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Windows Live and Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could."
quick....uninstall...UNINSTALL!!!
"And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could." Why couldn't they? It's amazing the things they can do with computers these days, you know...
1) This is a project in MS lab that has been kind of limited
2) People don't like to talk about MS making things better
3) Soon yuu will see Google adding this feature as well. THEN, you will read about this and average Joe will tell you how Google innovates and MS catchs up [bg]
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
They don't need to edit anyone out. Just check your Windows EULA - it's in there right after the section concerning rights to your immortal soul.
Beep beep.
It could be useful to see a picture of all the turns when getting directions.
The government doesn't want you to know this, but here's the secret:
When you're outside... people can see you.
If this is really true M$ seems to have no clue as to what to do next. This seems to be a huge $ sink - and something that I just can't see anyone wanting to use.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
Cry me a river dude, what makes you think you have the right not to be photographed in public? What makes you think you have the right to tell people they can't photograph your neighbourhood? This is a non-issue, and street level photography tied to satellite appears to be very useful. I have often looked up places I'm intending to go on Google Earth to get an idea of the geography of the location, now I can use street level photography to get some landmarks too. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already and just hope that Microsoft will be collecting data outside the US too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But since when is "Microsoft spying on people" news?
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
well, this will certainly help stalkers... and I'm on a Mac, crappy M$ anyway...wonder how long it will be before they are sued for violating copyright on various private buildings or other structures like the Chicago Bean
Well, forget it. Microsoft has never been much interested in security issues until after the fact.
If they ever come to my house they get pictures of Penguins and signs that say "Windows sucks".
13. Any legal action is absolutly excluded. (Pi World Ranking List rules)
I was captured at some undisclosed moment by a camera. Someone who looks for me very hard might be able to see that I was in a public area 10 days ago even tough there's no way to search for anyone, very unlikely that they would recognize me, and I could always hide from the truck if I'm really paranoid. A stalker will stalk you. Not use this.
I would suggest then that you don't go out in public. And maybe you should buy up all the land around your neighborhood and make it private. Or maybe you could just wait for Google to show up and do the same thing, then you'd feel ok about it and think about how empowering it will be for you to be able to browse down to "virtual peeping tom" and see what's going on in your house when you're not around.
(BTW people have this same complaint about Google groups: the posted to usenet before the advent of the pervasive web and the idea that some corporation would come along and violate the usual standards of post expiration was abhorrent. But because it's Google and they won't Do No Evil(*), that's ok. Ask any slashdotter.)
* - For some values of evil that are of a nuisance to Google executive and Google's profits.
Because that has to be the most ugly interface I've seen in a long time. Plus, the views are terrible, as are the controls...
on the fair side, it only cost Microsoft a mere $2billion dollars to write so far =)
And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could.
That kind of work is exactly what the 3rd-world "IT" shops excel at. It is a very simple task to describe, and very simple to determine if the work is done correctly. But it is very hard for a computer to do it completely automatically.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They could edit out most of the people, but they really have no obligation to do so.
I just hope nobody's expensive car gets stolen because some thief is scounting local.live.com to see what's in people's drive ways.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
People, as in the the people near you you can also see. Not people, as in billions of people across the earth.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
We know where you live and we can see that pitiful lock on your front door. Get serious about security, indeed. :/
And it was closed down after about a year.
e ets/2100-1032_3-5833916.html
http://news.com.com/Amazon+A9+takes+it+to+the+str
http://maps.a9.com/
So it's not 'new'. I think part of the problem is that A9 didn't have their own maps feed.
I worked for a company that photographed many buildings on the north side of chicago. We used it so that we could pull up photos of apartment buildings when condos went up for sale -- we could put ads online and in print without having to send a photographer out for a new photo.
It's been years since I looked at it, but I used to use a web site that would show you pictures of buildings in paris -- I think it was a yellow pages type site. I had a reservation in a hotel, and used the web site to find out what my hotel looked like, both so I could decide about whether or not to stay there, and also so I'd be able to recognize it when I was walking through the streets. You could look at any specific building in town, and move up and down the street to see what was around it.
I'm inclined to agree with the person who pointed out that people can see things that are outside anyway. At least this takes that public information and puts it into a usable form. If they want to put trucks in the street to take these photos, and if they want to put the fruit of that labor up on the web, more power to them.
I just hope that their web app works with firefox and linux.
Long exposures (>60 seconds) will remove most moving objects (cars, trucks, people).
Or with computers, a series of short digital exposures which only keep the content "common" between the frames (moving objects will be in different parts of subsequent frames).
This is a fairly cool app but I wonder, given the amount of money involved in collecting all that data, why they didn't use gyrostabiliized cameras for the side views. It's weird seing buildings tipping sideways. Obviously another cost-cutting method was using front and rear cameras. But this leaves you "driving" toward oncoming traffic half the time. Still, once it becomes advanced enough and the speed-issues are solved, this could be a useful app.
Imagine, say, a zillow-hybrid. A homebuyer could select the items to put on the dash and then drive around neighborhoods while the "instruments" show the average property values, crime rates, tax rates, income levels, school performance, etc.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Stay inside.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
was a time when only people who were near you could talk to you too. isn't modern technology great?
How we know is more important than what we know.
They use black helicopters.
"Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around."
And you didn't call the cops?
Seriously.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
This could be fun, let's all follow the cars around wearing tops with red and white stripes and a strange hat. We can then have one big game of 'Where's Wally. :-)
I've used the street-level photos in A9 for at least the last year or so, and it's proven to be really useful in finding a new place. I think it might only be photos of blocks with businesses on them, but since I live in a mixed commercial-residential area, my house is in there already. No stalkers so far!
So, when do sightseeing blogs start to pop up, pointing out the rare frame where somebody is caught sunbathing nude?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Say honey, how come Dave's truck is parked in our driveway?
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Well, it works in Firefox, so chances are it works on a Mac after all, just not on Safari, if that was the one you had problems with.
And yes, the people captured seem to actually be left in.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
When they scaled back a lot of their other services.
The State of California, for one, has been filming at street level for the last decade. Shots are used for court cases, reconstruction of roads when wiped out by mudslide, etc. What...you've never taken a photo in your neighborhood and posted it on the 'net?
The comment about it happening around the world is most likely crap... MS is already in enough trouble without sticking their neck in yet another noose.
. . . screw the privacy issue. This is kewl.
Somewhere your street is on a map! Eeeep!
Your house is visible from the street! Eeep!
Your mailbox is visible from the street! It has a number on it! People will know how to send you meil! Eeep!
A real-estate agent somewhere once took a picture of your house! THEY KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!
And you're in the phone book! Strangers can call you! Eeep!
There's a picture somewhere of you in a high school yearbook! Your classmates can point at you and laugh! Eeep!
And because this is a Microsoft project - it ABSOLUTELY MUST be evil! Eeepp!
OH DEAR GOD, TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO EAT YOUR CHILDREN. ALIVE. WITH BBQ SAUCE. AND ONIONS. MMMM ONIONS!!!!!11oneone eleven.
In conclusion: Get over yourself, you whiny bitch. Quit projecting worst-case disaster scenarios onto yourself. Unplug your television, stop watching sensationalist news programs ("Tonight: Bananas - a potential deathtrap hiding in YOUR fridge? Could you be in DANGER?") The boogymen really aren't out to get you.
Understand that most crime is a crime of opportunity - like walking past your house on their regular schedule and seeing that you've left the front door open. Or leaving the box for your new DVD player on the kerb, proudly advertising that you've got a bunch of shiny new stuff. Almost nobody does research for their crimes. Although if they do to the point of looking your home up on the internet - the chances are that (1) you already know them and (2) you've got bigger problems with organized crime (and they're likely to drive by your place to do recon in person), the internet is just an additional information source.
I think that's rather cool to be honest.
We've got satellite, we've got birds eye now from Live Local, and I reckon that the street level stuff is awesome - just the thing for driving directions. Imagine being able to send someone a bunch of shots showing where turnings are, landmarks etc. Neat stuff
While I can understand the privacy aspects concern some, I was under the impression that when you're in public, you can pretty much be photographed by anyone regardless. Ok, so this is Microsoft, but how many times do we show up in the background on people's holiday snaps and videos, on the news? When Google Earth appeared, how many people we zooming right in to see if they could make themselves out in their gardens?
So what's the deal with you appearing anonymously on a sidewalk in some road mapping software - it just means that you were in a certain place at an undetermined time? How do you see that being abused? Is it a general feeling towards all ground-scale mapping (Ordanence Survey in the UK have been doing this for years), or just anti-MS?
Either way, I have to say that I like the results and hopefully something like this will appear globally soon, avec or sans people...
The average North American is captured 26 times every day by a surveillance camera, whether operated by a business or government. In London, the rate is far higher given the huge amount of cameras. And yet people demand even more cameras in some misguided belief it makes them safer. So are you upset by the fact that Microsoft may have your image (or an image of a house) or the principle in general? Me thinks its more the former.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
You're in "public." That term means that other people can take photos of you. Cope with it.
Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong here, not by any stretch of the imagination. Besides, it's not like you can search-by-face or something ridiculous like that... what information are you afraid will get out?
Comment of the year
So do you suffer from Repetitive Brain Injury or what?
That's just the cover story, the truth is that they will register copyright on every image that they take of all the houses and building and will charge a licence fee if anyone takes, or already has, a photo of those.
If you go to google maps, and choose the satellite view, and go to my road, you can totally see my car in my driveway!!!
I mean, how dare they?! Taking a photo of something in a public place*, right out in the open, then putting it on the web! I should sue!!!
(* Note to pedants - no, my driveway isn't public, but it's open to the street and plainly visible from the pavement)
Privacy concerns? Don't make me laugh. If they start sending people into private buildings with cameras, get back to me. In the meantime, kdawson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for allowing such a spin to be put on this story.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The real question is, have you been able to see yourself yet in the preview web site? That would be a real trip!
:watches thinkgeek t-shirt sales fly through the roof:
Obviously because you saw something "strange", terrorists must have been involved. They were going to burn, forcibly cross-dress, rape and kill all of you - possibly not in that order. So best to call the military police, just to be safe.
They'll cordon off the entire block, blanket the area with teargas, taser all humans, shoot any pets, arrest the survivors and disappear a select few to 'Gitmo. But that'll be okay - because it'll make you "feel safe" when you see something unusual.
Because, heaven forbid - you don't actually want to talk to anyone strange. That would be, like, negotiating with terrorists - which makes you a traitor! And you're not a traitor.. are you? Remember kids, "safety" first! We don't want to let Yippie-Al-Kie-Aye-Da win this war of terror!
I used to work in the public safety industry and at trade shows at least five years ago companies started showing up, hawking exactly this. The sales pitch was that they'd drive these vans around to take street-level photos of the city so the fire or police departments could have these views when dispatching to a call. Kind of silly use of the technology back then, not sure how successful the companies were.
It seems maybe these companies might have sold Microsoft on the idea. Perhaps there were a whole bunch of data capture vans and no customer base. In the age of Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth maybe spending money collecting these images are worthwhile. Or maybe just a waste of Microsoft's money.
A3 (Amazon's search engine) has had street level photographs for a couple of years now. It is possible to enter an address by zip code and then see the picture of that address as it looks from the side of moving vehicle. It's interesting and useful that MS might also do it, but it isn't new or original.
Amazon had something very similiar in A9 Maps. You could view either side of most streets in major cities. They also had a program where you would sign up and, given the name of a business and a few pictures, pick one out that best represented the storefront. You could see where they were going with this.
However, I just checked on it and it's discontinued. This is strange, considering the immense amount of effort this must have taken. I wonder if Microsoft didn't buy their data? If not, someone must have a use for it, as a Windows Live competitor if nothing else.
Firefox worked fine for me on a Mac.
There's gonna be some serious mooning goin' on...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
No, he probably just forgot a comma.
"People, as in the people near you, you can also see."
Note the comma after the first instance of 'you'.
The wii is the revolution, comrade!
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but when you're wandering around outdoors I'm pretty sure you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Unless they figure out a way to drive those vans into our restrooms, I don't see it as a huge problem.
That being said, I think it's a gimmicky piece of crap, and honestly I can't foresee it being useful for anything Google Earth can't already do better. Yes, yes, I know, that makes me sound like a Google fanboy. But to me, it really looks like Microsoft is trying to steal mindshare much more than actually provide something worthwhile.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
If you look in store windows (SW corner of 3rd and Stewart, for example) you can see the reflection of the van. Just looks like your average suspicious white van.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
They have every right to take pictures along the road. Its the law as long as they aren't on any private roads. Plus, I can't see any problems between this and google earth. Google Earth has done the same thing. http://newsads.blogspot.com/2006/09/google-earth-s hows-topless-sunbather.html
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Whaaa? I hear about this on the news over a week ago, and even saw a demo of the software navigating a few of the largest cities... Remember, this is mainstream, national, news, where it takes them 6 months to mention new computer viruses.
This nefarious activity you're so concerned about is the worst-kept secret EVER.
A quick search yeilds more results than you could possibly read through: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Micros
Then cover it with a tarp, cut off all public streets going in and out, and perform background checks of everybody just to be sure...
Short of that, you're out of luck. When the Microsoft guy jumps over your fence to take pictures of your pool, THEN you might have something...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yes, but except for certain special cases like news reporting on events of public interest, they can't take pictures in which you are recognizable and use them for commercial purposes without your express consent. Legal rights to "privacy" don't only apply to rights to prevent people from seeing you in the first instance.
This will be incorporated into a game like GTA: Hicksville, where you can drive around the city breaking into houses, malls, banks that all have floor plans accurate to the inch. Being able to simulate bank heists, getaways, etc, with this information it will be so much easier to plan crime.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Try using something other than Safari. Works perfectly fine on Linux using Firefox.
Don't click!
It is a cool idea, but if its going to be anything like google earth and be a worldwide product why the hell would i want people from the otherside of the world looken at my house. "Oh look theres a nice plasma screen in the window" and it someone sitting at there home in Australia looken at a house in America. Time will tell what this will be like i guess. But gezus how much detail can you put into a map without breaching someones privacy in there own home... Maybe they will incorporate it down the track into Windows 'Eat my computer alive' Vista.
NOT NEW: This has already been done in many areas by Microsoft, Amazon, and others.
PRIVACY PROTECTIONS: There are already computerized ways to blur faces and automobile license plates.
NO PRIVACY INTEREST: It really doesn't pose a privacy threat, because they are only capturing images that are already visible from the public right-of-way. Anyway can drive by and see the front of your house--there is no privacy there at all. So what does it matter if they drive by in their car or virtually on the web?
COUNTERVAILING INTEREST: This has the potential to be really useful. Online maps are helpful for getting directions, but it is even more helpful to see the route as you have to drive it. It'll make it much easier to find our way. In the future, it may help emergency responders reach emergencies faster--potentially saving lives. With Web 2.0 technologies, a phonebook listing of a business can show a picture of its storefront. This has the potential to be really cool and useful!
if they come through my neighborhood, I'm gonna moon em so they have to edit me out :P I don't want people all around the world looking at me getting the mail shirtless (yes I am that lazy despite it being 9 degrees out), my neighbors think that's weird enough. They actually can't film in your town AT ALL without a permit for that sort of thing so call the cops on em.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Um, no. If you're on a public street, it's fair game. What you're thinking of only applies to using someone's likeness or celebrity without consent to imply that a specific person is endorsing a product. You don't think that every local news station in the US has to compensate people milling about in the background of their news video, do you? If you're on public property you can take whatever pictures you want and commercialize them in nearly any fashion.
As has been covered extensively here, photographing people in public is not a big deal -- if you can see it legally, you can publish a picture of what you saw, within some limits. Does anybody believe that the paparazzi got a release for all the Paris Hilton stone-cold drunk pictures that prove she doesn't wear underwear?
The more interesting question for me is what happens when they take a picture of ART, or something that is the proper subject matter of copyright. If I recall correctly, there was a large silver blob sculpture in St. Louis which the police were preventing from being photographed. Absent fair use, taking a picture of a prominent piece of public art infringes the copyright in that work. (By statute in the U.S., architectural works may be photographed without any problem.)
Shoot the damned cameras! One needs privacy god damned it! p.s. damn is a verb (not a f**k word)
sex is better than war!
So its ok for Google to do it but not Microsoft.
Riiiiight....
They better be careful what streets they drive down or they may get a shot of multiple full moons with little penguins painted on them...
The exceptions are bigger than you think. You're probably already photographed on the Internet on someone's birthday Flikr album from a restaurant, or maybe you're one of thousands of people filmed on open street scenes for motion pictures. They can use material which includes your likeness for any purpose, including commercial ones, so long as your likeness isn't part of that purpose.
If I'm filming a tree lighting ceremony for the holidays and your face drifts into the frame, too bad for you. That video is still going in the film, because I have no idea who you are and your inclusion isn't even tangentially related to what I'm doing. Privacy laws only protect exploitation, not inclusion. In public, people and cameras can see you. If you don't like it, don't go out. Ever been on the big screen at a baseball game? Try complaining about that.
Yes, they're stills - but the vehicle, and thus the camera, is still on the move. You can deduce this from many locations such as highways where there are up to at least 8 consecutive shots that I've found where the cars in front are still in the next shot. Even if they did somehow manage to stand still on the highways, I doubt they would have gotten all the other traffic to cooperate ;)
That said - another posted already pointed out that it could still be done. The question is: why on Earth would they? and: are they required to, by law? Answering the latter tends to answer the former when it comes to these matters.
As long as you are taking pictures from a public place there is no problem. Its against Federal law for someone to prevent otherwise.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
... would this count as LOS (line of sight) for purposes of targeting a spell? It could get dangerous.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
Uh, this is pretty awesome, but I don't understand how I can drive the wrong way down an apparently one way street....BETWEEN BUSES.
How the hell did they pull that one off?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
When filming (say, for an independent movie) you have to consider the impact of the filmed object in question. If you're panning a shot past a bunch of storefronts to indicate locale, then you're free to do so, because none of the buildings or people are the focus of the shot. If you include a storefront in a static shot, with visible logos, or a person, who will become more recognizable due to the nature of the shot, then you start talking permission slips.
These rules do not apply to news, since the primary focus is the gathering of fact*. However, for most other purposes, you need to be careful and err on the side of caution. It's entirely too easy to get sued.
*unless you're Fox News, then the primary focus is the gathering of material for the governmental knobslob.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
It would seem that beyond the fairly primitive display and interpolation of the software currently being presented, the real gold from all these photos would be to start running them through a motion flow algorithm and 3d tracking algorithm to start generating geometry.
I think people are right in saying that this had somewhat limited applicable use, but the more raw data you have on an area, the more references you can feed into new technologies. Sure this data might not be useful now, but let's say Microsoft then proceeds to do a lidar scan of the entire city. Combined with this data, you have one more data set to use for comparison. Increase sample size, decrease margin of error.
It's much like a web crawler, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon are all in an arms race to know more about the world than anyone else, because the more you know, the more accurate you can be. I like the new 3d photo technology microsoft was showcasing earlier of I think the bassilica, start combining that with lidar and you have an automatic mapping/3d modelling application. The more photos you take, less likely a person will be in front of it.
Exactly, Basically if you are in a public place (and in most countries even just VISIBLE from a public place) your image may be taken (photos or video footage) for commercial purposes without asking your consent SO LONG as your image or likeness Isn't the reason for shooting an image of you....
In most countries I can even shoot an image of you for the EXPRESS purpose of shooting an image of you to sell for commercial gain and get away WITH OUT getting consent, just so long as it is of significant artistic merit (not just commercial merit).
I am stunned that nobody remembers the fertilizer in the fan when the folks from Al Queda did the same sort of thing is certain business districts! No need to send agents out now!
I wonder if they'll take advantage of Photosynth with all the imagery they'll have on-hand...
Who doesn't like free music?
The French Yellow Pages has had street level photos for at least eight years. Some people, it seems, make their tax dollars work.
As for M$ doing anything useful, I'll believe it when I can see it with free software. Until then, I'll just imagine they bought someone out and made their stuff crappier, like Hotmail. Is there anything that M$ borgification has improved rather than extinguished?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
These rules do not apply to news, since the primary focus is the gathering of fact*.
*unless you're AP or Reuters, then the primary focus is the gathering of material suitable for photoshopping.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Asking the driver of a strange looking vehicle, driving around your neighborhood, if it is something specific is not very smart. Much better to let him supply the answer as he could just agree to make you happy. Meanwhile you don't really know what he's doing. It's a perfect social engineering situation with a friendly person you don't know.
I'd take pictures of the driver or at least make sure I recognize him if it came to a lineup.
Are people really this out of touch with news?
Microsoft started taking street and air shapshots of cities over a year ago, it was part of their demonstration even over a year ago.
And now this Mac user is surprised? WTF. This isn't an 'answer' to Google BTW, MS was working on this technology before Google was even a glimmer in the eye of the geeks that created it. Go look up terra server, and when MS first put this up as a demonstration of how MS-SQL could easily handle terrabytes of data.
As for the street and air level snapshots, these TOO are ALREADY in use. Microsoft 3D earth uses the 'textures' of the buildings in the 3D models they have of several major cities already.
Additionally, the 'angle' view was introduced on MS Virtual Earth over a year ago, with multi-angle views of cities from airplane shots that complimented the satelitte images.
Is everyone this out of touch with technology and news, and if so, are the editors of Slashdot becoming out of date old timers as well? No wonder people are shocked to find out that Windows doesn't run on a DOS architecture nor crash every 5 mins if this is their idea of breaking news.
Talk about slow news day... OMFG.
You're on Windows Live Local
Won't somebody please think of the Karma!
Remember now, this was in 1975. I was there, invited by him, through Foxboro Instruments, as a man-machine interface designer working on nuclear power plant control rooms, to see just what the state of the art was. I was quite humbled, in fact, I still am. The concept was stunning, to say the least.
-r
Not true. To everyone's complete surprise, we once discovered my grandparent's photograph on the cover of a Time/Life book. My grandparents' iamge was recognizable and used for commercial purposes without their express consent. Moreover, they were the focus of the photograph. But they were NOT the subject of the photograph, the scenery behind them was. Which makes all the difference in the world.
Since Slashdot did not exist back then, they of course did not realize that their rights were being violated. Neither did it occur to them to sue Time/Life books or the photographer. Heck, it didn't even bother them!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This 'story', submitted by an anonymous someone is a MS plant - nice of Slashdot to bend over and take it so willingly.
"...biking...neighborhood...small city...strange vehicle...bristling with cameras"
Some of the legal/cultural regulations regarding photos and video of others is also interesting. In East Africa it is expected that you pay anyone included in your shot at the time of the photo. For example, I have some great video of a very young Maasai boy leading a herd of about 150 goats across the scrubland of northern Tanzania. I guess my tripod (and the tall pale guy behind it) was pretty conspicuous because he headed straight towards me, seeing me from about 300 meters out. He approached me very curiously and politely, but he was also there to collect his payment. I twisted the viewscreen around on the videocam and we shared some moments smiling at the camera smiling back at us and gave him 5 USD and we parted ways. Even if they are not the focus of your composition you can get some pretty nasty looks from some otherwise cheery folks if you snap and run. However, it is difficult to show the diversity and richness of a Maasai market area without snapping a shot of a few hundred people and it's unwise to go around handing out money in such places.
In public, people and cameras can see you. If you don't like it, don't go out.
True dat. But I bet that argument won't help the camera truck driver making maps of what it looks like to drive around the hood, yo.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the nude beaches. Now tell me that those people aren't being exploited. That's kind of a joke. Kind of. But I do think there will be any number of incidental people shots that do, for one reason or another, become online destinations in their own right. Should that then properly be considered exploitation, or not?
When Steve Ballmer, who not only is the largest Microsoft zealot ever making twitter look soft, but also has considerable influence in the computer world, retires, then we can worry about twitter. Until then please concentrate on the real problems. One man on Slashdot is not one of those.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
i liked driving the wrong way down the one way streets.
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
I'm looking forward to being photographed by MS and broadcasted in this Virtual Earth.
I don't know about US laws, but over here (in Europe) we got something like portrait rights.
Considering the scope of this project, with millions of viewers worldwide, only the portrait rights MS would have to pay me might already make me a millionair, not to mention the additional fine for not asking my permission to publish a visual recording of me in such a broad medium.
The government doesn't want you to know this, but here's the secret:
;-)
When you're outside... people can see you.
NOT when I wear my tinfoil hat...so there
--
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
I don't quite see where this is an issue as related to privacy, but it certainly is very cool. And it does work for me, in Firefox, on a Mac. It doesn't, however, work in Safari.
I used to work for NavTeq (or NavTech). They were working on the same kind of project and it is probably live now. You can automate the collection of street-level data for driving directions with such a van, DGPS and some software to recognize street signs, house addresses and the like.
This beats the pants off of having two people driving around and one taking notes while the other drives the car.
And it is light-years ahead of the previous technique of digitizing aerial photographs and trying to figure out the one-way streets later.
No, they aren't collecting photographic data for display on the web. Yes, they are going to cover every single street in the US. No, they probably aren't going to do Canada because the Canadian government has a copyright on the street maps and defends it vigorously.
http://googlesightseeing.com/2006/11/28/top-10-nak ed-people-on-google-earth/
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You've tried this before. Apparently it's not working. More to the point, arguing that "Microsoft is more evil" or whatever you think you're doing is infantile and disingenuous. You obviously do not understand the post you're replying to, especially considering how you trolled the one I linked to.
I found a Starbucks. It was real tough, but I managed to locate one.
Brandon
I'm not quite sure where it went, perhaps it was a casualty of the last revision, but a9 used to have extensive street-level imagery of major cities. For example, as nearly as I could tell, they had continuous photographic coverage of view of both sides of the street for every street in Boston proper.
The images appear to have been taken at street level, e.g. by a truck, and you could read the names on store facades, etc. The view only extended up about one story.
I'm guessing the same outfit that did this for a9 is now doing it for Microsoft and has just put new signs on the sides of their trucks...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Amazon's A9 HAD this, but they killed it. As part of stopping their own search and just using someone else's... Oh wait, that someone else's was MSN Live Search.
n e-war-continues-with-amazon-a9-powered-by-msn-live /
/. story:0 3
I'm sure that's not related at all.
Google:
http://www.geckoandfly.com/2006/05/05/search-engi
Prev
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/01/03562
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
"People, as in the people near you, you can also see." Note the comma after the first instance of 'you'.
Forgive me, English is not my first language, but... The commas don't turn that sequence of words into a valid sentence in the english language.
Absolutely. They don't edit the people out of postcards showing city streets, either.
I'd say people expect a minimum of privacy. Yeah, all bystanders will see me, but I expect them to mind their own business, or to the very least not interfere with mine. And I will potentially know they are there and I can watch them back.
Technology and the Brave New Surveillant States do not grant this two-way channel. They see me, I can't see them.
+Raider of the lost BBS
They'd better edit them out in Wisconsin. The laws about using a person's image for profit are VERY specific in that state and the law there would probably be overriding. No signed release from the individual and that individual has the right to sue for illegal use OF their image for profit and can recover costs and damages as I understand the law.
Illinois has the same law in place and, as the shots are being done as part of a widely advertised commercial enterprise, I am pretty sure that it could be argued that the exemption for a person "engaged in day-to-day activities" would not hold as the photos and video feed would be used on a feed that is generating income for Microsoft on a pay-per-click basis from their advertisers.
Legally, this is a real can of worms.
not really microsoft's, but Buenos Aires gov't has already done this, and the site is available at www.buenosaires.gov.ar
As a matter of fact, yes I was, at a football game. And I think the whole stadium complained, actually. :)
Do us all a favor and spray paint on the side of it: DEA. Nature will take care of the rest. =)
I live in a neighborhood where five or six major motion pictures are filmed each year (Batman Begins, The Weatherman, The Break Up, etc...). Whenever the movie crews are shooting on the street they put up big signs on the sidewalks telling people that if they walk through they may end up in the background of a film and if they don't want to be, they should walk the other way until filming is over. The signs seem pretty standardized, so it appears that this has passed muster with lawyers somewhere.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
To dress up as a pengiun and keep showing up on steet corners ahead of the photo van.
I was going to say that you can't talk to people near you in public because they have those little buzzing transducers (the ones wired to iPods) up against their ears.
Or, they're busy talking on their cellphone.
obviously you've never heard of paparazzi? this kind of thing happens to celebrities all the time. public space is public space and you have no right to privacy. this isn't new, people!
This is not "informative"... It's misguided.
The exceptions are bigger than you think. You're probably already photographed on the Internet on someone's birthday Flikr album from a restaurant, or maybe you're one of thousands of people filmed on open street scenes for motion pictures. They can use material which includes your likeness for any purpose, including commercial ones, so long as your likeness isn't part of that purpose.
You are correct in every manner but "commercial use." If your likeness is discernable and the photograph is used for, say, a magazine advertisement and you did not give permission you may well have a case. This is more so the more prominently you are featured, or if the photograph is used to portray you in a negative light, or for myriad other reasons. It's not cut and dry that if you happen to be in the background of a photo shoot they are free to do what they wish with your likeness.
Note that journalism is generally exempt from these rules, but not always, and the laws of "fair use" are based more on common sense and crossed fingers. The local news can get away with a lot that a documentary series or even 60 minutes could not.
If I'm filming a tree lighting ceremony for the holidays and your face drifts into the frame, too bad for you. That video is still going in the film, because I have no idea who you are and your inclusion isn't even tangentially related to what I'm doing. Privacy laws only protect exploitation, not inclusion. In public, people and cameras can see you. If you don't like it, don't go out. Ever been on the big screen at a baseball game? Try complaining about that.
You are missing a very important point with the ball game example... You are not in public. You are at an event, you bought tickets, and the fine print will say that you agree that if you are filmed your likeness can be used. There is also most likely a sign to that effect on the wall by the entrance. It's not that different from a EULA really, you are giving your consent whether you like it or not and your only recourse is not to attend.
As far as the tree lighting goes... What are you doing with the tape? Selling it to the Kathy Lee Christmas special? In that case if someone's face is featured prominently, and there is no signage that the event is being filmed, you'd better cut them out or at least blur the face if they didn't give permission. More so if they speak. Or better yet, secure a location release in advance and handle it like a professional. Is it going to the local news? You're probably all right, though if you are shooting with a home camera and the footage ends up on the news they may have a right to be angry-- after all a news crew is obvious and can be avoided if one wishes, not so much with a guy with a Canon ZR-50. Are you filming to show your family and friends you were there? In that case you are right, no one gives a damn, though common sense dictates that when you stick a camera in a stranger's face you do so at your own risk (you may not get sued, but you may get punched.)
I am not a lawyer. I have been an associate producer on several documentaries and (shudder) reality series. Part of my job was securing releases. It was an absolute nightmare. The rules are nebulous at best . There are expensive "oversight" insurance policies taken by almost every such production to cover exactly what we are discussing here.
Please don't take the sad state of society in large american cities as the norm. Just because a New Yorker would more likely punch me in the face than shake my hand and have a conversation with me if I approached them in the street, thankfully, does not mean the rest of the world is like that. This is one of the reasons why I hate people who hand out spam on the street or beg for change or other anti-social things; it makes people wary of each-other.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A variant of moore's law applies here I think, where the amount of information available goes up at a geometric rate just like processor speed and memory requirements. Ten years ago we would have laughed at someone that said we could get 15ft resultion sat pictures of most anywhere in 10 seconds, but we have had that for what, four years now. What's next? In 20 years will I be getting calls from the local contractor advising me that I need my shingles replaced because they're starting to crack?
Probably.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
http://www.mapwing.com/ is a lot like this, though user built and a bit more controlled. Users can take street level images and associate them with points on a map. Then these points can be connected together, enabling users to take a virtual tour of the mapped region. While large scale street level photography is nice, it is going to take more control and human input to make a first person virtual world.
I believe what was seen is a van for http://www.facet-tech.com/ , their url should have been on the van also. I used to drive a van for them, they have a system of cameras and gps to help with city maps and signage. They recently did get a contract to do the imagery for the live and local thing that has been linked. They do collect wifi but it's just a raw count of ap's , they don't run kismet. As far as the speculation they're checking for pirated copies of Windows I don't believe it. But since it's already been said "EVERYBODY PANIC". Or just install Debian.
Apparently google's trying this with robots or something. A person I worked with talked about how her robotic engineering friend was hired by google to make robots that go along roads with camaras mounted to it (or something like that).
Bill to the rest of us: "I know where you live..."
You never catch me alive
Seriously news has been crap in the last week or five. I use Slashdot RSS so at a glance I can see in Thunderbird the headlines and posters I've viewed recently. What do the editors look like? Well Zonk has been posting tons of useless propaganda spin stories and Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft supertrolling; kdawson has been posting some good stories and some spin crap; CmdrTaco has been bouncing between technology updates like Democracy Player or Parallels and spin-crap amalgamations like digital music loss or trying to play up slipstreaming in Windows as massive malware; and CowboyNeil has been posting a wide variety of basically only interesting stuff like ACTUAL progress in the SCO/IBM case (not more bash-bash-bash) or patent activity or Federal opinions on voting paper trails.
Somebody should fire everyone but CowboyNeil.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Pointless Microsoft bashing on Slashdot definitely seems the way up. Maybe I should stop posting AC and just go for it. I'll start rehearsing my "Winblows" and "Windoze" and "MonekyBoy" lines. Profit!!
Yes, but except for certain special cases like news reporting on events of public interest, they can't take pictures in which you are recognizable and use them for commercial purposes without your express consent. Legal rights to "privacy" don't only apply to rights to prevent people from seeing you in the first instance.
If your likeness was used without your permission by a corporation for whatever purpose it is a matter for the civil, not criminal courts.
"Rights" do not play into this at all. We are not talking about law enforcement or other government surveillance. A cameraman can not be arrested simply for filming you. The laws regarding this are nebulous at best, and there are many grey areas where, say, you may be a prominently featured part of the background. Your recourse is to sue and you may or may not win.
Either that or it's a traffic jam simulator.
I remember seeing this about a year ago, probably here on slashdot. I think its pretty cool myself and chances are if it was local.google.com so would everyone else.
At first I thought it was Google, now I don't know who they are, since I've seen several differently painted vans doing it. Most likely it was Amazon doing they're A9 project (based on timeframe) - it was badass. I used it a few times to show someone an obscure storefront I wanted them to see. Somewhere I have a photo of one of the vans, though this one wasn't white - it was painted yellow and had a company name/logo on it - and based on timing (within the last 12 months - was likely Microsoft). It was on an LA freeway. The white van was in Palo Alto.
And when in public, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Anyone can take a picture of you. What they do with that photo is another matter (ie making a profit with it, etc.).
The problem with all this stuff is not looking at a bunch of anonymous streets. It's about the way the world is going to be.
There will be surveillance everywhere run by an increasingly powerful organization, the US government. That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. My tax dollars will stretch more, less police needed, etc. People will be safer. However, laws are generic in nature. Rather than having more freedom, less freedom will be the norm.
San Jose, CA passed a "no pissing outside" law some years ago. Now that may seem innocuous, but think about the reality. There are laws against indecent exposure, so it wasn't about that. It was that someone didn't like the idea of a guy urinating outside. The question then becomes, where to laws like this stop? No spitting laws?
Now who knows where things are heading, but the US government has already passed anti-discrimination laws, which include not making a hostile workforce. What about making a hostile location? There goes freedom of speech.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
...back during the first MacWorld in NYC there was some guerrilla project going on in which a group was snapping images at all the intersections (an image looking up each street from the center of the intersection) and was going to compile them into a form (disc?) navigable just by using the arrows on your keyboard (turn left, turn right, step forward one block, step backward).
Never heard any more about it afterward. Anyone else?
It appears that you've never actually been to New York City...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
If they put up pictures of federal buildings, the terrorists win!
Maybe now independent photographers won't be harassed for taking legal pictures of public buildings. But I doubt it.
Sep 9th, 2001.. why? Have people gotten friendlier since then? Most any New Yorker said to me whilst I was there was "we don't stop for crosswalk signals, tourist." True, that was the white people. The black people were a lot more friendly. Typically because they were hitting me up for change or dollar notes, but hey, they put in an effort.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They don't need to edit anyone out. Just check your Windows EULA - it's in there right after the section concerning rights to your immortal soul.
But I already promised my immortal soul to Marge.
Up yours, Flanders! Er, I mean Gates!
If you don't like it all you have to do is say that a tool of this magnitude could be extremely useful for terrorists planning an attack on US soil.
Project shutdown in 5...4...3...2...
Microsoft's world domination issues aside, this is pretty damn cool. It'll be even better if they can manage to get the whole country. They're going to need a lot of vans to cover suburbs and things too. Although I'll bet they'll stick to big cities.
Come to think of it, that seems to be more frequent the higher the income of the 'random stranger' is. People of low socioeconomic strata seem to be more friendly. In the countryside it seems to be the exact opposite of this.
But then again, I'm no more than an armchair sociologist so what do I know? =)
I guess a bunch of medium-to-high-income antisocial people will be mad at Microsoft for displaying them in public :)
+Raider of the lost BBS
Of course, I might be grossly exaggerating :P
+Raider of the lost BBS
sept 9th? just finished some demo-wiring job in the financial district, did you?
-- D-23994, Muff#2613
Slashdotters will not appear in the photos unless the cameras can penetrate basement walls.
AT&ROFLMAO
Heh. Actually did visit the WTC. I most remember the rude bitch who served me at the cafeteria. We flew out a day later, arrived in London and the next morning the WTC fell down. I remember thinking "man, I hope the cafeteria was open."
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't see the need as a lawyer I have a new site WWW.adamswickle.com.
I have heard about this 'outside' thing of which you speak. Can you tell me a little bit more about it please.
AT&ROFLMAO
"The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped.."
That's, like, an awesome power - is it something anyone can learn from a book or DVD, or do you have to be born of parents from a distant planet called Krypton or something like that?
AT&ROFLMAO
So if I see a truck driving around taking pictures I will try to look as sexy as I can. So if you see the fat computer nerd trying to look sexy in the next beta of this thing - that was me.
I was out riding my bike last week, and came across a fellow biker photographing a local intersection from all angles. he didn't say Microsoft, but it was for a mapping project.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did anyone else notice the 360 controller?
Are we going to be able to buy Project Gotham: Your Neighborhood?
Or is this just part of Microsoft's plan to merge PC and console?
There are services that already do this for just about every level of roads - 10 or 50 ft intervals using automated cameras on vehicle dashboards. This is previously done so that traffic engineers don't have to drive to a place to see it when they need to assess traffic changes, signals, signs, etc.
How do I know this? A contestant on PRI's "Whad'Ya Know" explained to host Michael Feldman how this was his company's job. You can listen to it here: http://www.notmuch.com/Show/
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"If your likeness is discernable and the photograph is used for, say, a magazine advertisement and you did not give permission you may well have a case."
Not if your face is not connected with the advertising. If they're showing a busy street, or say, the opening of an Apple store, you're not featured prominently and you're not a target of the ad. If you're standing in front of everyone, then yes, you could conceivably have an issue with legal standing. Advertisers however would not use that imagery, though, because it artificially removes focus from wherever it's supposed to be in the frame. As long as your likeness is not connected (or plausibly connected) with what they're showing/filming, it doesn't matter that your face is discernible.
"You are missing a very important point with the ball game example... You are not in public."
Be careful to walk a fine line between "in public" and "on public property." You're in public at the bank, though you're on private property. You actually have more cause for action when you're on private property at a private function than you would just on the street, and the only reason this is the case is because of a) an indemnity clause or a 'likeness' provision or b) that the stadium is publicly-owned, placing you undeniably in public. Exclusive parties with guest lists are in public view though not necessarily on public property.
The oversight policies you mention are an important part of major filmmaking, but it's not because of truly nebulous laws and/or statutes (they're just slightly murky at worst), but because most production schedules and budgets simply don't have time to deal with legal actions over such trivial affairs. It's not that you wouldn't win the case, it's that you want to avoid it entirely as much as possible.
I'm not against the choice of company (Microsoft) behind this particular demonstration, I am concerned with the concept of massively refined ground level mapping when combined with other databases. The alternating posts demonstrate tremendous uncertainty about the legal status here. I wish a professional lawyer was on tap to Slashdot through a retainer to cut through the confusion.
... MUSIC! "Ach, laddie, ye canna share the music, but you can share the video..."
The people have not been edited, and they are recognizeable in many cases. I briefly looked for license plates. The photo editor at least did a riffle-through to toss out the absolute worst examples of license plates. However, all this means is that someone will simply need to do a second level of research and paste it on.
What doesn't make sense is how people are thunderously promoting how legal all this is... at the same time that certain other laws are being ratcheted up to a level so fierce "in the name of post-2001 terrorist shock" that entire websites cannot operate because SnakesAlive, someone might have a seventeen year old model. Or Johnny took an Apple Juice on board an airplane. (Seriously, that computer company needs a fruit juice sideline!!)
Using high grade correlations, you can extrapolate *who* is *in* the cars on these maps, and thus where they are. Then you crosslink with other databases, and then scary things begin to emerge. Yet this is the same company tied in with a TurboDRM attitude towards
So if you have opposite trends of "it's okay to increase information here, but restrict it there", something is going to break.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you ever want to see what it looks like to drive into oncoming traffic, spin the camera backwards then move your virtual car foward down the road. You also mow down your fair share of pedestrians.
"I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level."
Don't be such a fucking pussy.
It depends on what the photo is used for. Commercial use ALWAYS requires a model release, i.e. catalog or advertising work. News doesn't. Private investigator, probably not, unless you want to sell the photo (or use them for blackmail; that's also commercial use.)
To be fair you are both right... The truth of the matter is that in the United States there is no real law that states you cannot take someone's picture. You can't press charges on a cameraman (unless he is harassing, trespassing, etc.) for capturing your image. What you do have is legal recourse in civil court, and what happens there is (of course) based on precedent as well as moods of judge and jury and the poisition of the moon and stars.
This is on the whole a murky area, and to say you "can" or "can't" is innacurate. All you can really do when taking a photograph or video in public is estimate what you can get away with.
umm no you are WRONG. It is ILLEGAL to use anyone's likeness (ie their picture) for COMMERCIAL purposes without their EXPRESS written consent. PERIOD. (journalism and news are not considered commercial) WE spend thousands or dollars removing lame asses that end up in streen scenes in movies that are not supposed to be there. They can also not use a picture of your house for commerical purposes with out the same consent. Would you like to read a property release? Just search google or property release.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Not when I wear my ninja suit. Invisibility throught the I-don't-want-to-attract-the-lunatics-attention-to- me power.
I saw an article a few months ago floating around the web detailing microsoft lab's endeavor to create software that takes photos from a given location and creates a 3d map of that data. Combine some 24p video cameras and you have a huge number of photos detailing every nook and cranny of certain neighborhoods. This data is probably being created in anticipation of the eventaul ability of the software to create true 3d models rather than just arranging the photos in 3d space. There's a ton of experimental data on the ability to create 3d models from a single picture with a program that uses lighting cues to extrapolate depth data, imagine giving similar algorithms a few hundred photos per meter of a given area.
Cool stuff. I'm not sure I see the use for it presently, but in the future when we're all jacked into our underground life pods it will be a pretty efficient start for virtual reality. Combine that with the models from Team Ninja games and I don't see any reason for us to continue to live in the real world.
Just take a few (more than 2) images of the same location and eliminate anything that isn't in all of them.
Of course this isn't so simple in implementation. You have to figure out when you are viewing the same thing from a different angle and so forth but it certainly is possible.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I tried to use it. It's completely hopeless. Version .09 I guess.
Why would they bother to edit people out? Photos of downtown SF with no people would be pretty creepy--like a scene from some sort of post-armageddon movie.
There seems to be an assumption that they'd have to edit the people out. Why? You don't have a copyright on your face--anyone can photograph it and publish it--with a few limits: I can't use your image for commercial purposes without your permission, I can't invade your privacy (trespassing, super-telescopic lens, hidden camera, upskirt), etc. "Commercial purposes" sounds like a likely avenue for a lawsuit, but the phrase has been narrowly defined in the courts and the fair use exception to it has been interpreted broadly (news reporting, public interest, research, etc.). MS can also argue that their product is the photo of the street scene, not the image of the guy who happens to be standing in it. If they get Brad Pitt on one of the frames and start advertising that to draw people to a commercial web site, Brad's people will sue and probably win; if they get me in the background it won't advance their commercial purposes and it won't give me any ground to sue. In any case, MS surely has well-paid lawyers who've gone over all of this and decided the legal risks and costs are more than balanced by whatever MS hopes to gain out of the project.
Google have been doing this for a while now. Looks like there is a whole project being undertaken by Google, Amazon, MS.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7509
I never understand people getting all upset about other people capturing light which happens to have bounced of their body in a public space.
Evidently, you've not strolled around outside naked very much?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Here is a handy printable page on photographer's rights. There seems to be some disagreement about what is allowed and what is not. This should set the record straight. This guy is an attorney and went to all the trouble of making this document, so I'm going to say there's a good chance he knows what he is talking about.
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
As a side note - I am also on a mac, using firefox (Actually the Mac optimized "bon echo" build) and it works just fine.
or else!
This is really quite old ... what's new is probably the live.com url - I've seen this before.
old news!
Where would like us to drive today?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Hell, the next version of Grand Theft Auto could have a real city taken from photos and 3d extrapolation data, complete with photographic textures and more. I'm actually excited for when the driving directions in my GPS software has a real time 3d rendering of the city I'm in on the screen. It'll happen EVENTUALLY. Just not all that soon, if I had to guess.
I'd like it if the response time was a little fresher, and there was a way to control it with a joystick. It'd be sweet to drive somewhere first GTA style, with a joystick, and then print up your little map and throw it in the car. I would get lost less often, and I could also explore alternate routes without wasting gas.
The further implications of this are awesome. Meanwhile everyone is bickering about the privacy of a few individuals who HAPPENED to be in the frame at one single time in the shot.
It's pretty stupid given that the REAL privacy concerns come more from the actual cameras that are installed all over intersections and street lights here and in the UK.
That's the network we should be disbanding and decrying, not the random encyclopedic efforts to catalog roads for useful purposes, as seems to be happening here.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Privacy at street level has been gone a long time. Now, if they take picures of you in your house thru the window we might have something to nail them on.
And they lied to you, they are actually looking for illegal copies of windows. See, now they transmit a 'piracy signal' if you have wifi attached so you can be tracked down easier by the vans. It was part of SP2.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is a difference between being filmed once a year in a place you might expect it, and being filmed 10 times a day with the videos published on publically searchable databases. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer.
if you need to make a map to your office or tell someone to meet you somewhere, it would be useful if you could have a google directions or mapquest style guide to getting there that actually shows you what it looks like at landmarks. But currently interfaces suck they totally do not consider anyone actually using the system, because they themselves don't know how it is to be used.
Also there is not enough data.
Finally if you had a streaming camera on you a system could compare what the camera sees to the database so you never get lost. But of course it is much cheaper and easier just to locate yourself by cellular stations, gps, etc. However these things don't sell.. they are too expensive for most North American phone users (and only sell to a limited extent in markets where people spend more on them like Japan).
What is needed is:
- a common platform so you can plug things together that you purchase separately, like a gps antenna and a phone.
- a cheap data plan for phones
- a built in usb hub for phones (currently some have limited usb connections)
Possibly a windows ce based phone like the willcom es phone or vodaphone's phone terminals might be useful. However until manufacturers actually let users mix and match as AV component manufacturers let people buy vcrs and tvs from different companies, there will just be an unending battle of functions getting slammed into phones and users will just end up picking the ones with the most popular mix of things for the least money. This seems to be why gps phones are not as popular as phones that provide mp3 ring tones.
DoCoMo just came out with a >1 Mbps phone but as far as I can see it still is far too expensive for data, and does not seem to offer connectivity. I'd like to have a fast uplink, a nice camera, a gps, and a nice ring tone, and I wouldn't mind purchasing separate units from different manufacturers to do so. But I don't need 5 different phones and so I am skeptical about this king of street image product ever making it into mobile devices in significant quanitities.
No one's mentioned it, but what about these Witness Protection Programs we have? Not just a personal citizen's privacy concern, if they don't edit out at lease those individual's faces they could endanger those people's lives.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4855
"In addition to the aerial photographs already provided by mapping companies, "ground teams" of vans equipped with multiple cameras are driving around major US cities taking millions of photographs. The (ambitious) next step for Virtual Earth 3D is a street-level map that you can walk through, seeing actual buildings and storefronts. Ultimately, Microsoft hopes to integrate this with the online outlets of individual stores to allow someone to sit at their computer at home, and enjoy a walk down the Las Vegas strip, then fly over to the shopping district, wander into a clothing outlet, and purchase a new shirt - all without ever having left their chair."
1. Live in a house built after 1990.
2. Register the design copyright on the house, as per 17 USC Section 102.
3. Demand royalties from Microsoft if they want to reproduce images of your house's architecture.
4. Profit!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Ummmm.. Wrong. Ever seen a reality show ("Real World" comes to mind, as does "Airline", "Amazing Race", etc.) Real World frequently walks around outside capturing hundreds of random people's images. No way they got consent from everyone. Airline sets up cameras in airports and also captures hundreds to thousands of people's images in every shot. Again, no way they get everyone's consent.
http://www.homegate.ch/homegate/detail?lan=d&adver tisementid=102185067&level1=Mieten
click strassenperspective
(the provider is called endoxon. They claim they are better than google earth. From what I've seen so far, THEY ARE)
P.S. ... at least in Switzerland
This service just looks at what is already visible by people driving around. Google Earth captures what goes on in my backyard and on my roof deck. I consider that area quite private and I believe that I should have the right to keep that private. If my wife decided to sunbathe topless in the back yard I think she should be free from Google's roving eye-in-the-sky peeping in on her.
Seems a big privacy issue since they don't seem to be blurring the license plates. I found several that were fairly easy to read without enhancing them at all.
About a year ago, on the NYC Craigslist, there was a help wanted ad for a job that was described as riding a bike around various East Coast cities, with a digital camera and a GPS Unit, and mapping streets. Out of curiosity I replied, and eventually got a stock email from a Microsoft Adress. Very,very curious.
Et In Arcadia Ego
Isn't there some kind of dangerous aspect to what mshaft is doing? I mean, intel and other spy operations at the levels of upper government can do this and face being called on the carpet by ACLU or other countries' respective orgs (if such are permitted to exist), but for mshaft to do it, they must have been condoned by the government. If not, then they'll be told to shutter.
However, mshaft being mshaft, they'll probably give the government a deal with the devil by saying, WE'LL give YOU the goods, but we'll digitally morph or mask or modify to your liking any structures you consider to be safe houses, unlisted spook ops, dwellings or businesses used, visited, or owned by persons of interest, and more.
Pretty soon, mshaft will be that mega-weapon "arsenal of freedom" from the old STTNG episode, when the shit goes ape and starts fragging innocent people. Anyone remember the USS Yorktown, an Aegis cruiser that went (what we call in naval parlance) "broke dick" in the Atlantic (well, a bit offshore, not far out to sea...) around 1997/1998. Apparently a divide by zero error knocked the generators off-line, and the ship (costing some $980 million to $1+BILION) had to be towed to port, ONCE but MORE than once. Of course, the story was modified over time, and mshaft gradually got removed from culpability, depending on the sources you read.
Now, imagine if mshaft's structure catalog to "out-'innovate' Google" backfires. I wonder if IP addresses looking at certain structures (and, floors of buildings... speaking of which.. what will mshaft do NEXT? Start publishing the floorplans of offices, homes, plants and such?) will be flagged and sent to the TIA (total information awareness) people.... Imagine, tho, if we could ALL dwell on random and tipped-off sites jussssst enough to unnerve certain agencies. Hmm, they probably wouldn't JAIL us all, but might subject us to surfing "blackouts".
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I am not going to teach you every nuance of how the law works why don't you just go look it up or call a lawyer. Some of those shows claim some weird shit and are actually being sued and some have even settled. and its not hard to get several hundred extras to show up anywhere or sign releases for $20 sometimes. I work in Hollywood, what do you do? There are some crowd size rules. If you show a person in less then a group of 25 you better be getting releases. You provide a way to view JUST MY HOUSE for any sort of commercial use you better be ready to write me a check. No one is going to profit from my property without paying me. Guess what the law agrees with me. I sure as hell don't want MS making money off anything I own.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Before the trucks come to my neighborhood, should I install a billboard in my front yard and lease it to Google so they can advertise on the MS site.
Our neighbor's dog likes to crap in our yard, where our kids like to play, but our neighbor claims it's not their dog, so I am often roused early to perform poo-removal. So there I was, in sweatpants and a too-small t-shirt , carrying a shovelful of the neighbor's dog shit over to the trees at the end of our dead-end street, when this SUV bristling with antennas and cameras drove up. It's not unusual, because our street is somehow wrongly shown on every Nav system map as magically passing through the train tracks, when in fact it ends at our house. But this SUV, instead of u-turning in my driveway, slowly backed up. I looked closer and it's then I saw the "Windows Live" markings, realized it's competition to the A9 thing, and further realized I'm about to be immortalized on the internets as a fat, balding guy in sweats carrying a shovel of poo. I can't WAIT until my kids search for their house on Windows Live.
Now, if only the guy had been ten minutes earlier, I would have had immortalized photographic proof of my neighbor's dog's guilt, which would be handy indeed.
Almost right. Whether the consent has to be written or not depends on your state. It's always a good idea to get it in writing, but a simple "Hey, do you mind if I use this image for an advertisement?" will work in most states.
I'm a professional photographer in Florida, in which written consent is not required.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Ever been on the big screen at a baseball game? Try complaining about that.
I wouldn't do that without reading the back of the ticket, first....
Is there any way of knowing in advance when and where this picture taking will be taking place? I'm sure if we could get a huge group of geek volunteers to show up wherever they are shooting and moon the camera, they would quickly rethink this project!
pictometry does all the aerial photog and has been fFor quite some while. They do truly amazing work, by the way. Instead of traditional photos pointing straight down at the ground, their photos are all isometric, meaning you don't just see a white or black roof -- you actually see a split level red house with a fFence and garage.
Their data (the sum total of which consumes around 4 petabytes) is licensed primarily to law enforcement agencies and county planners. Here in Rochester (where pictometry is based), as well as numerous other locations, police cruisers are all loaded with a copy of the entire county in photos. The idea is that it is easier to be fFamiliar with an area if you know what that area looks like fFrom above. Also, pictometry has a remarkable set of software fFor planning and maintenance. Since you have a photo of every object in the county, you might as well catalog it all. Truly amazing stuff.
(No I don't work fFor them; I'm just impressed by what they do.)
Amazon has been doing this (perhaps in conjunction with others) for over a year now. The Mechanical Turk was primarily tested for identifying whether street-level images pointed at the proper address.
I assumed this was to make it possible to see what your destination would look like after creating map directions....
Wouldn't it be nice to see on your GPS direction screen both the street-level map, and a picture of the corner you should turn at?
You own the light bouncing off your house?
It's a bit awkward, but it's fine as far as I can tell. The only part about which I'm unsure is the way "as in" is used -- it is definitely understood informally, but it's possible it isn't strictly correct. Beyond that, I think it is correct.
Microsoft gains money from crushing the competition. Microsoft's goal is to make as much money as possible. I'm not going to respect the corporation whose primary goal is crushing me.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Yes, I understand that post perfectly. You're trying to tell twitter how to act as a "perfect" Linux community member, like a good little Soviet commissar.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Actually, it is a valid sentence with the added comma. Commas can be used to set off a parenthetical statement. It's a matter of style. Below is the same sentence with parentheses instead of commas. It also makes more sense in context of the parent: "When you go outside, people can see you."
People (as in the people around you) you can also see.
Still, as with most arguable cases, right or wrong, it's clumsy. Arguments about grammar usually start because the meaning is ambiguous, which is worse than breaking the rules of grammar. Actually, that'd be the most important point Strunk ever made. We wouldn't be arguing if commenter had just said "And you can see them." It's fragmentary, but the meaning is clear, requiring you to seek clarification from the parent if you didn't just read it.
Wow! Apparently I'll do anything to avoid working on my resume.
Try bathing. It helps.
I find that women typically talk to me, but men have a tendency to look away. I'm assuming it's because I'm 6'7" and ~300lbs (sigh) and people are often intimidated by me. Men are typically ashamed to be intimidated, so they have a tendency to look away. Women, I am sad to say, are probably used to the experience.
I know it's dangerous to make assumptions, but it makes the most sense so far...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A pilot has been launched for Toronto, Canada, not by Microsoft, but by a private company. It's called Virtual City and is cute, but not really all that useful, since the ground-level buildings and artefacts are quite out of date (some of the shots are almost a year old).
Either way, this will be cool when it's done.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
No, you aren't, generally (although the law varies in different jurisdictions in the US.)
No, it doesn't, it applies almost time a recognizable person is the subject of a photograph used commercially, outside of matters of public concern. OTOH, generally speaking, where the photograph is of something else and the inclusion of the recognizable person is incidental, I believe that in most jurisdictions you may be okay.
No, because news stations are covering matters of public concern, and are therefore likely within the space in which the First Amendment places a limit on any state-law right of publicity, and usually also explicitly excepted from such right of publicity.
This statement is not generally accurate. As on example, the California law providing for the right of publicity (Civil Code 3344) makes liable "Any person who knowingly uses another's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products,
merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or
soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services,
without such person's prior consent...". Note particularly that using a photograph on or in any "product, merchandise, or goods" is prohibited just as is using the photograph, etc., to sell goods.