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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.
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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
If you stood out on the street and took pictures of my house, I'd fear for my family's safety.
Anonymous Coward
could you make a copyright claim about photos of your house under U.S. Copyright law, as a "3-D work of art"?
No. Taking a picture of your house isn't "copying" it. Taking the plans of your house and building an exact copy of it _might_ be a violation of copyright.
Just thinking this couple didn't think creatively enough here for the proper law that could be used for a suit.
No, the couple are just money grubbers looking for a payday from someone with deep pockets. Sometimes people just have no case.
AccountKiller
People take pictures of buildings all the time. If you took a picture of mine, I probably wouldn't notice... Unless you started doing it frequently. In which case, I may well take a picture of you. People are too paranoid.
Follow me
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.
"Strike one" or "Score one"?
This is certainly a case which didn't need to go to court. Google will quite happily remove their pictures if they want. Any anguish suffered was brought on by their own actions. Barely anyone would have seen the pictures had it not been publicised by the court case.
Anyway, the Boorings will probably be slapped with a bill from their lawyer, thus teaching them a very valuable lesson.
If only common sense reigned, this would be so. See ASMP's page on photographing public buildings; not every building is impacted, but I've seen cases where museums and the like claimed that the architecture of the building itself constitutes a work of art, and that photography of the same was forbidden.
No. Taking a picture of your house isn't "copying" it. Taking the plans of your house and building an exact copy of it _might_ be a violation of copyright.
Because we signed the Berne Convention, we recognize copyright in architectural works. However, we make exceptions for photographs, etc., of buildings that are in public places.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
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?
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.
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.
Question: Can I take lots of pictures of people in public, arrange them, put them on a website and then collect ad revenue?
Do you have any references for this?
This is from Wisconsin. Here you go: Wisconsin Statute 943.13 Trespass to Land.
Your ideals won't save your stupid ass from a beating or a bullet. Wise up.
Your beating or bullet won't save you from a civil suit or jail time. Wise up.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Your ideals won't save your stupid ass from a beating or a bullet. Wise up. The real world doesn't give a shit about you.
I love how these so called god fearing Christian Republicans will claim they will shoot you for setting one foot on their private property.
You do realize killing someone for simple trespass on your driveway will land you in jail for manslaughter. Or maybe you're too stupid.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Totally reasonable. After all, tons of psychos dare the police to catch them before their crimes by doing daylight stakeouts of their potential victims. They always take a ton of photos of the outsides of the houses, it really turns them on or something.
But what you can be sure of is that it wasn't an architecture or art student, a real-estate photographer, a private investigator looking for someone else, bird-watcher checking out the birds in the chimney, or anything harmless.
Certainly it's a danger to your family. Your kids. They're the cutest ones in the whole world and it's amazing psychos haven't found them yet. Act quickly to ensure this breach is rectified.
Remember, for safety, never let anyone photograph your children. In fact, any men (and 10% of women) who see them will likely be driven to extremes of lust - prepare for group attacks where an entire mob tries to seize your children.
Seriously! If you aren't panicking you don't love your children!
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.
Why fear? Have you been so brainwashed by the "War on Terror" that someone taking a picture of (what I'm assuming to be) a nice building would make you freak out and fear for your life?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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!
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.
.... just as it's illegal to photograph people who are clearly identifiable in public and selling those photos.
Yet there is an entire industry that does just this to people in the public eye. Is there some legal exemption for people who have been previously in same lame film or made a pop song?
Or are you in fact talking complete and utter rubbish.
If there was such a law you can bet people like Brad Pitt and Britney Spears would be using it regularly to get some privacy from the Paparazzi.
There is only one law I can think of that this would break, and that MIGHT be Sharia Law, but since I am not an expert on the Qur'an I am not even sure of that.
I dont read
Yes http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/10/1033204
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.