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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."
If a structure is visible from a public way, it is legal to photograph it and publish it; it is not a copyright violation. Exceptions are made, of course, for certain government areas, most notably Area 51.
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
a9 maps used to do this. Interestingly enough, a9 maps no longer exists. Though now they appear to be in bed with Live
It _has_ been done already, and dismissed. Check out this story about an ideantical Amazon's A9 Maps feature.
This is what it used to look like. It was pretty awesome.
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!
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.
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.
There is even a commercial package called Tourist Remover which uses multiple images of the same location to compose a result without artifacts from moving objects.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
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.
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.
Maybe Austria's laws are different but as a long time pro and semi pro photographer working across Australia, New Zealand and Japan I don't have to get consent unless I'm selling that photo containing your for the express purpose of selling your image for commercial gain.
If I took images of people riding a ferris wheel at a fair and _sold_ them to a news paper for for gain for them to include in a news article about that fair then I would not need to get consent from the people riding the ferris wheel.
If I included that image in my portfolio for personal promotion of my business (but did not sell that image) I would not have to get consent so long as it is not displayed to the general public ie I could, within my private business address show it to interested customers as an example of my skills as I'm not seeking to profit from YOUR image rather it's just a generic image demonstrating the ability of being able to take a successful shot under those generic conditions)
If I included a image that had your likeness but that likeness was incidental to the main focus of the image (the fair) I could publish that in a book that was to be sold for commercial gain.
If I took a photo of you and exhibited it in a gallery as a work of art I could do that without your consent. I can also sell that image for commercial gain, you could take legal action (as is some times done by celebrities) but if the court decides the primary purpose of the image is as an artistic work rather than specifically an image of that specific person then I could continue to sell that image for commercial gain.
BUT.... BUT if I took a portraiture image of you as the subject (non incidental) of the image and published that in a book for commercial gain and the book was not of "historical" or "newsworthy" content nor deemed to be primarily published for its "artistic" merit I would be required to get a signed consent form.