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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."
This doesn't seem to be a "The man is restricting our rights", more of a "people are nicely asking for some attempt at privacy", and this asshole (Jens Best) wants to say "FUCK YOU, I'm going to go against you because I can, even though you were nice enough to ask otherwise"
The manually taken photos were of higher quality, and more detail than the Google streetview ones. Then the request to remove from streetview........ could result in more detailed imagery of the area being posted to a place where more people will notice it
(Since streetview is so large, and has so many images.... a picture of an obscure place would probably not be noticed by many people, let alone get any attention or concern)
I can remember getting off the train at the Pentagon. I wanted to go upriver on foot to photograph the skyline of DC at night from across the river (don't ask me why -- ugly city). It didn't take too minutes before a Hummer came rolling out and a guy in a gun turret (gun pointed at me) told me to go away and not take any photos.
Like it or not, some really stupid rules -- and even just really stupid etiquette -- governs what you can and cannot photograph.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Yes, but how far did you push back when you were challenged?
It's really pretty clear that a photographer has certain rights to shoot photos anyplace in public in the U.S.A. Government has often tried to intimidate photographers, under the guise that "national security" demands they cease, or alternately, lower-level security protests under false claims that some "policy" was violated.
The Amtrak photography incident comes to mind: http://carlosmiller.com/2008/12/27/amtrak-police-arrest-photographer-participating-in-amtrak-photo-contest/
A good guide to your REAL photographer's rights can be found here: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
Having a gun pointed at you is a pretty strong intimidation tactic, yet if you're confident you're in the right, you can still stick up for your rights in that situation. Some soldier driving out to meet you in a Hummer is probably NOT prepared to fire a weapon at a civilian photographer. WAY too many consequences for an action that extreme. So you *could* have let them arrest you and take your camera, rather than complying ... and you'd have a really GOOD chance of coming out the victor.
But let's face it.... that skyline photo probably wasn't something you wanted badly enough to fight for it.
...it is about not being a douche bag.
Really, it isn't illegal and that isn't why Google removes them. He isn't going to get arrested so his willingness to have that done is irrelevant. What he is doing is being a a major asshole and justifying being proud of it under some "information wants to be free" meme.
My address, phone number, and a great deal of other information is certainly public knowledge - one can look it up on the internet (and I even use an abbreviated version of my real name so it isn't even that hard), yet I still wouldn't want all that attached to every post I made. There is a great deal of public information that we *all* would rather not telegraph in that well a concise and easy simple way to view. I'm willing to be this guy has a number of things about his life he considers private, is legally not, and would be royally pissed if people made a point of putting it on the internet. If someone walking down the raod asked politely to not be photographed few would call him a hero of anything if he then not only followed them taking all the photos he could but made sure that everyone singled them out to show what they would rather have private - no different here. I don't care about my picture being on Google Street View (well, other than the car was taking pictures when a police man was telling me to move my truck is parked in the road because someone up the street complained - we are on a dead end road. It's amusing as you can clearly tell I'm out on my front porch, the police car in the street, and the man in Blue talking to me - but then I find the thing more amusing than anything especially since I can pinpoint the exact time the car want by) and can't really see why anyone would care - but if they did it is called being a nice person to remove it.
If he wants to push a real cause go take photographs of military installations or secure places like nuclear power plants. But then there you are actually likely to have real consequences instead of just being a douche bag and making people mad. Plus it is places that are actually illegal to photograph, used to be legal to do so, and there is a great deal of debate on what should and should not be allowed. Peoples houses in mapping software? Not so much - as is he is simply trying to make himself feel better by doing something minor/worthless and rationalizing that it is somehow, in someway, actually edge and dangerous. Yea, go stick it to the man! Just wait until these people see their houses photographed on the Internet, that'll show !
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Not sure what you're inferring from the summary, or implying with your "moral high ground" comment, but he's not trying to "stick it" to Google. Google have just complied with requests to remove the photographs. I think he's going to do what they can't(or won't) do, i.e. take pictures and link them to Google maps. If the same people want to request that those photographs be taken down, presumably Google won't be able to just remove them...as they are expected to do when it's their photographs and they're trying to avoid a lawsuit/Bad PR. Even if Google does take them down, he can still find some other way to do it..
Why Google removed them in the first place I have no idea. Photographs taken of anything from the street must surely be allowed on the grounds that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy if your building is situated on a public right of way?
In Germany, there's the so-called freedom of the panorama, which means, that you're allowed to take pictures of the panorama in public places, which includes houses etc. However, that freedom is limited to a natural perspective, so you may take take the picture while walking down the street, but you may not use a stepladder or step on a car roof to get a higher vantage point. It's a very simple to understand and convenient rule about private space. If you don't want to be photographed in your garden, make the wall high enough that people passing-by can't see over it. If someone peeks over that wall and takes pictures, he's invading your privacy.
So what the photographer proposes to do is probably perfectly legal. With the Google streetview cars the problem is, they take the pictures from higher up than regular eye level, thus the freedom of the panorama doesn't apply to them and they get in all kind of trouble. There's another company (can't remember which one) taking pictures of streets, but they have mounted the cameras directly on the car roof, probably to avoid the problems Google has.
All in all, Google is in this mess in Germany because they didn't bother to check local laws and believed American rules apply everywhere.