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A retired Penn professor has been blocking Uber Eats robots for months. This week, she got arrested for it (www.phillyvoice.com)

submitted 18 hours ago by UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107

Police confirmed they had responded to a report of "criminal mischief involving a robot" on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored "multiple commands" to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.

Uber declined to comment.

Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she's doing.

"It allows me to talk to people about what's going on," she said. "It's always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it's good to have those kinds of conversations in public space."

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Anyone trying to navigate that section of the sidewalk.

It's still bullshit, and it's still a first amendment issue as it is a form of protest.

But standing somewhere, blocking a public space is obstructing the flow of traffic, and meets the standard. Being arrested is part and parcel of protest because legal challenges form precedent. Sometimes you want to be arrested for both visibility and that opportunity to challenge a law, or otherwise shift things.

Blocking the robot isn't the same as blocking a human. But blocking robot did block other humans. They had to navigate around it. Rubbernecking is inevitable. You've got the people interested in what she's doing and why standing there too. In terms of whether or not she violated that law, there's zero doubt she did.

And that's part of the process of changing that law, hopefully

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 1 minute ago

Okay, but define standing there, and define public space, and define blocking.

Is standing in a public space for 10 minutes blocking?

What if you're standing in a line? What if you're standing, looking at a parking meter? Perhaps you're waiting for the walk sign on the road, and you're standing on the edge of the sidewalk?

Is there now a large list of exceptions? Does that mean standing in a public space where your activity is not part of the list of exceptions means you are now obstructing it?

What if you're standing in a public space, but you're a worker and are actually tasked with working on that public space? Technically, you are standing in a public space, so you are blocking it, no?

Is there some temporal element to this? If not, then are you technically blocking a public space simply by existing in that public space? If at any point you are in that public space, you are not actively moving out of that public space?

So on and so forth. This can continue forever.

The implications of something like that are pretty far-reaching, and the ambiguities are great.