Who Owns Your Address in AR? Probably Not You. (protocol.com) 65
One day, we will all don AR glasses, capable of serving up information geospatially tied to every house and place in our neighborhoods. But who will own and control these spatial AR layers? From a report: It's the stuff of nightmares: The other day, I found my property occupied by a stranger, who was renting it out, Airbnb style. The good news: I'm OK. I wasn't actually evicted from my own home -- at least not in this world. Someone had acquired my property in Upland, a blockchain-powered game that allows people to buy, develop, rent out and sell virtual land parcels based on real-world property borders. It's a bit like Monopoly, played on top of Google Maps, with virtual land speculation happening on a gamified version of the real world. With bright and colorful imagery, and a goofy-looking llama as a mascot, Upland emphasizes that it's all fun and games. That's true for its economy as well, as most of its in-game transactions have little to no monetary value in the real world. The person who bought my property currently makes the equivalent of 4 cents a month in Upland's in-game currency by renting it out to other players.
However, Upland has big ambitions, which include eventually expanding into AR, and providing its data via APIs to third-party developers who may one day be able to build their own game and nongame applications with it. And the company is not alone: A small but growing number of startups and crypto initiatives have begun selling and renting out AR spaces tied to real-world addresses. One day, these efforts could be key to telling your smart glasses which information to display as you look at a famous landmark, or even your neighbor's home. This brings up a ton of questions: Who should have the rights to an AR layer tied to a physical address? What does it mean that these AR properties are being divided up among early adopters before most people even know they exist? Will we see the same issues that have plagued real world real estate, including gentrification and displacement, replicated in AR?
However, Upland has big ambitions, which include eventually expanding into AR, and providing its data via APIs to third-party developers who may one day be able to build their own game and nongame applications with it. And the company is not alone: A small but growing number of startups and crypto initiatives have begun selling and renting out AR spaces tied to real-world addresses. One day, these efforts could be key to telling your smart glasses which information to display as you look at a famous landmark, or even your neighbor's home. This brings up a ton of questions: Who should have the rights to an AR layer tied to a physical address? What does it mean that these AR properties are being divided up among early adopters before most people even know they exist? Will we see the same issues that have plagued real world real estate, including gentrification and displacement, replicated in AR?
What? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: What? (Score:3, Funny)
It's a slashvertisment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad... (Score:2, Informative)
On a more serious note, some of these /. "editors" are simply too cognitively-challenged to even understand WTF they're typing.
Re: (Score:2)
Typing? You give them too much credit. I'm pretty sure they just copy-paste for the most part. And then have a gibberish generator put the tiny extra blurbs on for them.
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Funny)
I once owned a hotel on Park Avenue in Monopoly. Surprisingly, this did not entitle me to a free hotel room in real life New York City. Heck, one time in Risk I owned all of North America. Same thing, no one there recognized my sovereignty. Total rip off.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That's too bad. It sounds like a total nightmare. Sorry you had to go through that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure I do - I bought an NFT of my house. That'll keep 'em out of it.
Seriously? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Similar to email names and website addresses (Score:2)
This is similar to the way the rest of the internet had done it, yes.
The username name goes the first person to register that username, the email address goes to the first person to claim the email address; the domain name goes to the first person to register the domain name.
We even have a name for it: cybersquatting.
So, same for VR, I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Except this is more like creating your own domain registry with its own root servers. Sure, people can squat all day - but it literally doesn't matter if everyone else is using a different domain registry.
Re: (Score:2)
What in the world would make anybody think everybody will have their own registry for VR?
It will be corporate.
Re:Similar to email names and website addresses (Score:4, Insightful)
What in the world would make anybody think everybody will have their own registry for VR?
It will be corporate.
This! Is! Slashdot!
*punts Geoffrey down a well*
I run my own cloud services on my own NAS, my own NAS backup, my own mail server, my own web servers, my own DLNA servers, my own SSH servers, my own local home automation server. Even my own FTP server is still kicking around if I really need to enable it again. When the time comes to run my own AR server, I'll do that too, along with the public access side of the WiFi 9 signal required to pump it into the eyes of passers-by. It will be cheap, it will be open source, and it will run on commodity hardware. We'll see to it. And it'll look like crap for at least the first decade, but what can you expect from programmer art.
Re: Similar to email names and website addresses (Score:3)
Re:Similar to email names and website addresses (Score:4, Insightful)
There are already multiple AR worlds that map to the real world (Pokemon Go is probably the most popular). There's no reason to think that any single corporation's or even personal AR world will be the definitive one.
Re: (Score:3)
Look at crypto. Any time someone tries to be "THE" authority for anything on the Internet - chat, currency, anything - someone else comes along to create a clone. Assuming that is something sort of catches on and they'll remain the only one would be far from the usual.
Maybe domain registry was too harsh, but it's very reminiscent of the newer TLDs. Their main source of revenue is convincing companies they have to buy their name on every TLD to protect their trademarks.
Let me guess! (Score:2)
AR address. Obvious scandal. Is it the Whitewater Development Corporation?
Wait. What millennium is this again?
Er (Score:2)
Will we see the same issues that have plagued real world real estate, including gentrification and displacement, replicated in AR?
You mean will people buy and sell stuff? And will people with more money get more stuff and drive up prices? Yeah.
If it ends up turning into anything important, however, it will likely end up like domain names - you will get to claim "your" thing if you really want to.
Doxxing (Score:2)
Child Sex Trafficking (Score:4, Insightful)
When illegal activities are added to my/your address in VR, is that a problem?
How long before a law enforcement entity gets a warrant based on VR info for real world visit?
How will search engines tell the difference between real world info, VR info, and internet-info, or Onion-info?
Re: (Score:2)
Information about who lives at a house is often public info. You've already been doxxed.
Oh, Good Lord (Score:5, Insightful)
The cyberbros are hell-bent on trying to waste our time with their trivial little sideshows.
Come on - cyber-squatting on fake property is the "stuff of nightmares"? Oh, but it's not just AR - it's blockchain-based AR. That's totally different...
Re: (Score:2)
The cyberbros are hell-bent on trying to waste our time with their trivial little sideshows.
Come on - cyber-squatting on fake property is the "stuff of nightmares"? Oh, but it's not just AR - it's blockchain-based AR. That's totally different...
But wait until you see the NFT I made of a screen shot I took of your house inside Upland. It's going to make me a fortune.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope the house in Upland isn't as messy as my real-world house currently is...
Question is what information do YOU get to see (Score:3)
Re: Question is what information do YOU get to see (Score:1)
Crap. Planning dinner is HARD.
If this bothers you . . . (Score:2)
If you're worried about someone else "owning" a plot of land that corresponds to your place in the real world , . ,
GET A LIFE!!!
sounds about right (Score:5, Funny)
What did you do about it? (Score:5, Funny)
Who owns all these Pokemon? (Score:4, Informative)
Who owns all the Pokemon wandering around my house in AR? I am presumably allowed to trap them; why can't I sell their virtual pelts and meat?
What happens if I spoof my GPS location and put your AR layers on my own property? Do they become mine?
OP is having an existential crisis of his own making. These questions are absolutely idiotic.
Re: (Score:2)
Who owns all the Pokemon wandering around my house in AR? I am presumably allowed to trap them; why can't I sell their virtual pelts and meat?
The local kids trapped out all the wild Pokemon around here years ago. They're basically extinct now. Wretched varmints.
The kids, not the Pokemon. Pokemon just want to be free!
Re: (Score:2)
In Japan it was discovered that an area around one of the oldest, most important Shinto shrines had an abundance of Pokemon. The shrine owners ended up asking people not to go there looking for them, and not to catch them. Despite them just being virtual animals in a virtual world, the priests felt that it was wrong to do it anyway.
You could just... (Score:2)
...like...not put on the glasses and watch.
Right?
Ship has sailed (Score:2)
I don't own my home address either (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't sell rights to my address independently of my home. Also if I don't pay my mortgage the bank takes my home. If I have paid off my home and stop paying my property taxes, the county will take my home and sell it for me, keeping their cut plus fines.
The legality and even society's very concept of ownership varies greatly when you step beyond the a simple example of owning the shirt on your back.
Re: (Score:3)
Careful, there are jurisdictions that seize your home, sell it to pay off debts, then keep the excess. Even
Re: (Score:2)
We do it honestly here. If you have (say) a £200 annual car tax charge overdue and don't pay it within so many weeks of the vehicle being seized, then it gets crushed - regardless of it's resale value.
Then you still have the unpaid par tax arrears and storage and crushing fees to pay. If there is any value to the post-crushing car (unlikely, because
Re: (Score:1)
I can't sell rights to my address independently of my home.
Pretty sure it is even more restrictive than that.
It is the city/municipality that assigns addresses, so this could vary by city.
Assigned addresses are first and foremost used to refer to a tax lots on the property, not the buildings.
When my neighbor remodeled their garage into a studio house (an in-law thing), they requested another address be assigned. Here they assign them outward from a central point in the center of the city.
Ultimately the studio was closer to that point, and was assigned their old
That's an ad (Score:2)
Please shove your obscure AR game where the sun never shines. You could have picked any number of long established outfits that do the same. Many businesses are inundated with requests to claim their own business name in some directory. Uncounted "review" sites help themselves to the top of the search result pages for any business they can find. Delivery services just open web shops in the name of your business without even asking. Pokemon Go puts 3D figments of the imagination in your front yard and turns
state / country / city / etc land rights? (Score:2)
With an street address there is government things.
and if they try to claim government land?
tribal land?
will claim jumping laws apply to this? (Score:2)
will claim jumping laws apply to this?
Re: (Score:1)
the vague concept of "metaverse providers" would have to be officially recognized as a "new frontier" by actual government agencies rather than just some marketing drones. since "being secure in our personal papers and effects" has so far not traversed the law effectively to include online data, i wouldn't hold your breath
The Nature Of Reality (Score:2)
This gives new meaning to the phrase "You are living in a simulation".
Who has rights to other people's dreams; and recursively, who owns your ensuing "nightmare"? One thing is for sure, if you're paying attention to this kind of AR layer, you have definitely been P0wned!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to grilling the Nidoran I found out back last night.
I sense people need to read Neal Stephenson "FALL" (Score:2)
AR (Score:1)
Same thing as "naming stars" (Score:4, Insightful)
There are companies that maintain databases of stars, where they offer naming rights for things for $10. And nobody recognises those databases (there are a lot of them). Anyone can do that. Same idea.
Oh no... (Score:2)
Just like how when a student made a WAD of our school for Doom and the school lost their rights to itself as a result.
Oh wait, no, because while based on the real world, it's just a game. I could make a Downland, SideLand, and really an infinite number of reality-inspired environments and it has no hint of meaning for the real world.
faulty premise much? (Score:3)
"One day, we will all don AR glasses." Uhh, no -- speak for yourself nerd.
As a famous kernel dev once said:
"We're a generation of men raised by technology. I'm wondering if another tech gadget is really the answer we need."
I've got bigger problems (Score:2)
I've got bigger problems. Someone keeps buzzing my house in Flight Simulator and won't stop doing it.
Who cares? (Score:2)
no we wonâ(TM)t (Score:2)
one day we will all don AR glasses (Score:1)
observers paradox - strange word, just like metaverse meant something completely different. If you live three doors down from disneyland with a w
False scarcity (Score:2)
We won't have one metaverse, we'll have thousands, each with their own mapping of VR to reality.
The only correct way to do a 1:1 mapping is to reserve every VR address for the RW owner of that address, but I don't see that happening because the alternatives are more profitable.
The solution is built right in (Score:2)
Company a and b sells the same land. (Score:1)