Pokémon Go maker taken to court over players on beaches | Hacker News Reader

Pokémon Go maker taken to court over players on beaches

theguardian.com

25 pointsdustinmoris19 comments

Where does personal responsibility come in to play? Seriously? Why does Niantic need to tell me not to trespass?

I could see this being a problem if pokemon ONLY spawned on these beaches that would be targeted sending of players to restricted zones. I just don't get how it's the Niantic's responsibility to control their users.

Lawsuits like this just bug me, I do recognize that this is what courts are for. AKA filing a law suit when you feel like you've been wronged to get a judgment from a third party. Hopefully the court will not place liability on Niantic because that could set a bad precedent.

You can look at it from many angles. Maybe the game should not try to send players into restricted zones in the first place. The game is designed to lure people into different areas and trying to incentivise someone to break the law and cross a restricted zone could be seen as a legal issue itself. I would compare it to cases like where Google has to remove torrent sites from their search results.

Where does personal responsibility come in to play?

Haven't you been following politics? We are in the 21st century right now. It doesn't. The concept of personal responsibility is being eroded day by day.

Does personal responsibility ever come into play with things like this? In general terms I haven't witnessed a whole lot to suggest individuals are terribly concerned about externalities associated with their actions when there aren't direct consequences. You know, 'the Tragedy of the Commons' and stuff like that.

The custodians of this beach are likely working with limited resources, they gotta do something.

I think there's some twisted analogue to the concept of an attractive nuisance here. Pokemon GO is creating an incentive for more people to goto that beach for something that wouldn't be exclusive to the beach. So people that want to utilize the beach as a beach are being hit by the negative externality created by Pokemon GO players being drawn to the area.

In this scenario it seems like any solution not implemented by Niantic will cost the municipality money/time. Reframed: why should this city have to subsidize Niantic's game?

What's funny is that the American concept around personal responsibility (or lack thereof) is less prevalent in Europe making me think that this is just the most expedient action the Netherlands could identify.

I'm against lawsuits blaming companies for others behaviors in general but this one is a bit more complex in my mind.

I would agree if it was the case that Niantic was targeting this specific beach, but instead it's all beaches because the algorithm distributes Pokemon evenly throughout the world regardless of location (this isn't the actual case but it's still an algorithm that chooses most spawning of Pokemon).

Niantic created a game that incentives people to go to anywhere in the world and get Pokemon. They don't have to go to this beach, and if it's trespassing then it's still an illegal action. Very similar to driving while texting. Is that the driver's fault or the phones fault? What if the phone company could stop alerts if the phone is going over 60 mph?

My spin is Why should Niantic subsidize the players poor choices? Or why should Niantic subsidize the government more than it already does through tax revenue?

In this case, if I were running Niantic, I would remove the game from the country in question. My game is the way it is, if it is illegal to operate in your country that is perfectly fine. Let me know and I'll go somewhere else. That is all assuming one big thing, I can afford to be harsh about this. If so (which Niantic can) then that is probably what I'd do. It's perfectly fine for you to make laws that don't enable games like PokemonGo, and a verdict against Niantic could be interpreted like that. How could I know that I wouldn't be sued again in that country?

Of course Niantic will just black out this beach and problem solved, but hey that's what I'd do.

Edit: I appreciated your answer and perspective though. I just wanted to say thanks for the well thought out reply.

I don't think it's trespassing for the players to be at Kijkduin, just problematic to have people there in those numbers. The players may be making individually-acceptable choices, and it's just the collective behavior that's a problem. It's easy to say that people should have the judgement not to do some individually-harmful thing. It's harder to argue that individuals should have the judgement not to partake in a harmful collective behavior (humans just aren't generally good at considering things like that).

Niantic's algorithms are sending people around in a pattern that is causing damage. Since they've been made aware of that, and it's difficult to blame the individual players, it's reasonable to ask the company itself to make a change. Niantic's the only one in a position to solve the problem quickly and cheaply.

> I just don't get how it's the Niantic's responsibility to control their users.

Clearly Niantic are controlling their users. Those people were not trampling over the beaches before Niantic put pokemon on the beach. All that's being asked is that niantic stop sending hordes of people onto delicate ecosystems.

Where does the personal responsibility of Niantic to the public come into play?

If the normal operations of your business result in a public nuisance, you should adjust them.

If I ran a business where I paid people 5$ for a selfie of them outside-the-boundaries in a national park, it would only be right for the park to ask me to adjust my business practices.

It's well known that people will do stupid things for money, fame, and internet points. It's not responsible of a business to encourage that kind of behavior - especially on a world-wide scale.

But this is more like you are willing to pay $5 for pictures people take of themselves with a tree. There are tons of trees: trees are everywhere. There also happen to be trees outside the boundaries of national parks and on the grounds of military training zones. Do you then need to tell you "you will not be paid if the photo is of a tree you should not have been able to stand next to"? Why are people choosing to get their photos with trees that are in territory that creates a nuisance? (FWIW, I think it is fine to ask Niantic to not put Pokemon there, and I also would hope Niantic satisfies their request; but making there be legal damages over this seems incorrect.)

More like $5 for pictures of a specific kind of tree. It also happens that in a particular area, those trees are only found in restricted areas.

People are trespassing on unmarked parts of the beach because there are rare Pokemon there, that they can't otherwise conveniently get to.

The town has apparently asked Niantic to restrict that area, and it apparently failed to do so. What kind of recourse do they have, now?

>"The town has apparently asked Niantic to restrict that area, and it apparently failed to do so. What kind of recourse do they have, now? "

They could build a wall around the restricted area. I.e. Restrict access. This is them trying to pass off the security/upkeep/maintenance costs onto an external entity that has absolutely no jurisdiction or personal-ownership of the area involved.

What's next, popular blogs about travel being told not to promote certain regions because it makes them too popular? Musicians being told to stop playing because listeners are dancing too-much on grass and damaging the local fauna? Ridiculous scenarios, but personally I would clump them together with the specific one being discussed. We should ban discussion about this topic, too. It's causing people to eat too much high-carb food, and as a consequence, too much deforestation is occurring in 3rd world countries in order to make way for farm-land.

Say 99% of players take the appropriate, personally-responsible actions while playing the game.

You'll still have 1% of a very large population being encouraged to take some problematic action.

While I don't know the specifics, it's even possible that it's not a problem if a small group of people check out the dunes now and then, but it becomes a problem with traffic.

> The Hague authorities said they had been trying to contact Niantic since mid-August but without success. “We had no other choice” but to go to court, they said.

Well, alright then. I've had a lot of luck influencing outcomes by sending legal sounding cease and desist letters from legal sounding domain names I own.

But that was last decade, now I just complain on twitter. Super effective.

`now I just complain on twitter. Super effective.`

I still find twitter the best way to get comcast to lower my bill :D

"The volume of players roaming the beaches in the so-called Pokémon capital of the Netherlands have prompted concern over the potential damage being done to the protected dunes surrounding the area.

The authorities now “want to ban these small virtual animals in protected areas and in the streets from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am,” the municipality said in a statement."

Why not ban visitors in these areas and during these times instead? Is it a matter of managing the volume of people? Why not issue limited quantities of walking permits in these areas? Going after a game maker seems like the wrong approach to addressing the problem.

Why should they set up time restrictions? The pokemon hunters don't care where the game sends them, so instead of putting complex rules into place for something which has functioned for a long time, it would be a lot easier if the game developer just gets asked to exclude this area from the game and then everyone can be equally happy again. Sounds like your approach is wrong to address the problem IMHO.

If I set up a game on your street which attracts 100s of players and you and your neighbors struggle to find a parking on your street and get home then what would you do? Would your solution be to set up complex rules for visitors and parking tickets, or would you just tell the players to go and play somewhere else because they actually don't care if they play on your street or in the park? Sometimes its better so keep it to simple solutions, don't you think so?

Land of the frivolous lawsuits, indeed. I wonder how many there would be if the loser paid the defendant's court costs.

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