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Judge Dismisses Google Street View Case
angry tapir writes "A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania family against Google after the company took and posted images of the outside of their house in its Maps service. The lawsuit, filed in April 2008, drew attention because it sought to challenge Google's right to take street-level photos for its Maps' Street View feature. Judge Amy Reynolds Hay from the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted Google's request for dismissing the lawsuit because 'the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim under any count.'"
My favorite Google Street View story: Google Maps Car Hits Deer.
Just like the settlement it reached with book authors, Google could give $66 to each homeowner photographed by StreetView. We could call that agreement the Google stimulus package :-)
There is a serious discussion to be had about privacy rights and Google's objective to picture, reference and catalog everything. Some inside Google take the "do no evil" to heart. Street View blurs faces and license plates.
Good, but I wish it didn't have to be voluntary. We know what voluntary compliance by various industries lead to. That's why privacy laws have to set clear boundaries. In the dismissed lawsuit, note that the Google driver did enter a private road by mistake. Mistakes in sensitive privacy situations can be very damaging.
--
Join a FairSoftware Project: share the revenue, be part of important decisions
Strike one for those who believe that not every dispute should be resolved in court, and not every resolution must involve money damages.
Was that because they were too Boring?
Anonymous Coward
I agree that mistakes in sensitive privacy situations can be damaging. But this particular plaintiff, the court found, failed to show that it was damaging in their situation, which is the requirement to sue for damages. They claimed they suffered $25,000 in emotional anguish, and the court held that they didn't provide any plausible legal arguments to support that damage claim.
If we do think, as a matter of public policy, that even harmless violations should be penalized in order to discourage them, there's a way to do that: pass a law that establishes a fine for such violations. The fine, of course, should go to the government, not the plaintiff, unless the plaintiff actually was harmed. Public policy via, you know, actual laws and law enforcement, not ambulance-chasing lawyers and "mental-anguish"-inventing plaintiffs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I bet if I stood out on the street and took pictures of their house and posted them on my blog they wouldn't notice or care. But Google has lots of cash, so they sue them.
I worry about Google knowing too much about me, but not about them taking a picture of the outside of my house.
Think Deeply.
If you drew up original house plans and had your house built to specification, could you make a copyright claim about photos of your house under U.S. Copyright law, as a "3-D work of art"?
Better yet, if you took photos of your house and made a deposit of those photos together with the blueprints, would the Library of Congress accept the copyright registration (for statutory damages)?
Just thinking this couple didn't think creatively enough here for the proper law that could be used for a suit.
Heck, patent the driveway of your home (this was about Google using a private road to get a view of their house) and get a lawsuit on Google for patent infringement for duplicating the "aesthetics" of the driveway design into Google Earth, including form and function.
One would expect them to worry at least as much and blur the military bases of their own and friendly nations... You know, the gals and guys, who ensure that Google (and its, supposedly, privacy-minded insiders) can continue to exist...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They didn't file a criminal tresspass complaint; they sued them for civil damages. You can see why, though; presumably fines for tresspassing are relatively negligable, probably in the range of three or four digits, so it's not like they'd change Google's behavior. Of course, $25K is equally peanuts for them.
Depends on whether or not the plaintiffs clearly posted the road as private property. Otherwise it's a pretty benign mistake to accidentally drive the Google van up it.
-IANAL
A private road doesn't necessarily mean that it's private property. It just means that maintenance of the road is not the responsibility of the local city/county, etc. Of course, the road could be on private property, in which case it seems some kind of no trespassing sign or a gate would be in order.
hahaha.. i just posted about this.
+5 for COMMON SENSE.
Those stupid camera cars need to *KNOW* what they are doing *BEFORE* they do it. Currently, they just breach privacy and allow people to opt-out of being put on public display. That is WRONG WRONG WRONG.
What's the difference between a knowing-trespasser and an unkonwing trrespasser? Simple -- only one of them knows what might be coming to them.
Privacy > Google Fanaticism.
It doesn't seem to matter to Google whether or not you mark the property as private property. This is not the first time the Google maps van has entered property they had no right to. They have previously ignored clearly posted "No Trespassing" signs and entered private property: Google Maps Trespassing Again.
Trespassing does exist; it's just a matter of whether or not the property owner decides to enforce it or not - and Google saying that they provide opt-out functionality to removed pictures from Google Maps is no excuse for blatantly ignoring the "No Trespassing" signs in the first place. This is like saying I can get away with selling door-to-door even to households with "No Hawking" signs posted (which to be honest most door-to-door salespeople do anyway).
Most of the time when you see someone standing in the street taking pictures of your house, they are real estate appraisers shooting photos of the comparables for their report. They're usually harmless. Either that or your wife is up on the roof naked again.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
they have since removed the image. But if you look carefully, you can see the deer on the left before it got hit.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Breaking one law doesn't make everything else you do a crime. Taking photos isn't a crime unless your truly invading someones privacy. The mistake that Google made was trespassing and nothing more. The photos are still legit unless they showed the owners sunbathing nude or having sex in the living room window. That would be a true invasion of privacy and something worth suing over.
If you could manage to get inside of Google and take pictures then yes, anything you photograph is yours to keep. What you do with said photos though is another mater. The most someone can do is ask you to leave when your on private property or call the cops. They can't take your film or camera. If they do, charge them with theft.
nah couldn't be must be dreaming .....
someone wake me up .
IANAL, but I was under the impression that (in a lot of places, I don't know about where these people live) it's only trespass if the area is marked as some way.
For instance, let's say that you live on a corner, and you have a big lawn. It's legal for me to cut across your lawn. However, if you have a fence around it, or a sign that says 'gtfo my lawn,' then I can't.
Regardless, it's certainly legal to take a picture from public property, ie, the street. Now, if you look, where their house is is pretty close to the street. Yeah, they're on a 'private lane,' but it's not very long. Who knows if their sign was even up or not? Of course, they'll say it was... but was it really?
If you tried to walk into Google's office and start snapping pictures, they could certainly ask you to stop. It's a pretty poor analogy.
You know, your posts really paint you as an extremely violent and ill-tempered person. I'm going to wager that you are not a violent person, so you may want to try not to come off as such an internet-tough-guy.
That being said, I mostly agree with you. If something like this happened once, by accident, then removal of the pictures and a good talking-to would probably be in order. Its typically not well-advised to sue people or companies over simple accidents that can be resolved amicably. The question in my mind is whether Google is repeatedly doing this, whether on purpose or on accident, and whether appropriate information is there for Google to avoid this.
If the appropriate information isn't there, then I'm going to call no-foul on Google's part and wag my finger at the city and the property owners for not properly making public where public property ends and private property begins. One cannot reasonably hold someone accountable if they cannot tell what is private or public property.
I'm guessing, however, that the information is out there. So the question is whether this is a one-off accident, systematic negligence, or a beg-forgiveness-instead-of-ask-permission case. If its negligence, then Google needs to be fined and held accountable. If its the latter... then they need to be hit hard.
...but, when you try to beat me down for walking on your drive-way, I may just bash your stupid fucking head in in self-defense! Jack-Ass!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Why are we discussing Google as though the entire company has made the decision to trespass or not to trespass? As far as I know, the trespassing issues have come from a single google maps car, not all of them (assuming they do indeed have a fleet). Thus, it would be on the heads of the camera car's drivers to have made the decision to trespass or not. If they submit photos which don't show a "Private property" sign, how are the maps guys back at headquarters going to know what's private?
I'd have slammed the individuals driving the mapmobile first, as they're far more likely to be deterred from further trespassing by that measly 4-digit fine, and it would also alert other drivers for Google to be on the lookout, as opposed to screaming and fussing for the entire company to get down on its knees and apologize.
What is it about people that they always want to go for the top of an organization when the way to move mountains is to start at the base?
Because that's how the legal system works, and quite rightly so. If I get sick from a bad batch of cornflakes, I sue Kellogg's, not the guy who was working at the factory that day, even if it was his sneezing in the flakerator that made me sick. I happen to think that's good public policy: it will encourage Kellogg's to make sure its operations prevent this kind of thing from happening again. If the only person I could sue were the employee, there would be no incentive for Kellogg's to clean up their act and they would dump all the blame on the "bad apple." That's an upside of treating corporations as persons under the law (there are downsides as well, of course).
.sig withheld by request
Google blurred the satellite photo of the US Naval observatory in DC, a public building, in order to protect VP Cheney.
If Google is willing to protect the privacy of a public figure than it ought to be even more protective of the privacy of a private homeowner by burring a photo taken while being a non-invited intruder on that homeowner's own property.
No. This wasn't a ruling on the merits of the case, but rather a ruling on a failure to follow the rules governing court cases. Someone else could file a suit against Google, and this time not suck at it, and the case would proceed, probably without making any reference to the case discussed above.
Google blurred the satellite photo of the US Naval observatory in DC, a public building, in order to protect VP Cheney.
If Google is willing to protect the privacy of a man who can shoot you in the face with impunity
FTFY
You can't take the sky from me...
That stupid car shows up on my private property and they'll be lucky to leave with all their blood.
I've heard that in several european countries, Scotland for one, there is no law against walking onto someone else's land, provided you don't damage it. It seems a bit more complicated and debatable than that, but it seems clear that you can hike through someone's farmland and they have no legal right to shoot you. Not the case obviously in the US. What's with our trespassing obsession? I step foot on your land, you'll injure me just because you can? Is it that we think everyone is out to get us?
The legal system allows us to sue corporations, yes. The issue I have is that the corporation wasn't the one who told this guy to ignore Private Property signs, at least as far as we know. They seem to be denying that pretty strongly, and my guess is that no one really knew what had gone on except the drivers, until long after the pictures were taken.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the law would just as well allow you to sue the driver of the vehicle that trespassed as the company he was working for. The difference is in scale - as other posters have said, either way, the cost of one lawsuit isn't going to be monetary incentive to do anything. The media coverage might be, but you don't necessarily need to sue someone to make the news.
If Google or Kellogg's wants to blame the mistake on one "bad apple", let them. It could be the truth. If it's not the truth, it'll happen again and then you have two incidents to base a bigger lawsuit on.
You can not force people to follow company policy; no matter how many lawsuits you throw at Kellogg's there will always be one factory worker who decides he doesn't need his mask and sneezes in your corn flakes. All of us who have worked under someone know that there are plenty of opportunities to cut corners and break rules. Holding the corporation responsible for some assembly worker's bad idea is just one more way of relieving us of our own responsibility for actions on the job - actions which are supposed to uphold the company's reputation.
It's entirely possible the guy's gonna get fired, since I'm sure they know exactly who it was driving the van that day. That is as it should be. Doesn't mean you have to sue the company over it, if they've removed the source of the problem already.
Which is exactly what they did, you just need to ask as I'm sure the whitehouse/pentagon/navy/ did.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/faq.html#q6
But seriously taking a still picture from a public place without even using a telephoto lens seems a bit of a stretch to label "intruder".
My vacation snap shots have numerous people I don't know in them, and numerous houses in the background too. The photos of my kid playing in the yard has the neighbors house in it too. Are you seriously suggesting I should thus not let anyone see them?
No, the reason why is that criminal trespass fines would go to the government, whereas civil damages would go to the plaintiffs. They didn't want to set a precedent or punish google or discourage google from going it again. They wanted some cash.
It is definitely systematic negligence/disregard. I have observed this personally.
A few months ago, in my local area I was checking out street view and reported for removal 2 separate places that I knew were private roads and are clearly marked as such.
Google got back to me that they had removed it, but that does not change the fact as to what happened. It is quite obvious that their approach is to do what they want, then, if questioned, apologize and attempt to undo it.
I am not an extremely violent person, nor am I posing as an internet-toughguy. I am a mature and civil adult that will defend privacy to great extent; that is all. If I woke up in the middle of the night and you happened to be in my home, you would be hurt very badly unless you had the means to hurt me first.
Its a shame the google-fanboy mods out there don't have the integrity to protect privacy for others when such privacy is invaded by their prized e-totem of happiness. I guess google will have to start tracking all of their internet usage and making it public before they might start caring.
The people who mod me down for my expressed anger toward invasion of privacy are quite likely the same people who cry about Bush+Telecoms. But they don't like Bush.
Google, as a company, is responsible for the actions it makes. In this case, the standard operating procedure involves negligent disregard for privacy.
Maybe google will hold its individual car drivers' responsible, but since they are not enforcing such respects for law/privacy, they should as a whole be accountable for such actions.
Look at us getting modded down by google fanboys.
Fuck privacy, so long as the company you like is breaching it, right?
If Bush did this, we would have +5 Insightful.
This is killing my faith in slashdot.
Google Maps to "Tallahassee, FL" and drag the little yellow man onto the map without releasing the mouse button. Almost all the streets light up blue, indicating Street View. Of course, some extremely remote and rural streets aren't included, but that's par for the course.
But wait. See the white spot in the middle of the city? It's almost like the Street View drivers intentionally excluded that area.
That's Florida A&M University, a historically black state university--originally the State Normal College for Colored Students. Surrounding it is an economically depressed, predominantly black neighborhood. Nobody will deliver pizza there after dark.
I cannot imagine Google intentionally excluding it just because of race. It's not a safety issue either--it's nowhere near being a "carjackings in broad daylight" kind of place.
I'd love to know how that happened. Could Google have a policy telling drivers to avoid areas that make them feel uncomfortable? Needless to say, the presence of run-down houses and large numbers of black people does make some people feel uncomfortable, regardless of the reality of personal safety.
Also, where do I sign up to be a Street View driver?
Nothing more.
Nothing more if you don't care about privacy.
One of the first things we learned in the photography class I took in college was that photographing and selling the photos of someone's house is illegal in some places without the owner signing a release form, just as it's illegal to photograph people who are clearly identifiable in public and selling those photos. The only tyme it is legal when a release form is not signed but the photo is sold is if it is used as part of an editorial. Now, it may be legal in some places but not everywhere.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Some background on the law in the USA.
US law defines areas of private property in two different ways. There are true "private" areas, such as the inside of your home, and semi-public areas, called "curtilage." There's a sliding range of protection in each category, but we'll save that for another time.
Curtilage is your driveway, sidewalks leading up to your door, the treelawn, and possibly other areas immediately surrounding your house. Curtilage is basically any area where is is reasonable or expected for other people to enter. The reason there is a sidewalk leading to your front door is because you expect to use that door and you want people to use that path, instead of tramping across your lawn.
You can curb the expected curtilage rights to varying degrees by posting "Do Not Enter" signs, fencing in your yard, gating your driveway, etc. Otherwise the default is "anyone can enter," for reasonable/expected use.
Interestingly, anything the Police can observe inside the private areas of your property from the curtilage is fair game, in terms of not needing a warrant to enter. I.e., the police come to your front door and see [what reasonably appears to be] a kilo of cocaine, they can enter your house [at least as far as the room with the cocaine.]
Furthermore, at that point many jurisdictions would allow a brief search of the house in the name of officer safety too, to make sure there aren't any folks with weapons lurking. And anything illegal that is in plain sight can be seized. More than that, they do need a warrant, but it's a slippery slope. The moral is to hide your bad stuff in the first place.
I wandered a little off topic, but it calls for interesting analogies in the digital realm. What information that you send/receive is "private" and why/why not.
is that the couple requested Google remove photos of the home which Google complied. Yet the couple still claimed "damages"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Was that staged?
:)
It seems as if that short bit of Charlick Way and Sampsonia Street was taken at a different time of the day from the other streets.
Go down federal street and you'll see it's sunny with clear skies (and no battle) till it passes Sampsonia Street, then it becomes wet and cloudy (with the battle) then in the next shot it's back to sunny (and not battle) again. Similarly for Charlick Way.
Maybe they somehow missed that bit in an earlier pass and came back later when coincidentally a battle started just as they passed...
yes, I recall that the queen of England one had a trespasser in her house, but they could only remove him from the home and not file trespassing charges.
don't forget, The USA had to deal with having to house the British during a war to gain the independent. it's manifested itself within the trespass laws.
I myself have a no trespass sign on my walkway, and a gate. The gate is rigged so that when you open it at night a dog starts barking . I think it's funny, but if it keeps barking or my porch alarm hits I get my gun.
I have a thing about those holy joe's that come around my house, it's call the bad sprinkler system, works wonders. nothing better than on a Saturday morning (cold day) activating it when they are knocking on the door. I really need to set up a video cam.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Google has executives' homes on Google Street View, the Google Server farms and the entire Google Plex. They are openness luminaries and I commend them for taking the bold initiative of putting themselves out on the front lines.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If any private citizen walked around and took pictures from public land and published them online they'd have a website like mine. What did Google do that I did not, except accidentally stray onto private property in a small number of cases?
How does this compare to Bush wiretapping all domestic and foreign phone calls, hoping to get lucky and make up convictions after the fact?
I am a mature and civil adult that will defend privacy to great extent; that is all. If I woke up in the middle of the night and you happened to be in my home
Oh, by privacy you mean safety. Because yes, certainly someone was in your house without your knowledge or permission they could be a threat.
Here we thought you were freaked out by something trivial like someone standing on the street taking pictures that included your house.
Hah hah. How dumb that would be.
In sweden all general land areas are per definition public, only exception is the imediate surroundings of a house, farming fields with crops growing and of course military/industrial sites. But the later are not realy a problem, typicaly they are fenced.
Mostly it works quite ok, if you walk through the forest and happen to come upon a house, you just keep more or less out of sight, or at least outside the parts where they have cut the grass short. In the rural areas people quite often doesnt bother with fences, unless they want to keep animals out or in.
So its a nice country for trecking!
One look at their house and you can see why you wouldn't want to show the world. But being a whiny little troll and suing only to have the international media bring all eyes to your poorly kept property is hilarious. And what is with the number of garages?
Or in your case, fuck freedom unless it's YOUR freedom we're talking about.
Asshole.
Odd innit. One of the top ten. Don't see "Walking on my land" in the top ten.
Maybe it's in the unexpurgated Bible. The one with the Gannet.
I've never been robbed, but I'd like to think that the savings in "key hunting" time and frustration over the course of my entire life has long since paid for everything in my house. So if we lost it all now, I'd still be ahead in the deal.
Are you saying it's not like that where you live? Well, not to put too fine a point on it: you live in a lousy place.
Glad the judge in this case didn't reward the frivolous lawsuit.
Just another example of greedy people trying to make a quick million without earning it.
I live on a private road. I think it is fairly likely that a private road will be on private property. The road I live on is private property, with a "road use" agreement between the six property owners using the road, one of whom actually owns the property the road is on.
A "No Trespassing" sign or gate is not a reasonable requirement, as it may deter expected usage, such as deliveries, guests, etc. It would also be unreasonable if we were to call the police every time a car drove down our "private road."
However, if a Google Maps vehicle "accidentally" drove down our private road, and we found the data on-line, I think it would be reasonable for us to be able to request that Google Maps remove the private road view from their public servers. Making a view public that was gathered from a private location without explicit permission from the owner isn't reasonable in my opinion.
To use the curtilage principle brought up elsewhere, if a picture of my residence is taken from a public area, I don't think I should be able to complain. But if someone enters my property's "publically accessible area" (curtilage) to take pictures of my residence, I think they have gone beyond a reasonable use of that area and I should have a basis for a claim against them.
Try shooting someone just for walking on your land in the US, see how that works out for you. Despite what your local gun-toting lunatic might tell you, it ain't legal, it ain't moral, and it ain't American. You can tell them to leave and go from there, but unless they pose a danger to you shooting them is proof that you belong behind bars, at best.
sneezing in the flakerator
oh god, that made me laugh so hard. now i have to explain myself to my coworkers...
Google is selling eyeballs, the photos are lures for those eyeballs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
it seems clear that you can hike through someone's farmland and they have no legal right to shoot you. Not the case obviously in the US.
I don't know of any jurisdiction in the US where someone has a legal right to shoot you for ordinary trespassing. Not even Texas. Many states have "Castle Doctrine" laws, which say that if you break into a residence the owner can shoot you, but that's entirely different from walking on someone's fields.
Further, no US state that I'm aware of (and I've read the relevant laws of a lot of them) allows trespassing charges to be brought unless it has been made clear to the trespasser that he or she should not be there, either by a personal warning, a fence or signage (that is sufficiently prominent and placed so that the person should have seen it) indicating that trespassing is not allowed.
If there is no fence, and no signs and you trespass, then the owner can ask you to leave. If you don't, you're trespassing. If you do, you were technically trespassing but cannot be cited or charged.
In general, in the US, you can go anywhere you want as long as it's not fenced off or posted "no trespassing". And anyone who shoots you for going where you want is breaking the law unless you're breaking and entering.
Check your local laws to be sure what I'm saying is right in your jurisdiction, but I'll be shocked if it's not.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, explains our violent, gun-crazy culture here in the good ole USofA. Paranoia, insecurity and materialistic tendencies--mixed with a dash of nationalism, and some whacked out views on gun rights...voila!
You know, our daughters used to be able to go door-to-door and sell Girl Scout cookies, but now days, they are more likely to be assaulted than a homeowner is. You privacy freaks suffer from a completely out-of-proportion reaction to a made-up threat. It's like wearing a parachute on a commercial flight, or wearing a motorcycle helmet while driving your car.
You can't shoot someone just for walking on your land. You can't even shoot them if they refuse to leave. They have to present a clear and present danger beyond their mere presence to take any physical action against them. Most you can legally get away with is telling them to leave and calling the cops, but if they leave before the cops get there, it's very unlikely they'll even get a trespassing charge.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This is about PRIVATE roads (streets), not public streets. The street, too, is private.
I am glad to clear this up for you.
Oh my god, a case of trespassing. Someone needs killin'
I understood all along, I just don't give a shit about your private property or your little ape-like routine in defense of it. Seeing someone uninvited in your house would be a threat, seeing them on a private street outside your house would be... Odd.
Ugh, Ugh, Monkey Man.
Well then, what's so wrong about the government listening in on your phone calls? Its just a phone call, right? Not like they stepped in and interrupted you or anything.
Surely you care about that.
I hope your lackadaisic approach to privacy in this case is not driven by unquestioned faith in google. These encroachments are widespread and systematic, not individual cases.
The individual offense is not what I take issue with, but rather the systematic disregard that leads to the offense in such high frequency. Make an effort to inform yourself. Identify private roads you know of, go on streetview and look. I've already done this and found two in my local area, which is why I'm quite passionate about this topic.
Quite apparently, we don't all share the same common respect to privacy. Surely most people here do care, but this is not about privacy; rather it is whether we love google enough to ignore systematically offensive acts.
Ugh Ugh!
(pounds chest)
none of these people have their SAG cards on file damnit gumby - get those releases!!
Is it that we think everyone is out to get us?
Yes. Because they are.
While I think Google Maps Street View is a nice way to view a neighborhood, I think it also opens up some people for attack, making it all that much easier to find their house, and the neighbor's houses too; so I think there could be a charge against Google.
Certainly a fine is appropriate for this. From $5 - $5000 depending on whose mistake it was and what they had done to prevent it.
And beyond that, yes again. Full-blown conspiracy charges if they can prove this was a result of higher-ups collusion. Fines of 500 * the expected profits from those pieces, etc. Definitely corruption needs to be stopped and we aren't going to stop it at the Enron levels if we don't stop it at the lower levels too.
We value privacy as well, and have laws to protect/assure it. Trespassing, harassment, various peeping and anti-recording laws, etc.
But realistically, it's easy to walk/drive onto private property without noticing the signs, or without knowing where else to go. Both of those are valid reasons, imho, for people to breach 'private property' signs. After all, the sign just warns of the obvious - someone owns everything. But we walk/drive on various semi-public pieces of private property all day, like driveways, sidewalks, front path/steps, etc.
An actual 'No Trespassing' sign means that, but is it trespass for instance (in a lay-meaning, lawyers need not apply) to go knock on your door if I think there's something you need to know urgently enough?
To achieve, in a way that means "no really, I'll be pissed if you set a single foot on here", needs a BIG sign - one you can't miss. A marked fence (colored plastic tape woven through a fence, between trees, etc. So that there's not a single view of the property that doesn't mark it as off-limits.
If you aren't doing that it's silly and a bit rude to expect your land to remain untouched in any way.
It simply seems out of proportion. Private land is, yes, and you have some expectation of privacy, but not half as much as if you put up a gate, an unmissable sign... like curtains for your property.
Even if it is annoying though, what's the threat? Seeing someone on your private property is, I repeat, odd. Also maybe annoying. Seeing them in your house without permission is scary. The police deal with odd and annoying.
Fair enough, thanks for the reference, it does appear fairly complicated.
It is complicated, just one change can affect the legality of taking photos in public. So far I have only shot photos for myself, but even then when I'm out taking photos and someone is going to be identifiable I always ask them if I can take their photo. If they say no I'll look for something or someone else to shoot. Something I'll been thinking about though is to get one of those portable photo printers when I get a DSRL, I still use a 35mm film camera. That way I could offer to make a print of a photo for those I take photos of.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Perhaps you should have read my other posts on the subject. There is no one answer to everything. Under one set of circumstances something can be legal but change one thing and it becomes illegal. And what's legal in one place is illegal in another, even in the US.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?