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Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear
Kittenman writes "The Telegraph (and several US locals) are covering a story about a Japanese woman who had her underwear on the line while the Google car went past. She is now suing Google: 'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'"
... don't leave them in public view to begin with?
It seems hard to imagine that the woman expected her delicates to stay completely private when she hung them up for the entire world to see.
Congragulations, miss. The entire readership of /. will now see your underwear.
Well done.
Sent from my CR-48
She wasn't wearing them at the time, so who cares?
I understand not wanting pictures of your underwear online, but she didn't seem to have a problem hanging it in her front yard.
In my eyes, any legitimacy she had was lost when she sued first instead of just asking to have it blurred or removed.
'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'
Even ignoring the fact that the woman's underwear was apparently visible from the street in the first place and it never bothered her. This reeks of unhealthy paranoia to me, is Google really responsible for one woman's mental issues? Granted, this thinking is exactly what the modern media creates, the idea that the world is filled with kidnappers, rapists, and violence. It's ironic that there are fewer murders than ever in US history, the kidnapping rate is lower than it was in 1940, and the overall violent crime rate sets new record lows every year (maybe not since the recession, but I haven't heard).
I know many people are saying that she should not have left them out to dry in public view. She made her mistake long before that.
She is in Japan. She shouldn't have washed them in the first place; instead she could have sold them for a nice profit.
I'm not aware of the laws outside the US, but that line is loaded. In the US, sexual harassment is the only crime that is judged by, not on the intention of the accused, but the perception of the accuser. There is the allowance for a measure of common sense when asking "would a reasonable, normal person be offended in this way" which is introduced, but no company is going through a sex crimes trial before settling. It just isn't happening. Can someone comment as to these laws in Japan?
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
... that she might miss out on a chance to sue a big company for a whole lot of money she doesn't deserve, by feigning distress. I'm sure nobody involved thinks it's anything other than BS, but they're probably hoping Google will settle.
That'll teach her to air her dirty laundry in public!
(N.B. This joke would actually be funny if the laundry actually was dirty)
Summation 2
Hypothetical situation: Amateur photographer sees her underthings on the line, sees the framing, thinks it makes a good shot. Posts it online, wins some flickr award, gets lots of attention (remember, hypothetical!). The rest plays out as normal.
Does she deserve more, less or the same amount of sympathy?
So far, everyone seems to be concluding that this woman is some sort of nut and/or lawsuit-happy money-grabber. Honestly, I agree with that given the evidence shown so far, but everyone deserves some level of defense.
This woman is making at least one claim that can be tested - that she lost her job due to this. It would be rather simple to find out if this was the case - ask her ex-boss if he fired her over them, find out if she was shunned by coworkers over the images, etc. Most cases of people suing over trivialities involve less testable claims. As such, either she's not good at trolling the legal system, or she's got more of a case than we've assumed. After all, Japan is a much different culture than America or Europe - something like this could actually be a big deal over there. I honestly don't know. So, I'm going to wait for more info before making any sort of final judgement.
Actually, it would have to be Japanese women. And for the record, I'm neither. But I do know that Japan has a tradition of "if it's behind the property gate, it's invisible, even if it's visible", simply as a matter of being able to live together in close quarters. So a polite Japanese neighbor would ignore the laundry on the line and not take snaps of it.
But I still get the feeling that some Japanese are just as litigious as the worst in the US.
We are the 198 proof..
I'll see your woman with OCD, and raise you a Delusional Disorder with Major Depression.
Not intended as a sexist comment, simply a reflection of my current life.
I know everyone is at risk of developing some mental illness at some point in their life, but the stats do show women being much more often affected than men (for Depression, 50% more likely in women than men).
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
This is rediculous. Are all of the ladies who recognize themselves on upskirt.com going to sue them as well? Where do you draw the line?
Sorry, my stance is this: If it's publicly viewable it's fair game. That's why I wear pants and dry my laundry in a clothes dryer.
the whole rest of the world, over whom you have no influence, social or direct.
And that's just it: you have no influence, nor they over you. In a sense, your underwear is more private on Google Street View than it is on the street. The people who see the underwear on the street are your friends and neighbors. You'll interact with them after they've seen your underwear.
The imagined voyeurs are on Google Street View might in fact be real people, but you don't know them and will never meet them. In fact, the odds are that they don't even exist; the world is a very, very big place and it's got no particular interest in your middle-of-nowhere.
If she'd become the target of some sort of stalker, or if some juvenile web site put up a "look at the giant underwear, hur hur" page, she might have a case against them. And in doing so she might take a swipe at Google, which has deeper pockets, though her odds of success are pretty low. In taking a preemptive swipe against Google, though, and subjecting herself to the Streisand Effect, she looks either money-grubbing or obsessive. Neither of those is going to engender much sympathy.
Someone took a picture of her underwear and posted it on Google Streetview...
Here's the original article.
From the original article in the Mainichi Shinbun, "It seems that someone posted the picture of her underwear on the internet.[...] She said, "If it had been an exterior view of the apartment that's understandable, but that a photo of my underwear drying on the veranda should appear is strange no matter how you look at it."
Again, this isn't just a case of something weird showing up on Streetview, according to the woman in question. Her paranoia is a little more understandable considering that she claims someone took a picture of her underwear and went to the trouble of posting it where she would likely find it. Being concerned about harassment or stalking isn't completely unreasonable.
Some other details that were left out of the English article include that the woman in question is from Fukuoka City in Fukuoka, that she's in her twenties, that she was fired from the hospital were she was working, that she lived alone at the time of the incident, that she found the photo this Spring, that she filed suit in November in Fukuoka District Court and that opening arguments were heard on December 15th. As of December 15th, Google was hurrying to verify the facts of the case.
There was a 2channel thread about the story that referred to it as "MyPantyView," but unfortunately Slashdot's Japanese counterparts had no comment on the matter.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
"But there is a difference between the attention of your neighbors, with whom you have some kind of dynamic relationship, and the whole rest of the world, over whom you have no influence, social or direct."
Most sex crimes are commited by people who know the victim.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
In Japan you can buy even in 100 yen stores a very neat special covers for your laundry that you put over the hangers and voilá, women and girls can put they lingerie to dry in a balcony without worry about the prying eyes of the male neighbors. If this lady was truly worried about it she could have bought her laundry covers a long ago.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!