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German Photog Wants to Shoot Buildings Excluded From Street View
crf00 writes with this report excerpted from Blogoscoped: "'Spiegel reports that German photographer and IT consultant Jens Best wants to personally take snapshots of all those (German) buildings which people asked Google Street View to remove. He then wants to add those photos to Picasa, including GPS coordinates, and in turn re-connect them with Google Maps. Jens believes that for the internet 'we must apply the same rules as we do in the real world. Our right to take panoramic snapshots, for instance, or to take photographs in public spaces, both base laws which determine that one may photograph those things that are visible from public streets and places.' Jens says that for his belief in the right of photographing in public places, as last resort he's even willing to go to jail. Spiegel says Jens already found over 200 people who want to help out in this project and look for removed locations in Google Street View, as there's no official list of such places published by Google."
If a photographer wants to take a picture of a building out of personal interest, I'll side with him. If he wants to share that photo, I'll still side with him. But this isn't just a photograph, it's being attached to GPS coordinates and being included in a navigable recreation of the world- something very different from a simple photograph.
Another way to look at it is people's concern over privacy with regard to data mining by corporations. Most people aren't too concerned about one piece of data being out there: name, address, favorite (something), job, salary, so long as they aren't linked together. When you start grouping that information, it goes from casual use of information to a potential intrusion of privacy. Personally, I don't feel Street View infringes my privacy enough to have a problem with it, but I understand how others might feel it is invasive.
(note to mods: this is a copy of my post below, I'm posting twice as I don't expect mods to still be reading this story-- you can ignore this copy)
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