad and restrictive to you, you're not the only one. The problem with an ordinance like this is it directly inserts the city between the speech rights of an app developer and users of the app. Games of this nature have long ago established themselves as both works of art and speech, meaning free speech protections apply. Prior restraint on free speech has a lofty legal bar over which to vault.

In fact, that is the exact argument made by an app developer, Candy Lab AR, makers of the augmented reality app Texas Rope 'Em, when it sued Milwaukee.

According to the complaint, the "restriction impinges on Candy Lab AR’s right to free speech by regulating Candy Lab AR’s right to publish its video games that make use of the augmented reality medium. The Ordinance is a prior restraint on Candy Lab AR’s speech, impermissibly restricts Candy Lab AR’s speech because of its content, and is unconstitutionally vague such that Candy Lab AR does not have notice as to what speech must be approved by permit and which it can express without seeking a permit."

Much like Pokemon, Texas Rope 'Em has players traveling to real world locations to collect assets -- playing cards, in this case -- in order to further progress in the game. Augmented reality, though becoming something of an industry buzzword, is actually a long-established technology, used in everything from map applications on phones to games. Candy Labs is asserting that the ordinance requiring a permit prior to the game being used in the city amounts to prior restraint on its speech. And it's quite difficult to see how that isn't in fact the case.

We're talking about public land, after all. Augmented reality makes use of public locations and public data all the time. Broad ordinances looking to curb its use in the face of its rise in popularity face headwinds of all kinds, but it seems the question of its constitutionality may torpedo this one entirely.

Filed Under: augmented reality, milwaukee, permits, pokemon go, texas rope 'em
Companies: candy lab ar

Pokemon Go Hysteria Again Highlights How Media Is Happy To Be Gullible And Wrong -- If It Means More Ad Eyeballs

from the First!-(and-wrong) dept

If you spend any time online, you've by now noticed that the internet this week belched forth a tidal wave of incessant chatter over Pokemon Go, Nintendo's new augmented reality game involving scrambling around real-world locations to "catch" collectible, virtual beasts with your phone. The game is by any standard a smashing success, boosting Nintendo's market cap by an estimated $9 billion in two days with the app rocketing to the top of both major app stores. The phenomenon is, frankly, pretty amazing: As with any massive phenomenon involving tech many people don't really understand (augmented reality in this case), the news wires immediately lit up with all manner of hysteria over the game's impact on the real world, with much of this impact wholly imagined as sites rushed to pursue search trends and ad eyeballs. The media being, well, the media, one hoax website was able to get countless news outlets to parrot all manner of fake stories about Pokemon Go, from claims that brothers were killing brothers to reports that major traffic accidents were being caused by players running out into the middle of traffic to collect creatures that technically don't exist.

An ouroboros of phantoms chasing phantoms.

The media also stumbled all over itself to pounce on claims that the Pokemon Go app was a privacy nightmare, busily reading your e-mail and digging through an ocean of personal data that would any second now be in the hands of nefarious hackers. Most of these reports had to be subsequently walked back with updates after analysts actually bothered to study the app and reporters started (gasp) actually asking questions about just what the app was really doing:

"But in a call with Gizmodo, Reeve backtracked his claims, saying he wasn’t “100 percent sure” his blog post was true. On the call, Reeve also admitted that he had never built an application that uses Google account permissions, and had never tested the claims he makes in the post.

Cybersecurity expert and CEO of Trail of Bits Dan Guido has also cast serious doubt on Reeve’s claim, saying Google tech support told him “full account access” does not mean a third party can read or send or send email, access your files or anything else Reeve claimed. It means Niantic can only read biographical information like email address and phone number."

While the app did appear to be asking for broader Google account permissions than was necessary (on iOS and less frequently on Android), both Google and app-maker Niantic issued a statement noting this was a bug they're busy fixing and that no personal information had actually been accessed:

"We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user's Google account. However, Pokémon Go only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your user ID and e-mail address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google account information, in line with the data we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon Go or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon Go's permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon Go needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves."

And while a bug that gives broader permissions than necessary is bad, it was far from the "hacker's dream" and "privacy trainwreck" portrayed by dozens upon dozens of different outlets. Meanwhile, most of the data being collected is a fraction of the data being hoovered up and sold daily by your wireless carrier, something routinely forgotten by those laboring under the illusion that privacy in the cellular era still actually exists.

None of this is to say that many of the stories bubbling up amidst the Pokemon Go chaos aren't incredibly interesting. Watching police having to remind players that the laws of the state (and of reality) still apply while playing the game has proven pretty fascinating. Interesting too are conversations about whether African Americans and Muslim Americans will have a decidedly different and potentially unpleasant experience playing the game in the land of shoot first, think later law enforcement. But the most interesting story remains the meta narrative of a press so focused on profitability and being first that it couldn't give a flying Aerodactyl about actually being right.

Filed Under: augmented reality, journalism, pokemon, pokemon go

DailyDirt: Do You See What I See?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The stereotype of a nerd wearing glasses is deeply set into many cultures. But it might not be too long before it's not just "nerds" wearing glasses. More people (nerds and jocks alike) are staring at screens and need corrective eyewear. Treatments like LASIK could become more popular -- or people could start wearing smartglasses for augmented reality and a clearer view of the world. Even if you have 20/20 vision now, almost everyone seems to get presbyopia, so count yourself lucky if you're not reading this with corrective lenses.

• By 2050, half the world's population could be myopic -- if current trends continue. About 40% of the US population is nearsighted, and about 28% of the world has myopia. There could be environmental conditions to avoid -- maybe going outdoors more will help -- and we could reduce myopia for future generations. [url]
• Smarter displays could adapt to a user's imperfect vision -- so a person wouldn't need to put on reading glasses to view a tablet screen. Vision correcting software under development can already correct for some myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism and a few other vision problems. [url]
• Augmented reality eyewear could help farsighted people -- when the tech gets smaller, thinner, higher resolution... and less obtrusive to wear. Eyewear displays could also help with a bunch of different vision problems, but it might take a while before the reputation of "glassholes" have worn off. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ar, astigmatism, augmented reality, corrective lenses, eyewear, farsightedness, glassholes, hyperopia, lasik, myopia, nearsightedness, presbyopia, smart displays, smartglasses, vision

DailyDirt: Fooling Your Senses

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Visual illusions can be fun to observe, and there are countless examples that trick human perception into seeing things that aren't real. However, other senses can also be fooled. As computer interfaces try to engage more senses (eg. touch, spatial awareness, etc), there may be interesting applications for tricking human perception for virtual reality environments. We may also just learn more about how our brains work. Here are just a few illusions that might seem creepy or cool, depending on your point of view.

• The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is a trick that fools your brain into thinking that a fake rubber hand is actually your own hand -- causing the person to recoil if the rubber hand is attacked or threatened. You can re-create this illusion yourself at home -- if you have a realistic-looking rubber hand just lying around. [url]
• An interactive project creates a 15-minute simulation of what it might feel like to have Parkinson's disease. Using a combination of video and a haptic feedback glove, this augmented reality setup expands on the Rubber Hand Illusion to trick a person into feeling involuntary hand tremors. [url]
• For many years, some people have reported mysterious or supernatural feelings of a ghost-like presence, and oftentimes these experiences are accompanied by medical conditions such as epilepsy, stroke or other neurological disorder. Researchers studying this strange brain illusion have developed a robot that can induce the feeling in healthy people, and this experimental device could make it easier to study this "phantom presence" phenomenon. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: augmented reality, brain, haptics, illusions, perception, rhi, rubber hand illusion, senses, simulation, virtual reality