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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.'"
Google driver did enter a private road by mistake. There is now available a very sophisticated bit of technology that is guaranteed to ensure that this never happens again. I believe the scientific name for the device is a "gate".
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No.
We can not afford to continue down the vein of 'If it isn't locked, then you deserve what happens to you' line of thinking.
It's crap, it's harmful, and it only empowers criminals, and insurance companies...but I repeat myself.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll see your deer photo and raise you Pittsburgh Samurai Battle
You're an idiot for leaving your door open, and the person who took it is a thief who deserves fines and jail time. Blame and fault are not zero-sum games.
Street View blurs faces and license plates.
Google maps is also good at respecting the privacy of retired military officers!
I disagree. Approaching someone's door [almost] always requires stepping onto their private property without their prior consent. Until that is not the norm, you cannot institute a blanket ban on the practice.
What an inane straw man you've created. Does anyone think, "if I can see it it is mine?" Of course not. If I park my car on the side of a (public) road or in my (private) driveway, the theft of it is the same crime. No one seriously argues that taking a parked car is "okay" because it's in a public place. The only question is whether there are privately owned places that are publicly accessible. And the answer in most places is an emphatic YES. That includes driveways, front walkways, etc. But it does NOT follow from that that the users of those spaces then somehow get rights over that place. It remains privately-owned, and a random person can't, for instance, remove the paving stones from in front of my house without expecting legal consequences. It's easy enough to keep the two sets of rights separate, unless you are willfully obtuse.
.sig withheld by request
If you leave the door to your home open and come home to find that someone is photographing your things
The next product from Google Labs! It's like Google search for your PC, it's Google House View (beta). Can't remember what your bathroom floor looks like, can't see it from the sofa, and you're too lazy to stand up? Google can help!
You appear to be testing whether the car is equal to the constant expression 'allowed to be here' rather than testing whether the 'allowed to be here' property for the car is true. Since you are comparing things of two different types for equality, it seems that the most likely result of this will be to fire missiles at everything that approaches.
Remind me not to visit your house...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.