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Google Sued Over Privacy Invasion On Street View
mikkl666 writes "A couple from Pittsburgh has sued Google because a photo of their house appeared on Google Street View. They are demanding in excess of $25,000 to make up for the 'mental suffering' and the diminished value of their home. Their street is apparently marked with a 'Private Road' sign, and they claim that putting a photo of their property online is an 'intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion' of their privacy. Google, on the other hand, claims that this lawsuit is pointless since anyone can ask them to have pictures removed without legal action. We've previously discussed some of the privacy concerns surrounding Street View."
I had the opportunity to speak with some people on the Maps team when I interviewed with Google and mentioned that they need to address the privacy issues of street view before someone sued them, whether it was technically illegal or not. They didn't listen, and I can't say I'm surprised by the result.
I just love it when people grab any occasion to try to sue as much money as they can from large (and rich) companies, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. A chance these companies also have dozens of lawyers for whenever that happens.
You just got troll'd!
Telling people that there is no damage because you can ask for something to be removed is silly IMO, that doesn't cover the time it was up until the request was followed and I dislike the idea of opt-out in general, asking someone for permission should happen BEFORE acting, not just acting and telling people they have to come to you to revoke their permission.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Here's what makes this case different than the other StreetView suits... the Google van wasn't supposed to be on this road in the first place. A private road means that the owners of the road take no government funding or care for it, and therefore get to decide who they'll allow on it. Google wasn't wanted, so there's the problem.
I don't like opt-out memberships. The ability for companies to get away with opt-out usually comes from legislation. Not simple company choice.
Google never ceases to teach me new things. I guess it's okay to do impolite things as long as I remind the victim that they could have asked me to stop at any time.
How long until google is indexing my underwear drawer?
I dunno it seems like a case of bad judgment on the driver of the mapping vehicle. If you look at the pictures it seems like they drove right up to their garage, taking pictures the whole time.
It also seems like provider of the maps is also at fault, if you follow along on Google maps you can see that the street appears to extend all the way to their garage.
But, there doesn't seem to be any "private road" labeling on the map nor was their any sign visible when I followed the street via Streetview to their house (though they did delete the offending pictures, so maybe the sign was there?)
Regardless though, I would expect that the drivers of these vehicles would know better then to keep the pictures they took of a property while parked in front of a garage.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Especially after this lawsuit, they'll have to get the hell out of there to live up to their name.
I think the judge should have a big red button on the bench, connected to a solenoid and trap-door located under the plaintiff and his lawyer. As volcanoes are in short supply, a pool full of hungry crocodiles would do.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Presumably they see some of the value in their house being in the fact that it is on a "private" road. Google's images demonstrate how little that is really worth, thus lowering the value of their property.
IANAL, however it seems like this should come down a question of visibility. Is the house visible from the street? Then it seems that publishing a photo that includes the house shouldn't be a problem. It would be different if it were a close-up photo of the house, or one looking inside it, but if it's just the same view available to a passer-by, what's the harm? My only question is whether the 'Private Road' sign could cause problems. What's a 'private road?' Do the residents pave it and light it, or is it really a public road maintained by the municipality with a sign that discourages visitors?
This reminds me a bit of companies that place security guards to stop people from photographing their buildings. My reaction has always been that you shouldn't put a building in a public place if you don't want it to be photographed.
First off, I don't understand how their home value is diminished. Second, even if it is, so what? If Google is engaging in legal acts (making that assumption), why is it Google's concerns for their home value? I've always questioned this "property value" argument when others are engaging in legal behavior. If painting my purple polka dots on my house that are allowed by local statute, diminishes your home by $25, it's not my problem, it's yours. Same goes for this house in question. Oh yeah, don't forget the Streisand Effect.
I remember when people were trying to sue McDonald's because they said the restaurant made them fat... gotta love America!
Either way, they must have a very strange life
oh, yeah... I guess they could be looking to make a quick buck.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They don't have a case. Anyone can take pictures from a public location; if you don't want to be photographed, you have to put up a fence.
Contrary to what they claim, the road in question wasn't even clearly marked a "Private Road" (you can see that in street view itself; there's no sign anywhere).
However, Google has apparently voluntarily removed the images anyway, which makes their case collapse.
In Texas a private road is defined as one maintained privately, as opposed to a public road that is maintained by a government (municipal, county, state, or federal). Usually the residents who use the road share the responsibility to maintain it.
I assume in Pennsylvania it's the same. If you don't want people driving on a road, you need to mark it as such. Put a gate, or a sign forbidding unauthorized access.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Should they not seek to prosecute Google for trespassing then?
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Blah, have they even looked at street view? The images obtained are a joke. Unless the vehicle drive right up within 15 ft of something the images are grossly unfocused beyond 15 ft.
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
It's about the free moneyz.
If you look at Google maps, you can see quite clearly that their house is at the end of a private road. The Google road crew drove onto private property, continuing to take high resolution photographs before turning round and going back the way they came.
A road sign clearly indicated that this was a private road. Maybe Google's road crew didn't understand English, took a wrong turning, or their maps were out of date. Since they took photographs every 10 metres or so, having a photograph of their property is not going to affect its value by any significant amount.
This really does amount to trespass and invasion of privacy. Any individual is free to walk the streets of their neighborhood and take photographs, so long as they don't enter private property. But as soon as they wander into their neighbors driveways and gardens, neighbors would be justified in calling the Police, and getting them to be given a warning or to be arrested.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Nor mental suffering.
This whole hype is to pump up the value of their house.
Hope they will get some hate mail, so at least the mental suffering will be true.
They might suffer some mental problems, though. But that's not Google's fault.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
On an entirely separate note, why are we so suspicious of one another that we live in legally constructed imaginary fortresses upon which the mere presence of somebody else causes us to go berserk?
Personally, I'd prefer to live in a place where people I didn't know came to visit me all the time. In fact, I actively try to solicit that.
I hate printers.
Allegheny County has a real estate assessment website which has pictures of every house in the county. Including the Borings:
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Image.asp?CurrBloLot=0823E00136000000&Street=Oakridge
This story was posted to Fark earlier this week, and linked to The Smoking Gun. Apparently these people should sue their own government also, because the assessors office has a picture of the house online as well, complete with all the dimensions of the house/
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0404081google8.html
These knuckleheads should have just done the opt-out and this whole thing would have been over. Now theyâ(TM)ve invoked the Streisand Effect and everyone in the world has seen their private house. They are most definitely in it just for the cash, who would give a rip about their crappy little home, it looks like a half step up from a broken down mobile-home.
Kevin
Irrational Diversions
vs "Opt In"
Whenever a company operates from "consent by omission" (by not getting permission first, as in "opt in" they are opening themselves up for such questions.
Frankly, I dislike a lot of what Google is doing with this feature. There is a big difference between showing street level photos of commercial areas and residential areas. I think Google has crossed that line here.
If Google operated on an "opt in" basis they'd be using those photos with permission and thus, be immune from lawsuits.
Frankly, Google is acting more like Microsoft and less like Google of 4-5 years ago every day...
Corporatism != Free Market
If this really was about tresspassing, you'd think that the property owners would have sued for that, instead of this "mental anguish" and "reduced property value" bullshit.
It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
End of story.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
After seeing the map, I think the owners have a point -- the private road is essentially their driveway, and they have a line of trees screening their house from outside view. These people want privacy, and Google violated it. I don't know if it's worth $25,000, but on top of the incident where the Google Street View van drove onto a military base in contravention of Google's rules, I think this is a sign that the people taking the pictures are inadequately trained and lack common sense.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I think that's a totally different situation.
For one thing, presumably any image of my house is incidental: you were photographing your friends and family at a barbecue, not deliberately going up to my house just to photograph it.
For another, your photo probably doesn't record much detail from inside my house through the windows or doors caught in your shot.
Next, presumably such images are for your own private use, and not for general distribution to the public.
Finally, you're not systematically going about getting pictures of everyone's houses and building a searchable database of the lot. With a lot of privacy issues, the existence of one piece of data is only a small part of the problem, and the greater danger is in the systematic collection and data mining of lots of such data.
These issues are rarely black and white, but comparing taking an incidental picture of someone's own home for private use to Google's behaviour with Street View is like comparing quoting a small excerpt from a book in a review for critical purposes with industrial copying and redistribution of the entire work. One of those we consider reasonable and inoffensive, and the law in most places provides a pretty clear exception for it. The other we consider unreasonable, and it is illegal in most places.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Allegheny County (where Pittsburgh is) has all houses on their property assessment website.
Here is this one: http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Image.asp?CurrBloLot=0823E00136000000&Street=oakridge
The county has been causing all of us Pittsburghers untold amounts of "mental suffering" for years.
Google should just claim they didn't parse the "Private Road" sign, because it didn't conform to web standards.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I think you are more or less correct here, however, different countries have different private property rights. In Sweden, for example, you are free to pretty much roam on private property as long as you more or less keep out of sight and do not cause a disturbance.
The UK has similar "Right to Roam" legislation which applies to many pathways and scenic areas. It's something to consider when buying a house or even office space in a business park. You find out that the local residents use your driveway or car-park as a short cut to the local supermarket because 1800 years, a Roman goat-herder went to court to maintain a right-of-way between the town market and the local pasture.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Google should countersue the couple for mental anguish for having to deal with another completely frivolous lawsuit and the stress on the employees that it creates. Also for defamation of character and libel.
200 million should be a good value.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I did a project more than a decade ago with EMTs and other first responders about vehicle INS systems ( before GPS became ubiquitous ). The drivers jokingly ( or maybe not ) noted that the eventual real effect of people that had overgrown vegitation, concealed drives, locked gates, non-existent or faded curb numbers, missing or angled house numbers and unlit or burned out porch lights was that response time effectively doubles or triples with a corresponding effect on medical survival rates. As society becomes more dependent of spatial technologies like StreetView, a similar counter-survival friction will occur as Fedex, Dominos, and EMTs are delayed by uncertain spots in their data. So that EMT's opinion was that eventually these 'hiding' people would be selected against and be left in the shallow end of the gene pool.
The problem is, Google aren't a public service. They are not part of the government. They have no official status as, for example, charities do. They are simply a profit-making commercial organisation that enjoys no special privilege, trying to get away with stuff because they are a large and therefore somewhat influential commercial organisation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"the private road is essentially their driveway". EXACTLY, It boggles me everyones solution is to SUE. You would think a law stating if you loose you pay ALL COSTS including the other parities, that would make people think twice. 'mental suffering' PLEASE complete morons i'd say. 'diminished value of their home' did they just realize they live in a dump.
If the people didn't want anyone taking pictures of their house they should have: a)put a sign up stating this, b)built their house underground or c)made their house invisible.
With the absence of the above, people should be free to take pictures of whatever they like as long as it isn't for profit.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Remember last month when a Danish journalist was talking on his cell phone and wandered into a woman's lawn? She came after him with a gun of all things!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
I was going to respond that this suit is BS, since no-one has a right to "privacy" per se, just to private property. But since it is a private road that they had to drive down, it's really more like a long drive-way with "sub-driveways" off the sides. Hence, Google had no right to be there to take the photographs in the first place.
On the other hand, that assumes they didn't go somewhere on the other side, and use a telephoto lens. This should be easily discernable from the photograph (depending on how much of the background is in focus and the perspective).
They did say their problem was that Google had to trespass to have taken the photos as they appeared. However, they unfortunately phrase it in terms of "privacy violation". There is no such thing as the "right to privacy", per se. It is merely a right derived from private property, or self-ownership in some cases (e.g., for someone wearing clothes, no-one would have the right to come by and rip them off to "get a picture of what's underneath"; but this isn't because of privacy "rights", it is because of their right to their body and property).
Thus, the proper way to phrase it is that their private property rights were violated -- Google trespassed. As a result, their reasonable expectation to a certain measure of privacy, due to their property configuration, was not fulfilled. Hence, the damages they are asking for.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"This image is no longer available". I guess they responded.
Sent from my desktop computer
They are.
to allow pictures taken from a public place (the street). Granted, this case involves a private road, but your idea is invalid as it only takes one person to opt in to allow a picture from a public place - in this case it was google that opted in for the pictures to be viewable. Or another way to look at it is that I pay taxes for all the roads in my city... I want to allow google to use this service on all the roads I pay taxes for.
So a single picture shows 3 houses... who allows that? What about apartments?
It is a compicated issue, but it would seem that a good majority doesn't have a problem with this (based on what I have read and talking with others). So most are okay with it and anyone that is greatly opposed has the ability to remove the pictures... I don't see an issue.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
wouldn't the satellite view on google maps infringe on their privacy rights as well? i'm sure microsoft and their satellite pictures are guilty in this regard as well.... i would think the overhead/satellite pictures are far worse because would be attackers have a better idea of how to launch their next assault on the house.
Really ? Care to explain how having a picture of someone's house can cause them mental suffering ?
Would these people sue a pedestrian catching a glimpse of their wack shack ? Are they going to send me a C&D if I "accidentally" read the number on their mailbox ?
Their argument over the supposed impact on property value is bogus: everyone's values are dropping because the country is in financial crisis. Have they not seen the ridiculous foreclosure rates sweeping the nation ? Do they still hold that 1950's ideology that a house is a magical investment that steadily gains value over time without ever dropping ? Are they so obtuse to the concept of money that they believe it is infinite and everyone can idly get richer with each passing day ?
Some people gain, more people lose, but ultimately these folks sound like human failures desperately blaming their own ignorance on whoever's convenient.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"This image is no longer available" --Google Maps
$ make available
So we should stop caring because the photos they're taking of the inside and outside of people's houses and using for profit are low quality?
Thank goodness for that, I thought it might be a problem.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
If someone working for Google drove onto private property to take those pictures then they screwed up. It happens. They're not asking for an insane amount. Google ought to settle and move on.
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Search.asp
Allegheny County already put all this information online, years ago.
Also I'm not sure how you can "clearly see" it's a private road. Since Google posted detailed pictures of the area you would think we could see this "private road" sign somewhere, no? I just used street view to pan around and all I could find was a single wooden post with "Oakridge Ln" painted on it (where it meets Reis Run Road.) In fact you can still follow Oakridge all the way up to their house before google says "This image is no longer available" and still see no posted sign.
Here's another picture of their house:
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Image.asp?CurrBloLot=0823E00136000000&Street=oakridge
The people claim Allegheny County took their picture from a public road which, judging by the picture, is the same road Google was on.
Also how's this for invasion of privacy: They bought their 1 bedroom house in 2006 for $163,000 and it sits on 1.82 acres of land. It gets a D+ rating. It has no AC, 1 bathroom, and 984 sq. ft. of living area.
That's all available on Allegheny County's assessment website. Along with a nice picture.
My guess is they saw this on Google, ran to Home Depot for a private road sign, and decided to cash in.
Google should countersue the couple for mental anguish for having to deal with another completely frivolous lawsuit and the stress on the employees that it creates. Also for defamation of character and libel.
200 million should be a good value.
1. Put potentially objectionable image up
2. Wait for lawsuit
3. ??
4. Profit!
$ make available
The bigger picture is that you and Google don't value property rights.
Let us know when it is convenient for us to come over and take your shit.
Its amazing how people are already picking sides - googlers are the only ones who so far have a valid point - they have a system in place to have offending images removed if found. While yes it means they could CYA without legal penalty, the law WILL weigh in upon that. You can't sue someone because you're too lazy to click a link - they have a system in place to handle the situation which is considered legally acceptable in numerous other situations (look at youtube with their report-this-video function in the case of copyrighted material). As for the couple, since they are inciting the claim, it is THEY who are responsible to prove their side of the case. How do you know they didn't see a cash cow and get a private road sign recently put up? Was the 'private road' an extension of a public road which would not be posted as private on GPS? Let the facts tell the story, not your emotions for or against google.
I live on a private road. It is clearly marked "private road". Occasionally, someone accidentally drives down my road. In California, this is not a crime, as there is not a closed gate on the road. I could legally ask them to leave, and if they refuse to comply, I could arrest them for trespassing (C.P.C. 602J). I choose to ignore them and leave my curtains closed. Another option, I suppose, is to emulate the contumacious asshole across the street and attack anyone who blunders in. I am unable to fathom the damage that occurred in this instance, perhaps the laws are different in Pennsylvania?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Well, the FA does indicate that they are also suing for trespassing, in fact. Just RTF... oh nevermind.
BTW -- they also ask not only that Google remove the pictures from Google maps, but also destroy all the original data too (and remove it from anywhere on "teh interwebs" too), something I am guessing Google doesn't do with the little "opt out" form.
I guess these people don't know i can goto their local clerk and get their name and assessed value too. Or a host of other public or easily purchased record sources are available.
Views from the *street* are public. Don't like it, move further back from the road and put up trees. ( and put a cover over your property or move underground since satellite images are public too, since i could see that same view from the street, with a REALLY large ladder. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't know about the legal status of a "private road" but if I'm on public property, I can take a picture of your house as long as it can be seen from public property. It's not against the law. The only things that are exempt from this are government and military locations.
(1) $25k isn't exactly punitive to Google - it probably wouldn't even cover litigation costs if this went to court. Eric Schmidt probably loses that much change in his sofa each year.
(2) Others have posted that there are no signs visible indicating that this named road is private, or that trespassing is prohibited. It is entirely likely (though I don't know for certain) that there is, in fact, a public right of way centered on the road. That is often the case in Virginia even when the road is listed as private.
(3) They must be going fucking bonkers over their county's GIS website, which lists data on the property and sales price information.
I'm more libertarian than the average Joe, but I have a very hard time getting worked up over this. Get back to me if they start tracking people movements without consent...I'll back you up at that point.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Assuming that's the right house, where is the "Private Road" sign? I backed out along Street View, and couldn't find it.
Besides which, this looks like just another dirt road, with a fair number of houses along it. Their claim that the Google van drove down their long driveway just to take pictures of their house is a little bit of a stretch considering it looks like a normal (dirt) road with other houses branching off, and they just happen to be at the cul-de-sac.
Umm, by the looks of that house, my best guess is that they're concerned about the street-view shots exposing their meth lab and/or moonshine still!
All you need is lurv.
If you dig through TFA you may notice this is not exactly Biltmore.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I'm not arguing the law, because I'm not a lawyer. I'm saying it's morally wrong for a company to take photos of someone else's clearly marked private property and then use them to improve revenue to their website by publishing them for everyone in the world to see.
I'm all for not having an expectation of privacy in public areas, but that area clearly isn't public.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Remember Google did this intentionally to ruin this specific family's privacy. Or at least these people say Google did it intentionally. What Google should do is remove the house, but in it's place put an ad.
Can I bum a sig?
Isn't that cute? They still think there's privacy in the United States...
This sig is false.
So far, Google has been in only minor trouble with the "Homeland Security" goons. Of course, Google StreetView has no Washington, D.C. area coverage. They're being cautious about that. Full coverage of Manhattan, though.
Coverage of my old house near Palo Alto is so good that you can read the license plates of the cars in the driveway. You can even see me through a window, but it's just a faint outline because their images don't have enough dynamic range to look inside a dark room from a sunny street.
Maybe they were just bored.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
I know these people! All the women in the family have a rare condition, where, when nude, they appearence is easily mistaken for lawn chairs!
You can see them sunbathing in the back yard by the pool! I can't believe they didn't sue for more money!
FLR
I am not an american, and hence had a small question. Cases, (however flimsy) do at the end of time, take up some of the state/national judicial bandwidth.
Does the person suing pay for that bandwidth or does the taxpayer pay for it ? Just a question, since this case sounds a bit illogical to me and so I was wondering whether the taxpayer would be comfortable paying for it.
I'm not sure how streetview is making Google any money because there are no ads on the site.
According to the article the Borings say that Google drove onto their property to take the pictures, but as you can see Google just took it from the road and there aren't clearly marked signs at the time of the picture taking. Or at least I can't see a sign from the photos on streetview. I got the address from here.
Can I bum a sig?
If Google traipsed onto the "private road" to take the photo, that's trespassing, and the law should handle it. If they instead stood on the adjacent public highway and the house can be seen from there, well, too bad -- that's fair game. If the owners of the house want visual privacy, they can invest in a fence or large hedge. I'm as big an advocate of privacy as the next guy, but hell, you can't keep people from looking at or taking photos of your house if it is in plain sight. (That's why my dream house would sit in the middle of thick woods, surrounded by a 12-foot fence, surrounded by a moat. And maybe some gators in the moat if I can get a good deal from pets.com.....)
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I used to live at the end of a dead end road, and my roommate (whom was purchasing the home) actually owned 1/2 of the road from a telephone pole back to the fence/property line.
We had lots of signs up stating "PRIVATE PROPERTY" "NO TRESPASSING" "Violators will be shot, survivors will be shot again." On a few occasions right after we moved in, we had police patrols in our neighborhood (due to "gang" activity, but that's another story) and they would turn around in our driveway.
The cops were cool, and eventually let us know those signs didn't mean much, unless we actually owned the road, luckily we had the paperwork showing property lines. After that the cops wouldn't (couldn't?) use the very end of the road to turn around in, unless we had personally talked to that officer and gave him our permission. Heck, we let them use our property to conduct a few stake outs too.
So if these people live on a "Private" road, they better be ready to prove they own that land. If not, I say Google had every right to take some pictures.
I'm also not a lawyer, but from what I can tell, private roads are private because they were built and are maintained by private citizens rather than the government. Mainly because they go places that few people in the area would like to go.
They'll lose the case because there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy to claim. Law enforcement and emergency vehicles are legally allowed on all of those roads as necessary, and so are other people. If they had a gate or barrier then they might have a case, but as it is now they're basically just invoking the Streisand effect.
Living in a low traffic area isn't sufficient to give that expectation from the legal point of view. The open fields doctrine would be completely pointless otherwise.
If you shouldn't sue, what should you do when someone bigger and stronger than you does something wrong to you? Law enforcement's not gonna help, they don't care about trivialities. Personally, I'm happy about this lawsuit, because it may serve as a reminder to Google not to go over the line when making private things public.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
ok, i've already had to post a dozen times to explain to people that a "private road" does NOT mean what you all apparently think it means.
if you were to take a second and look up what a "private road" is, you'd find that it is a road for which a group of people--usually all those who live on said road--agree to share the burden of building and keeping up with the road. that's it. it merely means that no municipality had taken part in its construction or upkeep. it does not mean that you can't walk down the road unless you live there. it does not mean that you can't drive down the road and snap photographs of every house. similarly, it does not mean that you can't drive down the road in a van with "GOOGLE" painted in huge multicolor letters on the side of it snapping dozens of photos with a roof-mounted system.
what does this mean to the people suing google? well, it means that there is no legal reason they would win the case. in fact, there's more than likely ample precident for google to tell these uppity white folks to "shove it."
the fact of the matter is that if your house is visible from any public area then it can--and eventually probably will--end up as a photo on the internet. why is this an issue? i have honestly no idea. as far as i can tell it's just some white folks with too much money and too much free time. nothing to see here, move along.
p.s. i don't care what lawyers they hire and how much money they spend, the homeowners will definitely lose the case. that's a 100% guarantee.
if anyone wants to see some white folks turn red, i suggest staging an "african-american AIDS benefit walk" on that very street. the benefit of a private road (at least to people who dont live on it) is that you do not need a permit to host a special event. What's that you say? Your house was on national TV with 5000 black folk speaking about the plight of AIDS? Your property is worth absolutely nothing now? Theres no legal recourse for you to take? well cry me a fucking river.
The link you provided actually shows photos that you can't get from Google any more. I tried to move up the road but got a black picture and "this image is no longer available".
So, no, they didn't take it from the public road. They took it from the end of the private road and have now removed it.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The main purpose of a house is keeping people outside from looking in on your private affairs. As such, the outside of a house is the part offered for public consumption.
Anyone has the right to look at the outside of a house visible from a public place to stand. And we have the right to publish photos of anything we've rightfully seen.
If they want more privacy, they can draw the shades. They can raise a hedge. Or they can accept the reality that a "private road" doesn't prohibit people from looking past it, unless they make it really big. And then they'll probably get fined for raising a public eyesore on their property, which should really show them where the line lies.
--
make install -not war
True, but not all utilities are owned by government. My electric company (Alabama Power), phone company (AT&T), cable company (Charter Communications), and gas company (Alagasco) are all non-government owned, profit-making, reliable utilities. In fact, I'm against utilities being owned by cities, counties, states, or the Feds. They work much better at lower cost to the consumer. So there, you damned Socialist!
A "PRIVATE ROAD" sign does not mean its not publicly owned pavement. What they're doing is completely legal.
The company I work for does the same thing only much higher quality and they aren't posted on the internet. If i can see your house from the road, its legal for me to take pictures. Private roads are almost always owned by the city anyway, and the people who live on them whine until they get a private road sign.
Its the same with gated communities. your tax dollars pay to get their roads fixed, then they say you can't drive on them.
Fuck Rich People and their stupid gated communities. And even more so, Fuck <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wackenhut">Wackenhut!</a>
"Some men just want to watch the world burn..."
This is stupid. How did Google trespass? Did they at any point drive on any private roads? Doubtful. Did they sneak onto private property to take pictures? Really unlikely. So what did they do? Take pictures of things visible from a public road? Just because you live in a swanky, quiet area doesn't mean you can expect any more privacy than if you were living next to a busy street.
I may be many things, but I doubt anyone who knows me would describe me as a socialist. ;-)
I'm not claiming that all services must be government run. On the contrary, I tend to prefer a combination of small government and market forces, with small government setting up just enough regulation to keep the markets operating competitively. I just don't think describing something run by a profit-making corporation as a "public service" is an accurate representation, particularly when it's not providing for a basic need like water or electricity.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This couple is probably just playing the lawsuit lottery, and Google, being a company with lots of dough, seems to them a perfect candidate. Google doesn't have to claim anything. All they have to do is remove the photo, and the lawsuit will be promptly thrown out by the court, since the case will by then be moot. The couple could then claim that the photo having been there for any period of time calls for them to receive some settlement, but Google can easily file motion after motion and drag the case out like gum stuck to one's shoe until the couple runs out of money to continue the case.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
More interesting is that point 6 of the filing is a complete lie. It says, "At the beginning of Oakridge Lane, there is a clearly marked 'Private Road' sign." There is not. How do I know, sitting here in my living room in Kansas? Google Street View. And if one follows the road all the way from where it begins to the Boring house, there is no such sign anywhere along it. The road simply turns into their driveway.
Here is the proof. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9004971557883691425&q=google+maps+street+view&total=258&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
Who owns what in "road law" in most jurisdictions is fairly complicated. A so called "private road" could be anything from an abandoned public road to a road that was built by the landowner himself or another adjoining land owner who has given that landowner an easement.
Even if the road itself is totally owned by the landowner, whether they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" from photographs on that road is a question that is probably undecided or unclear. Even if the answer is yes, the issue of damages is probably laughable. A generic photo of a house on a road? I'd give them $100. If the photo had a picture of them "doing it" in the window, maybe $25,000 would be justifiable.
If you want to read more, check out this link: The Pennsylvania Legislatorâ€(TM)s Municipal Deskbook, Third Edition (2006), Road Law Basics Chapter: http://tinyurl.com/6hvvnk
Turns out the house belongs to a "Barbara Streisand", whoever that is.
Sorry, I am a surveyor. Private is just that, Google was trespassing. They have no rights to go on that road. This is tantamount to walking inside someone's house and taking pictures of their bedroom. If the road is private, they have every expectation of privacy. Sorry Google, better read those posted signs better next time. Open and shut case. Any good judge will find for the plaintiff on this one. If this were a public road, fine, all is fair, but it is private for a reason. I personally would have the association go after them. And for all those who don't know, yes, private does mean greater value. You can control who comes in and out of your development. That is why the signs are posted for residents and guest only. Private roads are not maintained by the local government, so no plowing, no garbage pickup, etc... With that also comes the expectation of privacy. Whoops, Google better get a good lawyer for this one. As long as the street had a sign on it, that is enough of a warning for those entering. There does NOT need to be a gate or a speed bump or anything else. Just a sign to designate as private. There really is no excuse for this. If they want to do mapping, they should have a F'ing surveyor on staff. Guess they don't. I wonder if the licensed surveyor's salary is less than what these people will get out of Google. There is tons of precedent on this. I am really surprised Google was the one to make this mistake. So much for "Don't be evil."
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
Some people must have money to burn. These folks are going to lose this case big time and IÄl bet the legal bills assigned to them will be worth as much as the house.
There is no expectation or right to privacy of things in plain sight from the road.
Some thought has just occurred to me while using StreetView just now. With all the panoramic pictures the same stuff under different angles we've got there, why won't someone make something to turn that in 3D? Surely it can't be that hard (besides for the moving vehicles). Basically we already know well enough where all the panoramas were taken, plus they're 360 panoramas and all quite close in space to each other. That wouldn't be too hard to correlate points/features between them and with some trigonometry obtain some 3D stuff. Then you could explore the result in a virtual car. Surely it would look a bit crappy and lifeless, but nonetheless interesting.
You just got troll'd!
From what I could see from the Google streetmap view, is that there is a gravel offroad with a number of mailboxes alongside with a good few warning signs informing the road drivers of the direction of the road. This would be a fairly clear indication that it wasn't public land.
I'll agree that the claim for $25,000 is rather ridiculous. The Google road-crew haven't returned and they have removed the pictures.
I don't see any "mental anguish" or "reduced property value" especially since identical images are visible through Google Maps and GoogleEarth. Half the world didn't even know this road existed until this lawsuit.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
As a Pennsylvania resident I agree with those that have sued Google Inc. When a sign says private, it means just that. This is however only after knowing if this road is maintained by the tax payers or if it's in fact a private road. If it's a private road unmaintained by the tax payers, then Google had no right venturing on it, just like they have no right using our tax based air forces bases to fly their airplanes out of. If this is however a taxpayer funded/maintained road, then that sign has no bearing and Google had every right to photograph while on it. I do disagree with this venture by google, even on public streets. Google openly censors information (about it's management) and about other countries. They shouldn't take advantage of the laws we have here by being able to openly photograph everything when they also respect the laws of other countries that tell them to stay out. If yahoo didn't suck so bad I wouldn't use google at all:)
This is strange for me to see right now, because I just discovered that Street View now works in Pittsburgh. If you pan the camera a little bit, you can see the roll of duct tape keeping my side mirror on my car. My dad would be proud.
On one hand, this is a little spooky, but I can't really quantify why. I suppose if I put a stone tablet in my yard named 'robots.txt' it would not help.
On the other hand, street view could be very useful for people moving to new cities. I got my place in Pittsburgh off craigslist sight unseen because I was too poor to afford plane tickets and hotels and the like. I got incredibly lucky, but I could have ended up in a rathole in a horrible area of town (of which there are many). I'm about to move to Montreal, and it would be very nice to have a way of checking out the city so I know (vaguely) which areas I like.
I would hope so, i think what the GP was trying to say in a polite way is the place is a fucking dump and unless there is a big chunk of property in the burst property bubble, the suit is worth more than the house is.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Oh, no. do you think they can afford to?
I sure hope so!
As far as the claims that Google should have looked and saw that it's a private road, from examining the Google Streetview photos, I see two signs. A sign on the adjoining street that says "School Bus Stop Ahead", and one of those annoying vertical post style road signs that says "OAKSRIDGE LA" (sic) and presumably "Reis Run Rd" on the perpendicular side (too blurry for me to make out).
Oh, and a road sign above that with an arrow on it advising traffic that the road bends to the left.
That's it. The road doesn't necessarily "look" like it's a state owned road, because it's not even paved. But there are roads I know of that aren't paved that are owned by the township, so that alone probably isn't enough.
Perhaps there *was* a sign, but not only is it not visible now, but there are enough photos from google, that there's nowhere you could say it *could* be.
On the feeder road (Reis Run Rd) there is a curious sign that says "Yellow Belt" with a yellow circle on it. It looks like a standard government reflective road sign, but I do not know what it means. It's situated at the intersection of Reis Run Rd and Rochester Rd so that anyone turning onto Reis Run Rd would see it. Again, this is not a "private road" sign in any way I'm aware of.
At the very end of the road (dead end) there are pictures that google has taken down. But the road is shaped like a "J" There is no way one could get to where the pictures were taken without having to pass signs where there are none.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
...lawsuit is pointless since anyone can ask them to have pictures removed without legal action...
Don't you think they should ask you for your agreement first? I mean, would you agree if anybody could publicly tell anything about you - without you knowing that, and whether it is true or false - without fear of retribution because "you can ask them to have the content removed"?
And what if you do not have internet?
For the most part you are also allowed to take photos of government and (some military) locations. from http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf [read the whole paper for the details that I've ommited]
The General Rule
The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs.
Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks. Property owners may legally prohibit photography on their premises but have no right to prohibit others from photographing their property from other locations. Whether you need permission from property owners to take photographs while on their premises depends on the circumstances. In most places, you may reasonably assume that taking photographs is allowed and that you do not need explicit permission. However, this is a judgment call and you should request permission when the circumstances suggest that the owner is likely to object. In any case, when a property owner tells you not to take photographs while on the premises, you are legally obligated to honor the request.
Some Exceptions to the Rule
There are some exceptions to the general rule. A significant one is that commanders of military installations can prohibit photographs of specific areas when they deem it necessary to protect national security. The U.S. Department of Energy can also prohibit photography of designated nuclear facilities although the publicly visible areas of nuclear facilities are usually not designated as such. Members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. Basically, anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside their homes.
Permissible Subjects
Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the following subjects can almost always be photographed lawfully from public places:
accident and fire scenes
children
celebrities
bridges and other infrastructure
residential and commercial buildings
industrial facilities and public utilities
transportation facilities (e.g., airports)
Superfund sites
criminal activities
law enforcement officers
Fuck you.
I have an expectation of money falling from the sky.
This expectation is born of both pure greed and the feeling that the world owes me something.
does that sound stupid to you? it sure does to me.
there is no such thing as common courtesy or acceptable polite behavior. These are just terms that you (or someone like you) has made up to cover the fact that they don't have a clue about what they are talking about. Where was the common courtesy of asking Google to take the offending images down, before calling a lawyer?
If you think that taking pictures from a public road (and it is public until you post a sign, put up a gate or do some thing to say otherwise) is a violation of your privacy, just wait until someone goes through your trash or starts writing down your car's license plate number every time you pass by.
get over it.
if you want privacy in your home, close the drapes. If you want privacy for your home, build it under ground, on an Air-force base, at night, by your self.
until then, get over it and your ethics too.
-- Sig under construction...
If I was Google I would remove the picture of their house and put up a picture of an outhouse. See which one they prefer.
Sorry for being a bit off-topic, but do is there a way to use street view without flash player ? Google says "to use street view, you must download flash player 9".
So does this mean next time someone pulls into my driveway to turn around I can sue the pants off of them? God what has ever happened to common sense? If I REALLY want my road to be private, put up a frickin gate & fence. If I really really want privacy, put up a electric barbed wire fence. I'd never make it as a judge. I'd be tar-ing and feather-ing people all day.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK and Australia trespass is actionable per se, that is, without proof of damage. That is because it protects your exclusive right to enjoy your property. As such, damages are essentially intangible and punitive, rather than reflecting the quantum of a proved, tangible loss.
Sorry, IAAL. But you don't always have to "lose" $X to be entitled to recover $X.
Read Pynchon.
But you understand where this is heading. Google more than could see that this was an unimproved road. That is a legal classification of roadway. In your case, the police have no legal right to use that road you talked about. Once you reminded the police that it was your road, they must, by law, respect it. Which, it sounds like they did. I also would like to thank you for allowing the police to use the road for keeping the community safe.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
for a good example of why you should look around for the google van before doing anything in public.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
No, that's not correct. Most of the photos are still there, and you can still see the Borings' house. You can also see that there is no "No Trespassing" or "Private Road" sign anywhere. Even if there were a "Private Road" sign, that would not necessarily mean that the public can't use the road: the road may be presumed to be for public access, it may be a "public space", or there may be easements.
Google appears to have removed the last few hundred feet of street photography as a courtesy. I doubt they legally had to.
I think that you missed my point.
my point was "Fuck You"
the rest of the reply was just an explanation of why.
my manners are in fine shape thank you.
-- Sig under construction...
I think street view is neat but really should be opt in.
I've seen pictures of forum member's houses where you can see things a would be thief would love to get their hands on just because they had their garage door open at the time google drove bye.
A lot of good opt out does when your atv, rims or classic corvette are already stolen.
I'm thinking of performing the experiment of looking through some of your posts and seeing if I can find something stupid to point out. Then we can see if you get angry at me.
Just a thought experiment. I actually think the lawsuit is incredibly stupid and a good example of how the American love of recreational lawsuits is destroying innovation in America, especially by larger companies. All you get for your innovative efforts is sued.
Do we have a song writer in the house? Can anyone convert "A boy named Sue" to "Innovation got me sued"?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
My city as well as many others in this country already have photos and MORE info about the property on their websites. So the fact that google also has them doesn't mean anything at all.
I'll even ignore the comments about how this makes it easier to find the pictures, if your looking to purchase a house in a city I'd be surprised if you didn't go to the cities website.(that is assuming your also computer literate enough to check google street view) I mention purchasing a house since that is sort of what the article is about.
Those who can, do.
The problem here is that you (and the law, arguably, I'll grant) are equating Google Street View with random shutterbugs. There's a difference between a dude taking random photos of houses that they see on the street, for their own private enjoyment, and a corporation systematically taking photos of every street in an area, and linking them into a publically searchable, geographical database that can be easily correlated with all other sorts of public databases.
Your argument, frankly, is uncomfortably similar to someboday back in the early days of portable cameras had argued that if you, walking on the street, see a woman undressing in her window, you should be allowed to take and publish photos of her, on the premise that anybody who was walking by at that moment could see her naked. The point of the comparison is that a new piece of technology (in your case, Google Street View, in my case, a portable photo camera) changes the privacy implications of something being visible from public property. Before portable cameras, a visibly naked woman through a window would only be seen by those who just happened to walk by at that moment; after portable cameras, a photo of said event could potentially be seen by millions of people over many years. Likewise, a photo of your house didn't have the same implications before the arrival of publically searchable geographical information systems that cross-reference systematically collected databases of street view photos to the street addresses depicted, which can be easily further correlated to all kinds of public records trivially accessible online.
Ponder the following (hypothetical) case: if the photo of the naked woman at the window is disseminated on the Internet along with its approximate location, Google Street View can be used to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses about the exact street address where the woman lives; this address, in turn, can potentially be used to obtain her name and phone number. This is a serious privacy implication of Google Street View, that goes beyond the privacy implications that such a photo may have had in the era before the Internet. I expect there to be countless other such implications.
Note that I've not argued so far whether Google are within their rights to offer Street View; so far I'm just trying to make you see that there is a very serious question whether they are within their rights. In the USA at least, the right to privacy is a right that's been recognized and interpreted by case law. Case law proceeds by deciding particular disputes, and often must revise or expand upon previous case law to deal with new situations or technology. Privacy law must balance people's right to control the dissemination and use of information about them, with other people's right to obtain and use such information, and different kinds of information and uses are judged differently; you're not allowed to conceal your criminal record from others, for example. You can't just flatly claim that the law allows Google to provide Street View, because the law is not final, and the courts may well require you to provide positive argument about why the law should not forbid Google from providing it.
Are you adequate?
Do they live next door to the Slowskys?
No offence, but it is you who is "all confused". As I say, I am more familiar with the UK/Australian common law position, but I imagine that the law in most US states would be similar.
You could, and would, succeed in all but the most ridiculously minor trespass actions, irrespective of whether the intention of the trespasser was good, bad, or merely ignorant. The whole point is that it is actionable without proof of damage ("per se"). That is to say, the bare fact that someone encroaches onto privately held land is the essence of the cause of action. Whether they do any damage (in the ordinary sense of the word) is not the point, and is not relevant to the question of whether a trespass is made out.
Indeed, there are cases where the mere fact of an object - not even a person - touching another's property amounted to a trespass.
The two main exceptions to the foregoing are, firstly, where there is a statutory entitlement to enter onto land (e.g. the police would have this in some circumstances, limited to a valid purpose), and secondly, where you enter onto the land for the purpose of seeking permission to remain on the land.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that trespass is a purely criminal concept, which is incorrect. It is also a civil tort, and therefore actionable by a private party against another. You would not have to call the police to take legal action.
And, as stated, the purpose of damages for trespass is not so much to directly compensate the party whose land has been interfered with for a specific loss so much as to enforce the concept that they are entitled to enjoy their land exclusively. You are still looking for what has been "lost" in a tangible way, but the answer will usually be "nothing" - this has no bearing on whether a trespass has been committed. The tort responds to the simple fact of unauthorised entry onto land, not to some specific damage occasioned to a person or to the property.
An analagous criminal offence would be battery, which can lead to sanctions notwithstanding that a victim suffers no actual harm. Merely placing a hand on someone can amount to battery, yet there is no actual harm suffered.
Read Pynchon.
Regardless of whether it follows from his definition, there is a legal difference (in the USA, in general) between an intentional, recognizable depiction of a specific person or building, versus a picture that just happens to include the person or building. If I take a picture of a crowd that just happens to include you, the range of uses I can make of that photo is broader than those I could make of a portrait that included only you. By the same token, there's a difference between a photo of a building, and a photo that just happens to have that building it.
And you're missing an even more fundamental issue here: the difference between the right to take a photo and the right to use a photo in a specific manner. If I see you in a public place, I have a right to take a photo of you. I don't thereby have the right to put your photo in a print ad for a company, with a fake quote in the bottom saying that you approve of that company's products or services.
Are you adequate?
Maybe I'll drive around in my van up and down your block and take pictures of your house and your neighbors' houses every day. And I can start a website where I post those photos. Just those.
Your house isn't invisible, underground, and it doesn't have a sign on it saying no photos, right?
This case opens up some interesting questions about what privacy is and what expectations people have for privacy.
We all know if the government was doing this a whole lot more people would be complaining. They could blame it on crappy use of MY tax dollars, but that wouldn't be the case entirely. It's partly because of the power differential between the government and the individual, which currently SEEMS to most people to be in favor of the government.
What if it's a great big "do no evil" corporation doing it? Not as scary or weird, right? What if it was Raytheon or Halburton? Scarier, etc. What is the stated purpose? How can the information be misused?
I think these are all interesting questions, and I don't think it's as black or white as my house isn't invisible or have a sign on it that says no pictures.
That's simply not true. Most private roads are paid for with private funds, including the upkeep and maintenance thereof. If the homeowners who pay for that upkeep want to keep people off of them, they have every right to do so. Of course, without a gate, one can reasonably ignore private road signs, so long as your purpose for visiting is within reason (driving to see someone who lives there, etc.). It is, however, still private property, and you do not have any automatic right to take photos on private property, nor certainly to exploit someone else's private property for your own gain. For example, you cannot tie onto a private road without permission of the road's owner.
Further, every gated community I've ever had any experience with has had a homeowner's association that pays for the upkeep of commons areas, including the road. The city/county only pays for upkeep of roads that have been explicitly deeded to it, and a private road generally has not been. Further, many private roads that I've seen do not meet the minimum requirements for county maintenance. This is particularly the case for roads up in the mountains of California, where a one-lane road with no shoulder, no retaining wall, and little bits along the edge sliding down a sheer cliff every time it rains do not qualify for being deedable to the county.... :-)
From a legal perspective, I don't expect this suit to go anywhere. If there is a reasonable vantage point from a private road, they have no case, and even if there isn't, a private road with no gate will probably be considered a semipublic place. The implicit offer is made to allow the public to enter to make contact with the owners. As a result, as such, you have no more expectation of privacy when viewable from such a road than you would in a hotel lobby. Both are privately owned with a general invitation to pass. The owner of the hotel can ask you to stop, maybe even to ask you to not publish the photos (and if you don't comply with such a request, you're probably screwed), but if you don't hear from the owner, the owner probably doesn't have the right to sue you later for an invasion of privacy when he/she discovers that photograph in the newspaper a week later.
Bottom line is that legally unless you have a gate, a road is probably semipublic regardless of who owns it, so Google probably had the right to be there, tacky as it may be for them to ignore "No Trespassing" signs on the road. Laws on this may vary from place to place, of course, so you should not consider this legal advice. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I can't see the road sign?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=oakridge+lane,+pittsburgh&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=47.704107,68.730469&ie=UTF8&t=k&ll=40.575477,-80.077774&spn=0.001102,0.002041&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.574951,-80.077822&cbp=1,262.59785152694116,,0,3.4029324903013083/
Google has removed the images. It may have been hard for them to get in contact with google, without sueing them, which is possbily why they did this. We will see if they drop the law suit.
Really, suing Google for $25,000 for one image? Ask for them to take it down. What's next? A person sues Google for a MySpace page that is in the results?
hxxp://nthegreat.co.nr
The argument was that Google's pictures devalued their house BECAUSE Google was trespassing, and if Google can trespass on private roads to take pictures of people's houses, then so can Microsoft and Yahoo and everyone else who comes up with a scheme like Google's. Who knows, maybe even companies like Blizzard (Warcraft in Real Life! Aggro mobs of angry banjo players!)... so they want to establish that publishing photos taken while trespassing is a risky business, and at the very least shouldn't be done by big companies with lots of resources to do a lot of trespassing.
The other picture was taken from the front of the house, not on the private road, and it was taken by someone who probably has the right to be there anyway.
From the lawsuit :
6. At the beginning of Oakridge Lane, there is a clearly marked "Private Road" sign.
9. Plaintifs [...] discovered that Google had taken pictures of their residence, including the swimming pool, from a vehicle in their residence driveway without obtaining any privacy waiver or authorization.
11. [...] To drive up Plaintiffs' driveway and stop in proximity to the residence, garage and swimming pool, Defendant significantly disregarded Plaintiffs' privacy interests.
So yeah, they trespassed, drove up a private driveway and took pictures.
I'm all for Google taking pictures of public streets, but going on private roads and taking pictures of houses from the driveway, they crossed the line.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Maybe I'll drive around in my van up and down your block and take pictures of your house and your neighbors' houses every day. And I can start a website where I post those photos. Just those.
As long as you don't break any laws, then go ahead and waste your time. Although I could probably get you on a stalking charge if you kept it up.
So I'm a tourist in a new city and I see a nice neighbourhood. I'm not allowed to take any pictures? How many tourists in say the Caribbean or Italy take pictures of the interesting houses while there? Should they all get sued?
Incidentally I lived in a restored century home in a tourist area for a while, and lots of people took pictures of my house because it was interesting. Some asked permission, most didn't. Didn't really bother me. If I didn't want people taking pictures of my house I would have taken measures to block it from view.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Maybe I'll drive around in my van up and down your block and take pictures of your house and your neighbors' houses every day. And I can start a website where I post those photos. Just those.
As long as you don't break any laws, then go ahead and waste your time. Although I could probably get you on a stalking charge if you kept it up.
Why is that? I'm doing it every day whether you are there or not, and so it's systematic. I'm not harassing you, after all your house is there, it's not underground or invisible, and doesn't have a sign on it about no photos. Why stalking? Stalking your house? Or does it make you feel like your privacy is being invaded so you invoke this stalking thing that doesn't really apply?
Maybe you have less privacy "needs" than the dude in this house, but it sounds like you still have some, or why would you think to try to "get" me on stalking charges?
How many tourists in say the Caribbean or Italy take pictures of the interesting houses while there? Should they all get sued?
Good luck suing someone in Italy. Or the Caribbean for that matter.
because only the *inside* of a house is truly private.
This is a slippery slope. I believe that my "private" property is private. For anyone to publish photos of this should require my permission. Your 747 postulation is already covered I belive. I'm too lazy to look up the details but there are provisions for aerial and other types that don't show much detail.
I live in a private community, with a gated, private access road. We pay HOA fees for upkeep of the gutters, street lights, etc, but the road itself is still actually owned by the city, and there's a line item in my county taxes for road maintenance. (this in is contract to my father who lives in a neighborhood that OWNS the road, and he does not pay this tax, living in the same town).
The police have a gate override code, and patrol our streets. We have signes up that say "private community" "no thru traffic" "no soliciting", etc, but the fact is, the road is actually a public road, and should anyone ask, they have every right to drive on it. As an example, an icecream company filed a grevience with our HOA and had to be given a code to our gate and the right to drive on our streets and sell their wares, and as long as they don't step out of their trucks and onto the sidewalks the HOA owns, they can play their music and solicit our kids from the streetside. Not that we actually argued against this, but if we did, they could have forced our hand anyway.
The only way to have a truly private road is it you got the permits and laid the road yourself on your own property, and you complately maintain it yourself. Of course, if you do, even the police need permission to come on it unless there's a stated emergency (they would not be able to patrol your road). My Father's community has to pay for private security to do this, and his HOA fees are about $1500 per year vs my $300 because of that plus actual road maintenance fees I don't have to pay.
I also know a family out in rural country that technically hasd a "private road" Since their driveway is longer than 1/4 mile, and there's actually 3 houses at the end of it, they were required to get a street sign and house numbers for 911 identification, but the road is theirs.
Google would not be able to drive on a road that is a true private road, but they actually know which ones those are. If you go to google maps, private roads are not drawn, there will just be a blob where a comminty is. If you can stand in a public location (street or public sidewalk) you can take a picture of whatever you want. They only grey area is in using that picture for advertising or other printed materials without permission. Since this is a database, and there's no advertising on the street view mage, not does Google charge for the service, they're in the clear on this one. (even more so since you can ask the image be taken down without cost and without legal battle)
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
note that what people see you doing inside your own house for your personal failure to close your own window shades is your problem. In fact, many people who have accidently seen someone "doing it" through their window have been awarded money for suffering in various ways. People have also been brough up on indecency charges for walking through their house naked with open windows.
Whether or not you are inside your home or within the bounds of your personal property, simply being in "public view" means what you do while in view is public.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
You're right, except that Google did not go on the road, they simply got a picture of it from a nearby public road. This was not a residential development, but a private lot with a private road off of a local public road that itself was not marked as private nor did it prevent thru traffic. Their private road is basically defined as nothing more than a glorified driveway.
Also, explain to me how snapping a picture from the road is any different than snapping one from orbit or from a plane. They object to one but not the other?
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Hard for them to get in touch? You click on the "Street View Help" link on the street view, and there's a link right there for "Report inappropriate image". From there, you can click on the box that says "this image infringes on my privacy".
Three clicks, and no need for a lawsuit.
Ok, but what if you do that and nothing happens? What then? Most internet companies don't make it easy to actually get in touch with anyone who works there directly.
i really enjoyed this blast from the past in the sidebar review:
"Plan on spending an extra $50 or $60 for a 512-MG SD memory card"
I doubt this would be considered trespass. Having a road there without a gate or sign saying "Do Not Enter" seems to imply a limited invitation to use the road to get to the house. The courts have ruled that using (even private) side walks to access houses for reasons of petitioning are not trespass if there aren't "Do Not Enter" or "No Soliciting" etc. signs.
Further, marking a road as private is not equivalent to this: there are other reasons you would mark a road private that have nothing to do with wanting to keep people from driving on it (eg, to clearly demarcate that it's not a public forum and thus not open to 1st amendment right exercise, since streets are traditionally considered such).
You might argue that even if this is true, taking pictures exceeded the scope of 'invitation,' but the Courts generally award only nominal damages for that type of thing (and even for Google, I don't think $25k is 'nominal.').
OTOH, IANAL, only a 1L (and we only spent like a day on trespass in my property class).
Right. A Private Road is not the same thing as Private Property. If it's a road, then it has a sign and house numbers. If not, it's a driveway. Most states, including the one I live in, have VERY specific rules about placing no-tresspassing signs. Even if there was a "private road" sign (which I could not see in the images, and therefore if it exists would likely be ruled improperly placed) there was NOT a ro-tresspassing sign properly displayed on this road using state accepted colors, designs, sizing, or proper placement.
In my community (which is a private gated community, but uses public roads maintained by the city) I not only have to place a no trespassing sign at my driveway, but at EVERY access point to my property, at every door not blocked by a gate, and at no less than 2 points clearly defined in my front yard. Placing enough signs to satisfy SC laws for tresspassing on my private property would be an eyesore, and my HOA forbids it. Even if I could, the law actually allows someone to walk up to my front door and ring the bell, no-solicitation signs and all, including quoted sections of the SC law book, and all I can do is ask them to leave. Only if they return can I actualy get them arrested for tresspassing. With this law, even if I had all the appropriately placed signage, google could have pulled into my driveway on a single occasion, snapped as many high res photos as they liked, and then my only course of action would have been to ASK them niceley not to publish those photos (or take them down if they already had) Suing them would have gotten me a counter suit that I would have lost.
Also, even if it's a driveway, even on private property, passerbys are permitted to enter the first few feet of your driveway as a means of turning around to go the other way or to stop to get out of the street where there are no shoulders. I this case, it was clearly marked as a road, thus they could drive down it and then turn around in a driveway, which it appears this is exactly what they did.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
You realize that by continuing this discussion, you're just increasing these people's mental anguish. Not to mention the smoking gun pictures that clearly show their house and pool. Soon it'll be $50,000! Eventually, "one MILLION dollars!"
Your own post contradicts itself; if it's a private road, then no, other people can't use the road "as necessary." I would say unless there's a specific reason for law enforcement to be on your property, they are trespassing. As for emergency vechicles, you call them to your house, so they are presumed to be allowed on the property.
A private road is a private road, and given that its NOT a public road, the public (i.e., google) doesn't have a right to be on it.
Do you find it ironic that google says anything in public view is fair game, but they block out the part of the picture on top of their vehicle?
Whoa there. It really varies on where you live. I believe in VT, mearly having shades or window coverings at all is enough, and even if they are open people aren't allowed to go up and look in.
What your asserting is pretty unreasonable; people would have to live without sunlight to get privacy. I don't think that's reasonable to ask of people.
Not at all. I can see out just fine with the angle of my blinds, and I get lots of sun. The polarizing film on my windows (that also acts as hurricane protection) lets sunlight in fine, but gives my windows a tinted sheen from eye level that makes them hard to see through from outside, especially when I have lights on inside at night. It's cheap stuff too (actually cost less than the curtains my wife insisted on for decorative appeal)
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Taking a picture of my house is fine and not against any law. If you are repeatedly doing the same action for no discernable reason and I perceive that as a threat to me and my family, then yes that does fall under stalking law and I can have you arrested or removed. It's the continual repeated action that elevates it from just taking a picture to harassment. It's got nothing to do with privacy.
How many tourists in say the Caribbean or Italy take pictures of the interesting houses while there? Should they all get sued? Good luck suing someone in Italy. Or the Caribbean for that matter.So you're ok with just suing Americans in America because it is easier? Either it's a crime or it isn't.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
In the State of Pennsylvania private roads cannot be used for personal or commercial purposes without the express permission of the landowners. This may be different then you are used to but it is the law. http://www.williamsscheetz.com/newsletter/PASP07.HTM But if you read the article: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/05/google_sued_over_street_view/ It wasn't a private road in the first place, it was actually their private property: "The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled "Private Road," and that violated their privacy." This means that the Google van drove up their driveway, onto their private property from the main road and took photographs of their home from their own property. I fail to see anyway that this can't be seen as tresspassing and invasion of privacy.
As I stated before, in the State of Pennsylvania private roads cannot be used for personal or commercial purposes without the express permission of the landowners. This may be different then you are used to but it is the law.
http://www.williamsscheetz.com/newsletter/PASP07.HTM
But if you read the article:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/05/google_sued_over_street_view/
It wasn't a private road in the first place, it was actually their private property: "The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled "Private Road," and that violated their privacy." This means that the Google van drove up their driveway, onto their private property from the main road and took photographs of their home from their own property. I fail to see anyway that this can't be seen as tresspassing and invasion of privacy.
tresspassing, maybe, if in that state law specifically labled the road as private property, and unlike most other staets, had no provision for access otherwise.
In this stae (SC) as well as most others a private road is still open to public to walk or drive down, they just can't stop there, loiter, get a permit for a public event, etc. Even if it's a driveway, people have a right to pull into it to turn around, and that's not considdered tresspassing. If it's private property, but an easment was granted to someone who own or leases a small portion of the bigger land, then that road is still considered to be open to public use in most places. (In this case, the owner of the house does NOT own the land the road occupies. They have 1.86 acres, but the road clearly occupies more land than that, so it's not event "their" road)
As for privacy? A photo of their house is already on file in the local surveyor's office, and another posted has a link to it. It's already publically available for free to everyone.
What's even funnier is now that this is a public case, and it's printed in the papers, their property and images of their home fall under journalistic protections as it's considdered a "celebrity" site, and now ANYONE can photo it and actually get PAID for the images, without needing permission. That just makes me laugh harder at these idiots.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Penn. is a strange state in the ways that its laws give homeowners and property owners additional rights and privledges beyond those found in most other states. Fewer things need to be clearly posted, as they give the homeowner greater rights than the public. Regardless of the legalities (which will eventually be worked out), or my belief as to the intelligence of the Borings, I refuse to feel bad for a multi-billion dollar company getting sued over a matter of 25K. Their lawyers will spend more money on this case in ball point pens and working lunches than the entirety of this lawsuit. Then again, I'm convinced that Google will eventually grow to become Umbrella Corp., so my own sanity is iffy.
Taking a picture of my house is fine and not against any law. If you are repeatedly doing the same action for no discernable reason and I perceive that as a threat to me and my family, then yes that does fall under stalking law and I can have you arrested or removed. It's the continual repeated action that elevates it from just taking a picture to harassment. It's got nothing to do with privacy.
I'm taking pictures of your house, not you. And I'm doing it whether you're there or not. From the street. Who are you to tell me not to do it. Maybe my "no discernable reason" is I'm doing an "art project" about the aging of your house. Who are you to get up in my face about stalking? Hell, unlike Google, I'm not even trespassing. Stop with your baseless charges so the courts aren't full of nonsense and can get around to real cases, like whether large corporations have to right to send their agents onto private property, take photographs of what they find there, put them and other information about them into databases, and finding ways to make money from that.
How many tourists in say the Caribbean or Italy take pictures of the interesting houses while there? Should they all get sued? Good luck suing someone in Italy. Or the Caribbean for that matter.So you're ok with just suing Americans in America because it is easier? Either it's a crime or it isn't.
I'm saying a lot of things. First, what is a crime or not a crime is somewhat a function of the geopolitical entity you happen to be standing in. It's a crime to drive if you're a woman in some countries. It isn't here. So yeah, I'm okay with Americans using the court system for its intended purpose and with our laws, sure. One set of those laws deal with trespassing on private property. There's also precedent for devaluing property and some other precedent for mental anguish. It's up for the courts (not you) to decide if they apply here. That's what the courts are for.
I'm also saying much of the Caribbean and Italy pretty much depend on tourists to have a functional economy. Italy hardly has a government half the time, do you think the court system is in working order? Good luck suing a tourist (your example) in either place.
The point is not to pay the 25K and be done with it. once they do, it sets a legal precenedt, and then 300 million americans can also sue and expect payment...
Besudes, it's the principal of the thing. Even if it was for a buck, I'd counter sue myself just to help stem the flow of frivilous lawsuits from trolls.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I've had blinds; nothing lets the light in like having them all the way open. Even the sheer window curtains we have block less light than blinds would. Since I don't think I need to worry about hurricanes, the curtains are fine.
I think VT's law is more reasonable; anything you put in place indicates your wish for privacy. People shouldn't have to do anything extraordinary (such as build a house undergroud, as another poster suggested) for other's to respect one's privacy.
I don't suppose you believe they should be prosecuted either? Maybe you've got a point, but I guess my basic desire to be left alone by the internet unless I go out and seek its involvement in my life is behind my dislike of the entire program of streetview. In the end I really don't want people taking pictures of my house so anyone can see it, something that may be useful for commercial establishments I find to be pointless when applied to private residences. And when I see something to be pointless my imagination begins to start working on things that it could be used for, silly and ridiculous at they may seem.
My last sill statement on the matter is that this is why we need to keep our grandparents at home instead of nursing homes. So they can sit on the porch with a shotgun and shoot people who tresspass onto our property.
Where I agree that cataloging certain types of information for the use by other people may not make sense, fact is, that information, pictures and all, is already cataloged... Google is just making it easier to get from a map to a landmark without having to look in multiple databases.
Granted, I'm not thrilled my home is out there for everyone to look at, but then there's the question, who's looking?
Do you know of anyone who simply types random street addresses into search engines to see what might have been going on at that spot sometime between 3 and 36 months ago by looking at a grainy image, and you don't even get a date to corelate the image to? The only people looking at google street view are people who have an interest in going to an address very close to yours... Even if some bozo in alabama looks up your pretty home in PA, what's he gonna do with that knowledge? he doesn't know you, likely will never enter your town, and likely you're not in the picture anyway...
I might suggest google stick to pointing their cameras forward only, except where there's a sign, landmark, public structure, or some other worthwhile landmark to record. They don't need to run down every random street and have perfect images of each house. The view looking forward usually provides all the landmarks one needs in rural areas. I coul dunderstand taking a shot of an intersection from every direction, but if all there are are houses on a street, I don't need a pic of each one... If I'm going to someone's house, they can describe it to me...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Then you have grounds for a suit. But if you're not even going to exercise the due diligence to go that far? Sorry, I have no sympathy.
In some places, you aren't allowed to put a gate on a road that is maintained by the city. That was certainly true where I grew up. Of course, that's probably a local policy specific to that city.
Uh, no, that is absolutely not true. I was considering buying a piece of land in the Santa Cruz, CA area about a year ago. I read the paperwork on the land, and road maintenance costs were shared among the landowners. However, the road in question is most definitely on Google maps.
Just because it is a road, that doesn't make it public. It could be semipublic, and with a gate, it might even be considered private, albeit not with respect to aerial photos. That said, I do agree that the people suing probably don't have a case, just not for the reasons you state.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
the name "Street View" implies pictures of what it would look like if you were walking down a street like a normal person, not walking up random people's driveways like a creep when their houses are clearly set back from the road. That is a problem even if the road is not marked private, but especially so when it is. Instead of casting them as greedy bastards, has no one considered that they might be trying to increase the publicity for what Google is doing with Street View? I don't know if that is what this couple is doing, but doesn't that possibility come up in almost every discussion of a seemingly frivolous lawsuit?
Street View and other GISes being widely available for anyone to search could have an effect on the housing market, but only as far as shady realtors/sellers/landlords who purposely leave out pictures of their properties no longer need bother trying to keep you from seeing it until they are twisting your arm and bending your ear.
That lawsuit is not a real case - its pure nonsense. You seem to agree it's not illegal to take pictures of a house, so wheres the argument?
One set of those laws deal with trespassing on private property. There's also precedent for devaluing property and some other precedent for mental anguish. It's up for the courts (not you) to decide if they apply here. That's what the courts are for.Taking pictures of a property does not devalue a property. That's sheer nonsense. So is the mental anquish claim. If they really had mental anguish, give them $10 for some Tylenol. What a crock.
And since you say that its not my decision on whether or not taking pictures is illegal, why is it you can say that I cant have you arrested for stalking? According to your argument shouldn't I have the full right to have you arrested for stalking (and probably sue you for mental anguish) then let the courts decide?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Are there no parents discussing this issue? I'm guessing that no one is going to be too happy that little Johnny who they sent out to play in the yard is now smiling on Google maps directly under his address with a "Directions to" bar over his head. First they tell parents they have to be ever-vigilant to keep the kids off the Net and away from the thousands of predators who are supposed to be lurking around every corner of cyberspace while Google is shooting drive-bys and putting the kiddies' pictures up and telling the predators exactly how to find them. But who are we to complain; it's all about the bottom line.
um, it's not like there's a "search for pics including kiddies" link in Google's map system. You have to know an address, then search for it, or at least in a vicinity of it, then zoom in and look at street view in tiny increments.
Since the images are primarily shot between 9 and 4 on weekdays, the chance of their even being a kiddie in your yard is slim, more over when you factor the chance of one actually getting snapped at that moment the google van passes, once every year or two.
Also, child predators hunt in their own back yards. (the small handful of them that currently exist in the USA). They already KNOW where your kiddie is. They don't need google. All they have to do is follow a school bus...
This is NOT a concern...
Besides, who's to say the surveyor didn't snap a pic with your kiddie in it, and you can allways ASK FOR IT TO BE REMOVED.
Better yet, if your kiddie is outside,m you should be FUCKING SUPERVISING!
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
So if you lived on a large, fenced, secluded, private property and the satellite or plane snaps the shot while you and your wife(or husband) are sunbathing nude in the backyard, then you wouldn't feel violated? There's a difference between being seen on the sidewalk and being seen inside your 8-foot high walls just because some voyeuristic fuck flies a plane over your pad to get a peek at your partner.
The Google vehicle was trespassing on private property....wouldn't probably have been a problem if they had snapped a photo from a public road.....around here a person can get a load of buckshot in their rear window for going up a private driveway unannounced and taking photos....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Have you seen the pictures? If that road is private, then they sure did a good job hiding that fact. If I was driving a car in the area, I wouldn't know that this was a private road either. At no point did I see a sign to the effect of "this is our property line" or any such thing. As a car driver in the area I would've driven up right to the house where I would've noticed "oh, this is a private driveway, not a through-street. Oops. Let me turn around and get back to the real road." And if there was a camera on the top of my car, I would have taken pictures already at that point.
Hiding the fact that this is private property and then trying to extort money from folks who happen to stumble onto it is called entrapment if I understand the legalese right...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Are we looking at the same pictures? Because I did not see any kind of mark anywhere that there was a private property starting somewhere. If you can't be bothered to put up a little sign that says "this is my driveway" then how do you expect people to know that it is?
Especially if you're suing to remove images from the web that would tell people that this is a private driveway.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
>>> >>>"because only the *inside* of a house is truly private."
>>>"This is a slippery slope. I believe that my "private" property is private. For anyone to publish photos of this should require my permission"
Your property is certainly private, but if sunlight bounces off your house and leaves your properly, then it's open to anyone who wants to capture it with a photonegative or CCD. You can control access to your land, but you can't control the sunlight that leave it & enters your neighbors' lens.
That's what I meant in my original statement. You can't block people from seeing the outside of your house; only the inside can be blocked. Only the inside view is truly private. (Unless you decide to erect huge walls around your property, but even then it's still visible from above.)
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Being a nudist, I wouldn't care.
;-)
Enjoy the view.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The amazing thing is that you welcome this with such open arms. Do you not remember when you were a kid being able to play in your yard for hours without your parents hovering over you, scanning the horizon? Do you not remember being able to run up and down your block with the other kids and having your mom call you in for dinner after a few hours of playing in the neighborhood? Oh, it occurred to me that maybe you're too young to remember that. And now our children have the misfortune of growing up in a world where parents must accept that random people will be pointing cameras at their property at an unspecified time (sometime between 9 and 4) and that if kiddie wants to ride his bike up and down the driveway for a few minutes, you must stand next to them the whole time. What a sad childhood our kids are going to have. And how many lessons in life are they going to miss out on because people like you require parents to hover over their children like nervous Nellies after you've gleefully informed them that they and their children have no expectation of privacy. "Hey, parents! Google is taking pictures of your home. AT&T is tapping your phone. Comcast is tracking your email. But what are you complaining about?! You have no expectation of privacy. You should be SUPERVISING!"
I can see why they want that 25k. I can't wait 'till google takes a picture of my house. I'm going to renovate the top floor!
I don't care if you try to have me arrested for stalking. I was trying to point out that you wanted to have your cake and eat it to. Seemed like you were saying Google should be able to take pictures of this guys house from a private road, sure I can do that too but then you'll invoke stalking. Then I took a stand against that. Yeah, that's for the courts (and ultimately your peers) to decide.
I guess I'll go and look at this OTHER article that showed up today, where Google drove right up the driveway. Since we are discussing the minutiae here instead of the big picture ("Do-No-Evil's trespassing, privacy issues etc.") let's agree to disagree.
"But if your house is on a private road, and the photographer took a picture of your house from your private property then that would be a problem. TFA leads me to believe this is what happened. And if it is then Google should pay."
You're half right. Google made a mistake in photographing that house, but they shouldn't pay $25,000, that's insane. They should apolojize and take doen the pictures.
I suppose you've never driven down a private road or driveway without permission? Should I pay the owner of a house $25,000 because I got lost on a narrow street and needed to make a three point turn? Get real.
No, I'm not having my cake and eating it too. As I said I'm fine with people taking pictures of my house. It's you who are trying to compare apples and oranges.
Google took a picture - one time. You were stating that you were going to repeatedly drive by and take pictures everyday. As I pointed out it's the repeated actions that turn the issue from a simple, legal picture taking to something potentially illegal.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Google took millions of pictures and has trespassed more than once, which is documented by the very photos they have taken. That makes them a repeat offender, no? I really don't get why you think Google hasn't done anything wrong.
The rule is that anything visible from public property is fair game. To me, this is a fairly sensible rule, and I wouldn't expect that others would allow me to unduly infringe on their rights by demanding they shield their eyes from things I emit into the public spectrum.
One exception to this rule, notably, is that the government (only, this doesn't apply to private citizens) may not sense and record non-visible parts of the spectrum without your permission...apparently the law holds that if you emit infrared or ultraviolet radiation into a public space, and the government detects and records that, it constitutes unreasonable search and seizure. A few years ago DEA agents used an infrared camera to detect the goings-on inside a meth lab and tried to include it as evidence in the case, and it was promptly thrown out.
In your example, if you sunbathe nude in your back yard, you should make sure that you are not visible to the public, pure and simple. Up until now, we didn't have technology (at least, not technology that was pervasive enough to make it an issue) to worry about being photographed from above, or from space, and now that's a problem. However, it poses an interesting problem. You might say that constitutes an unreasonable invasion of privacy, but I might say the value of being able to take high-res satellite photos from space and view them on the web outweighs that.
The future is fast coming, people, you'd best prepare for it. The day is soon approaching when many people will have eye implants that allow them to see, even to detect non-visible parts of the spectrum and see thru clothes, makeup, etc. Heck, right now anyone with a modified camera and the right optical filter can do that (warning: not necessarily safe for work). Someday soon thereafter those implants will be able to dump much of what someone sees to a personal HD or upload it to an off-site location. When the image falling on anyone's eyes becomes exportable, what happens to privacy?
As an amateur photographer myself, I'm occasionally accosted by someone trying to prevent me from taking pictures of their house, their kids, their observatory (yes, this happened to me at the top of Mauna Kea). It's ridiculous. For the most part, if I can see it, the law allows me to photograph it. If you don't want me photographing it, then you probably shouldn't let me see it. And this applies not just to public land, but also any situation in which I'm not trespassing—that is, if you invited me onto your property, provided I wasn't shooting a situation where the subject has an expectation of privacy, it's perfectly legal.
I definitely don't have all the answers on this topic, but I can say with confidence that it's a complicated issue that will likely have a complicated answer.but have you considered the following argument: shut up.