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Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1
Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."
Will Google be allowed to make installment payments on that?
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Since the judge found for the plaintiff, you would have to assume each paid their own. If the Boring's lawyer worked on a contingency, that would land him around $0.33 cold hard cash, to spend as he would like.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I hope they enjoy their $1.
If I were in charge at Google, I would go in person to deliver then an enormous $1 cheque.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
And pull up in a Google Street View van?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
But since American law operates as much upon precedent as statute, this has significance.
Google (and others) now know it's not okay to come on to private property for photogathering without permission, and can't play dumb next time. Google wasn't trespassing "innocently" or "by mistake"; they were engaged in commercial activity and did what they did intentionally. The judge in the decision also laid out the circumstances under which the trespass would have higher costs. If Google does this to someone who DOES value their privacy, the cost would be higher, and if Google is caught doing this repeatedly then they are sooner or later going to run into a "You don't learn, do ya, boy?" judge. Remember also that trespassing is a criminal charge, and in many places the property owner could call the police or even make a citizen's arrest on the van with the funny thing on top.
I'd be interested in seeing how Google would react if someone drove into their parking lot, hauled out a camera and started photographing their campus, their employees and their employees' cars, then claimed they weren't doing anything that Google wasn't themselves doing. I'm going to guess the answer would involve the Mountain View police and potentially DHS, (given that it's a high-value economic target to anti-capitalists).
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
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Notify all local media outlets.
And bring my own camera crew so I could post the whole think on youtube.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Really?
Even though the details are pretty brief, it sounds like a good ruling.
I think far too many people think that just because somebody wrongs you, you should be entitled to millions of dollars when you sue them even though what they did isn't all that damaging. Considering they could prove no ill effect to the Google car coming on to their property, they had no right to the $25,000 they claimed.
I could see this as being an issue if one of the members of the house was in the witness protection program and had to be relocated because of the image or something similar to that, but there was no real damage here. Highly publicized rulings like this really help in the fight against frivolous lawsuits by putting those types of people back in check. Courts aren't designed to make someone unfairly rich, they're designed to recoup actual damages and that's it.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Nothing really to see there...I have been to their cookie-cutter house and man, are they Boring!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I would think that if I, chose, to photograph my home. I would also get to chose what is visible in the yard, through the windows, in the drive, etc. I can chose to share photos I chose to take, any way I want. I took them, they are how I want my property presented, they don't invade my privacy. Having Google driving onto my property and take photos is completely different, and the judge seems to agree. I would have awarded them more than $1. They need to find something they authored in the street view photos, and then sue Google for copyright infringement for each use of the image. I hear that copyright infringement can get tens of thousands of dollars per shared item.
It was a Boring picture anyway.
Why are the Slashdot editors posting Boring stories on the front page?
What's so Boring about privacy?
"Everybody called me Mr. Boring, but now I'm famous!"
This is a more Boring version of the Streisand Effect.
Google is Boring its way into our privacy. (Didn't see that one coming, didya?)
Making up these bad wordplays is Boring the hell out of me. ...are we done?
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
You could have at least thrown in a coupon for Bennigan's! Make them feel like they won something!
I guess one could say that this case had
*puts on shades*
a Boring outcome
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
What's frustrating is the stupidity of the judge
and your stupidity and strawman arguments
What people need to understand is that the following is not equal in terms of relative power and ability to expose information:
A) A family across the street taking a vacation photo with distant relatives that includes your house in the background.
B) A real estate agent exposing pictures, for the purpose of a sale, on a website that might never be seen and the pictures would be removed once the house was sold.
C) Fucking Google who will provide an insanely well branded and understood portal to anyone seeking that information with a level of ease that would be considered indistinguishable from magic 500 years ago.
You're kidding right? the real estate site will get more people seeing there house than google unless/until you make a big deal of this suit and make everyone go look at it!!!
the pictures on google didn;t hurt anyone at all - if they had just simply request the removal google would have complied. instead they tried to get rich quick and it backfired.
Why does this sound like some straight out of the movie Trading Places?
...1 dollar"
"Here you go...
The world is how you make it
I disagree in cases like these.
Essentially what the judge has said here is that the Borings were technically correct, but the lawsuit was a complete waste of everyone's time.
In that case, I'd be more inclined to say the Borings should pay for Google's expenses, but that's obviously unfair given the cost of Google's legal team. So each paying for their own is a-ok with me.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I don't know about the local laws there,
But here in Canada a "residential zoned property" cannot have a fence exceeding 1.5m (about 5') in the front of the property and everything visible from the street is free for the public to "make representations of". This includes commercial reproduction.
What's frustrating is the stupidity of the judge. Quite frankly, a portion of Slashdot as well.
[...] Well first off, not everybody would instantly assume that putting their home up for sale would result in pictures being on a website, [...]
[...]A real estate agent exposing pictures, for the purpose of a sale, on a website that might never be seen and the pictures would be removed once the house was sold.[...]
You say those things and then have the arrogance to call the judge, as well as a portion of Slashdot, stupid? No, of course not everyone would assume that putting their home up for sale would result in pictures on a website... that's because it's not automatic. If your realtor does that without your express permission, that realtor is asking for a lawsuit of their own. If pictures of their house were on a real estate website, it's not because the owners didn't know about them, it's because they said "heck yeah, let's put some pictures with the online listing!".
Furthermore, in my experience, the pictures are not removed once the house is sold. Why do you assume (and state authoritatively) that they would be? For example, take a look at this listing. There's a picture, and if you scroll down to the red-highlighted stuff at the bottom, you'll see the selling price, as well as the closing date... oh look, the date's in 1998, over 10 years ago! And yet the picture is still on the real estate website!
Well, at least you were right about a portion of Slashdot being stupid... methinks you weren't looking at the right part though...
I would rather hand them a sack of 100 pennies :)
Always some motherfucker who wants to ice skate uphill.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
When looking at the Google case, the pictures taken were not aimed to directly or even indirectly attack the Plaintiff, but instead was part of an automatic car system which either took a wrong turn or was mapped improperly.
Now that the case is over and they have some free time, Google's lawyers can divide up into two teams, and the side representing Google StreetView can sue the side representing Google Maps, to recover their damages in this case.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Essentially what the judge has said here is that the Borings were technically correct, but the lawsuit was a complete waste of everyone's time.
One thing that isn't reported is that couple filed the original lawsuit before they asked Google to remove their home from Google's data. Also the Borings have won the latest round after they refiled since the original suit was dismissed on failing to state a claim. Judges tend not to like it when your first action is to sue another party rather than quietly working it out. Also they don't like it when they tell you that you don't have a case and you keep refiling trying to get around it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
A more appropriate analogy to this case: An actress is naked on private property a few feet from a public sidewalk while she's being photographed by a professional. These photographs are intended for unrestricted online publication. You, walking on the sidewalk, take a picture of her while this is happening and post it on your blog. She sues you and proceeds to show up naked to the hearing.
I wonder if the Boring lawyer was working for a percentage of the settlement. Now THAT would be justice!
Maybe a system where legal costs are looked at as part of reasonable damages. In other words, if you had absolutely no choice but to go to court to rectify a matter, your costs are legitimate damages and can be reclaimed - if, on the other hand, all you had to do was email Google and ask them to remove the images and no real damage was therefore done (as the images were already available online elsewhere), then it might be considered that legal fees are not a reasonable part of any damage claim since they could easily have been avoided/reduced.