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Google's Street View Meets Resistance In France
Ian Lamont writes "Google has begun to scan the streets of Paris as part of its Street View service, but the company may be hindered from publishing them unedited. The reason? French privacy laws. Google may be forced to blur faces or use low-resolution versions of the photographs. The Embassy of France in the US has a page devoted to French privacy laws, that says the laws are needed to 'avoid infringing the individual's right to privacy and right to his or her picture (photograph or drawing), both of them rights of personality.'"
What exactly is illegal,
1. taking a picture in France
or
2. publishing it in France?
To avoid (1), take the picture from space.
To avoid (2), put the servers in the U.S.
California has a similar law, Civil Code section 3344. This covers "publicity rights". Each person's "publicity right" in recognizable images of themself is by law worth at least $750, if used in any manner related to advertising or selling. If you're famous, the price goes up, to cover "actual damages".
So if you're in California and recognizable in Google StreetView, you could put in a claim. It's not worth it unless you're a major celebrity.
The online French Yellow Pages (http://www.pagesjaunes.fr) has a primitive streetview feature. Most of the pictures appear to be taken early in the morning when there are very few pedestrians, but it's still fairly common to see people in the background.
It can be very useful for finding the final destination in a trip. A friend gave me a link to his new place using StreetView, with the "camera" pointed directly at which house was his. With this, I knew what to look for when I got into the area (as it was near impossible to see the markings on the houses at night.
StreetView has its purpose, it's really a matter of how follow directions.
Also, I've been using it for house hunting in the city I live in. I'm able to see what kind of homes are in the different neighborhoods around town without driving all over the place. Once I find some neighborhoods that I like I drive there myself just to get a feel for the area in person.
Its not what it is, its something else.
You know, people's rights to their image do not only exist in France.
Don't you remember the Australian Virgin mobile fiasco ? They had taken pictures from Flickr under the Creative Common license for their advertising campaign. So far, so good. However, they did not have the consent of the people on the pictures.
Now, the family of the girl on the picture got a little wild and sued both Virgin and Creative Commons. The latter case has been dropped, but I believe the former is still ongoing.
In most countries, it is legal to take and sell photos of people without their consent in a public place - otherwise it would be practically impossible to take pictures anywhere. What you're not allowed to do is to sell them for use in advertising, to endorse products or services etc. without the consent of the people involved (model release).
I'm not aware of the specific laws in France, it just seems to me that these picture agencies would have thoroughly investigated that before selling pictures of people taken in France. It seems particularly absurd to pic on google in this case, given all the other examples of public photography available. However the rules as quoted in the summary would outlaw tourists taking any pictures too - that seems unlikely in the extreme.
Since the google pics are not used to advertise a product or service (the people are in fact really incidental), they should be safe.
The case you're talking about took and used a photo for advertising, to endorse a product, and hence was illegal.
I don't think the article I mentioned is the best or most relevant report on that topic, but it is interesting to test the threshold of privacy. In fact it is very easy to connect information about a person with the picture from Google street map. E.g. in Germany you need to provide proper contact information on professional web site, including postal addresses. Install the right Firefox Plugin and you could see the picture of the house in Google maps.
Well, I do live in Paris, and I can tell you this law is not really enforced unless you explicitly ask for it. Several times, photographers (*professional* ones I mean) tried to take a photograph of my baby girl (a cute and smiling one, but I'm not neutral on that topic! ;-), without asking for authorization, of course. I had to ask them to stop that, which usually led to a verbal argument.
Google has been caught red-handed. Good. Next time they will hide their cameras and nobody will notice, except for the few usual whistleblowers.
Sometimes when I had to go someplace I wasn't familiar with, I'd drive through the day, week before, so I would be on time. Now I've used street view to get a look at the address, and just have an idea of what landmarks to look for. I suspect if everyone did something similar we would probably be able to see a small decline in accident rates as people would be more focused on driving rather than looking at building numbers. Not to mention gas prices being what they are and time being what it's always been, it's just convienent. I would think using street view for voyeurism is a little unnecessarily time intensive. But that's not something I'd be inclined to bother with anyway.
The law is the law, and Google need to respect the local laws.
Yes, but that may not mean what you think it means.
French laws apparently are restrictions on publishing, not taking, pictures. So, Google can legally take those pictures, and legally take them out of French jurisdiction. And since they are not subject to French laws in the US, they can publish them in the US unedited. Google would seem to be in full compliance with all local laws at all times.
They do it in China, with their censored Google, so I can't imagine them putting up too much of a fight against French privacy laws.
Yes, and by that analogy, Google can censor French content for French viewers going to French Google servers, and everybody else can presumably see the uncensored images.
Of course, I expect Google to back down on this and censor French pictures globally, but I don't think they have any particular legal obligation to do that.
What really amazes me is that yesterday people were arguing that people on a public street had no right to expect privacy from cameras.
Before people jump all over me about the diffences, yes, I realize that this is apples-to-oranges. There are lots of differences in how and why the laws are written, and a big difference between law enforcement cameras (presumably not for public distribution or corporate profit), and Google cameras, etc etc etc.
What surprises me is that two societies with such close physical, economic, historic (+/- ad infinitum) ties have such radically different expectations of control over personal images taken in public.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Yes, and current French law would actually have made it difficult - if not impossible - for French photographers such as Cartier-Bresson to practice their art, no? What about Doisneau and Ronis? Boubet? It seems like an entire period of French public life is going to be recorded but not published or displayed the way much of the 20th century was - due to fear of lawsuits. There are limits in the US, but generally anything that is taken in public, and is for editorial purposes (including artistic) is legal - commercial use (like advertising) requires a release. Sure, France can pass any law - but it's unfortunate that something like French street photography - which has had a particularly lyric quality to it - should be limited now. I would have enjoyed seeing what that tradition, reinvented with today's technology, might've been able to show. Bringing that humanist tradition to bear on the spontaneous moments of everyday public life would be especially welcome in today's world. I guess future generations will have to settle for mass-media portrayals of today's life, and news coverage of spectacle and tragedy. That's ok, if it's actually what the people of France want. It seems like something is being lost, though.