*Nice to see some informed speculation on the dazzling host of lawsuits and innovative criminal charges that are waiting somewhere over the horizon of this emergent industry.
via @metaioUS
http://www.wassom.com/category/augmented-reality
(...)
"We don’t need to wait for mainstream AR gaming to see how courts might apportion liability for game-related injuries. Consider the 2000 decision of the Washington Court of Appeals in Anderson v. American Restaurant Group. Plaintiff Anderson “suffered injuries when she slipped and fell while running across the bathroom floor at the Black Angus restaurant in Bellevue to retrieve a piece of toilet paper for a restaurant-sponsored scavenger hunt.” Even though a wet bathroom floor is the type of dangerous condition that one might expect to be obvious, the appeals court reversed the trial court’s judgment in favor of the restaurant. “[A] jury could conclude,” the court explained, “that Black Angus should have expected that patrons darting into the bathroom would not discover or realize the danger of a wet floor because they would be focused elsewhere and in a hurry.”
"In a similar vein–but with much more severe consequences–is the case of Bob Lord. He was an internet entrepeneur and first-time player of “The Game”–a private, invitation-only, immersive role-playing game remarkably similar to the Michael Douglas movie of the same name. As summarized in this Seattle Times article, “The Game” was an annual “adventure scavenger hunt” in which adult players “would scuba dive, rock climb, sing karaoke with a drag queen and fire automatic weapons … decode the Declaration of Independence inside a prison and befriend a white rat named Templeton, whose shivering little body carried a message.”
"The 2002 version of The Game also involved searching for particular GPS coordinates inside “the Argentena Mine complex, a warren of abandoned openings left over from a 1927 silver-mining operation.” Lord had gotten little sleep over the 28 hours before the time he entered the mines. Confused by the Game’s ambiguous directions, he entered the wrong shaft, and fell 30 feet head-first, crushing his vertebrae and becoming a C3 quadriplegic for the rest of his life. When Lord’s family discovered that the Game planners had been warned about mine’s dangers beforehand, Lord sued them, and eventually settled for $10.6 million...."
