Pokemon Go players in July 2016 in Hong Kong.
Even now, almost a year later, Sheldon Wasserman sounds surprised when he describes what went down in Milwaukee’s Lake Park last summer.
“People are beginning to run across the streets, parking is absolutely overloaded, the police are now ticketing, food trucks are showing up,” the Milwaukee County Supervisor remembers. “It was unbelievable. There’s no facilities to go to the bathroom. People are urinating on people’s lawns. You’re finding female napkins and feminine hygiene stuff all over the place.”
The Pokémon Go phenomenon was at its peak.
For months, the pandemonium continued, with gamers spending all day and night in the park along Lake Michigan, chasing after Charizards. Officials asked for cooperation and enforced the rules they could, but the park was still overwhelmed, so Wasserman proposed an ordinance that would regulate and restrict the use of public parks by augmented reality app developers. The law was passed in February by the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors … and followed by a lawsuit filed in late April by a Nevada-based A.R. company named Candy Lab.
“The solution that [Wasserman] picked to solve, what he perceived as a problem, is regulating the publication of content,” Brian Wassom, the attorney representing Candy Lab in the lawsuit, tells Inverse. “And that’s been unlawful ever since we’ve had the First Amendment.”
And so, when the case is heard in court later this month, there will be more at stake than where people engage in late-night hunts for Charizards. The regulation of an entire burgeoning industry, and the interpretation of the Constitution in the digital age, could be impacted by the court’s decision in a case inspired by Pokémon.
,
Source: Inverse