Axon says cops are asking it to make its automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) look different from Flock cameras because Flock vandalism has become so widespread, according to comments Axon’s CEO made in a now deleted webinar.

The comments highlight how Axon is trying to take advantage of sustained opposition against Flock's license plate cameras, with one law enforcement customer suggesting a camera redesign would “help with the optics while we batten down the hatches” as the backlash spreads.

As 404 Media has reported, some towns and cities are switching from Flock to Axon’s cameras after cops did lookups for ICE in Flock, tracked a woman who self-administered an abortion, and have repeatedly abused their access to stalk ex-spouses. ALPRs constantly scan the license plate, brand, model, and other identifying features of all vehicles that drive past the camera and then make this timestamped log of activity searchable by law enforcement without a warrant.

In an August 26 webinar that was hosted on Axon’s official Vimeo page called “From backlash to trust,” Axon Chief Customer Officer Mike Wagers took a question from the remote audience and asked, “is there any talk — and there has been talk — to redesign Outpost, our fixed ALPR camera, to not look exactly like a Flock camera?”

“We are looking at [...] do we change the general shape,” Rick Smith, Axon’s CEO, replied.

At another point in the webinar, Smith brought up Axon’s Lightpost product, which is an ALPR and AI-powered camera that attaches to an existing streetlight. “Frankly, we’ve had a lot of customers saying, hey, we’d like something that looks different because there is all this blowback. ​​It's harder to vandalize because it's up higher,” he said.

Smith also said, “We’ve had some people say they’d like to see us make just a different camera, because our ALPR camera looks like an ALPR camera.” Another idea Smith brought up, pending customer feedback, is to go in the other direction and make ALPRs more explicit, with signs showing where they are located and a description of the city’s ALPR policies. 

MegaraMedia, a YouTuber, downloaded a copy of the webinar before it was removed and shared it with 404 Media.

During the webinar, Axon asked its law enforcement customers to chime in with questions and answer a customer survey. 404 Media scanned the QR code displayed during the webinar to view those questions. One, which appears to be the one Wagers paraphrased, read, “Is there any talk to redesign the Outpost to not look exactly like the Flock camera — I think it will help agencies with the optics while we batten down the hatches…”

Axon did not respond to a request for comment.

Around the country people have destroyed Flock cameras, including tearing them down, backing trucks into them, or spray painting over their lenses. Authorities have arrested and charged multiple people in connection with that vandalism. In one case, a cop made a fake, 3D-printed Flock camera to essentially act as bait; authorities then charged a man who broke the fake camera with three felonies.

One explicit reason some cities have ditched Flock for Axon is Flock’s national network. This allows a cop on one side of the country to search cameras not only in their own jurisdiction or state, but in another state entirely. When reporting on how local cops were performing Flock lookups for ICE, 404 Media found that some police departments did not know or understand their cameras were accessible by other agencies.

Smith said of the backlash against Flock and ALPR more generally: “This has been a hell of a storm.”

In a further fudging of the concept of online ownership, Sony Interactive Entertainment is disputing player ownership of its games, according to a legal filing it submitted to California’s Northern District Court on August 21. This follows a suit brought against Sony in June by four PlayStation Store customers who claim that the company doesn’t clarify the difference between buying a license to a game and owning it outright, as Olds once did when games came in lacquered polycarbonate plastic discs and cartridges that one could fling across the room in a pique of Game Over failure—or just sell them for money, if one was so inclined. 

As reported by former Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo on his Game File Substack, Sony’s response to the suit asserts that Section 1 of its Homeric Software Product Licensing Agreement explains that “the Software is licensed [,] not sold.”

To justify this logic, Sony further asserts that one cannot “own” a digital copy of a game because, as it’s a digital file rather than physical media (which is currently being phased out by game companies like SIE), it cannot be possessed by any one individual. “In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ‘ownership’ of a digital game,” Sony claims. “Were that the case, then [the plaintiff] would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026, for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after [the other plaintiff] had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because [they], not Sony, would have owned it then.” 

This digital-game reality is a quantum leap from the days when players could borrow their buddy’s Dark Souls disc after they’d chucked their own into traffic after getting their ass handed to them by Manus, Father of the Abyss, for the umpteenth time. Obviously, there were many physical copies of that game going around, as opposed to the only digital copy of Resident Evil Requiem that’s still somehow available to license on the PlayStation Store.

Indeed, Sony’s argument—that gamers don’t actually own shit when they hit “Buy Now” and “Complete Purchase” on the PlayStation Store, because those are words and words are wind—comes after the company recently emailed PlayStation account users to tap on their onerous Terms Of Service agreement. It reads, in part: “[In] addition to licenses of Virtual Content being subject to purchase and cancelation [sic] terms and conditions of the storefront/vendor, the availability of Virtual Content is not guaranteed, prices are subject to change, and order sizes may be limited without prior notice to you.” Here’s a fun part: “Purchases of Virtual Content licenses may be non-refundable.”