Judge Dismisses Google Street View Case 258
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.'"
roadkill (Score:4, Interesting)
My favorite Google Street View story: Google Maps Car Hits Deer [gizmodo.com].
Just like the settlement it reached with book authors, Google could give $66 to each homeowner photographed by StreetView. We could call that agreement the Google stimulus package :-)
There is a serious discussion to be had about privacy rights and Google's objective to picture, reference and catalog everything. Some inside Google take the "do no evil" to heart. Street View blurs faces and license plates.
Good, but I wish it didn't have to be voluntary. We know what voluntary compliance by various industries lead to. That's why privacy laws have to set clear boundaries. In the dismissed lawsuit, note that the Google driver did enter a private road by mistake. Mistakes in sensitive privacy situations can be very damaging.
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That would just be silly and expensive. Nothing more.
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That would just be silly and expensive. Nothing more.
Lawsuits are very often silly and expensive too, but you're right, that would if anything just alert people that they might be able to get more money.
That would just be silly and expensive. (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing more.
Nothing more if you don't care about privacy.
One of the first things we learned in the photography class I took in college was that photographing and selling the photos of someone's house is illegal in some places without the owner signing a release form, just as it's illegal to photograph people who are clearly identifiable in public and selling those photos. The only tyme it is legal when a release form is not signed but the photo is sold is if it is used as part of an editorial. Now, it ma
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Re:That would just be silly and expensive. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.... just as it's illegal to photograph people who are clearly identifiable in public and selling those photos.
Yet there is an entire industry that does just this to people in the public eye. Is there some legal exemption for people who have been previously in same lame film or made a pop song?
Or are you in fact talking complete and utter rubbish.
If there was such a law you can bet people like Brad Pitt and Britney Spears would be using it regularly to get some privacy from the Paparazzi.
There is only one law I can think of that this would break, and that MIGHT be Sharia Law, but since I am not an expert on the Qur
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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this checks for it once. I believe the proper stub code is as follows:
5 REM based on code by Wandering Wombat
10 IF car$ = "allowed to be there" THEN GOSUB 30 ELSE GOSUB 40
20 GOTO 10
30 REM open gate code goes here
35 REM RETURN would be nice but why, when you can see how fast that guy can floor it 'cause...
40 REM fire missiles code goes here
45 RETURN
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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"Some languages don't have C/C++'s brain-damaged '=' operator behaviour.", says the professional C++ programmer.
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He's overloaded an operator for the car class. That bit of code was omitted for the sake of clarity.
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Do you care to explain why? I think it is perfectly reasonable to drive down someone's driveway, and unless they tell me to leave, post notices prohibiting it, or make the drive inaccessible. There are certainly harmless and perfectly legitimate reasons to enter another's property. Why institute a blanket prohibition?
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And what if you are in the country and there isnt anything to mark it as a private driveway rather than a side street? Pretty common where I live.
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Some information (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
But there is two sides to things here.
Yes, you can't have a blanket "if it isn't locked" type of rule, because that would lead to chaos.
However, you can't have a blanket rule the other way too far either.
I mean, if you were wandering about outside some evening, and accidentally walked on someones private property that you didn't realize was theirs but thought was still public... What are you to do when you discover your mistake?
Most people would leave if told of that fact. You say 'whoops, my bad' and go away off the private property back the way you came.
I don't believe we need to make that person a criminal for such a small and easily fixable mistake.
I don't know, i wasn't there, but it could easily have been just that type of mistake as it is to be a malicious attack on someones privacy by the Google van.
I'm fairly sure when asked that Google does remove photos people are in. That is similar to saying 'whoops, our bad, we will fix it' to me.
Maybe I'm missing something here for a reason the Google van drivers aren't getting the benefit of the doubt?
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I mean, if you were wandering about outside some evening, and accidentally walked on someones private property that you didn't realize was theirs but thought was still public... What are you to do when you discover your mistake?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_public_access_to_the_wilderness [wikipedia.org]
(also known as "right to wander" and "right to ramble")
Just because it doesn't exist in the USA, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Off the top of my head: beaches are the only thing, in the USA, I can think of that are always public and you can always cross private land to reach.
Maybe I'm missing something here for a reason the Google van drivers aren't getting the benefit of the doubt?
I wouldn't think that a reasonable person could consider a dirt driveway to be a public access road.
A case obviously existed, but their day in court ended because the
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The vast majority of land owners are well aware of this, but you occasionally find someone that puts a barbwire fence across a stream. I never bothered to cross those since there are many other places to go and it is not worth getting shot to prove a point, but I always reported those.
The next year those would be gone. I alwa
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That's fairly common, but the type of right that the GP was referring to isn't connected in such a way. You can wander through yards and properties without being harassed. Well, assuming you're behaving and not wrecking things.
That was one of the stark differences between the US and Switzerland. It seems to work for them, but I can't imagine it working without a long cultural tradition.
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Just because it doesn't exist in the USA, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Off the top of my head: beaches are the only thing, in the USA, I can think of that are always public and you can always cross private land to reach.
Well, the article Was about a Google van on a road in the USA.
Just because t does exist outside of the USA, doesn't mean it does here.
I wouldn't think that a reasonable person could consider a dirt driveway to be a public access road.
A case obviously existed, but their day in court ended because their lawyer apparently didn't know what s/he was doing.
Well, there is always that.
I have seen nothing about the particular road, so can't say what I would choose personally in that situation.
Then there is always the question of how do they know where they are going? Personally I would use GPS and a map... or two maps, one in paper form, Just Incase(tm)
The point is, there Are situations where it is not at all obvious.
If it was li
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>>Off the top of my head: beaches are the only thing, in the USA, I can think of that are always public and you can always cross private land to reach.
Nope, not true, In NJ unless it has become a common access point ( has been open to the public and in use for 1 year or longer), you can shut your entrance to the beach. I know this to be valid in Point Pleasant, Long Beach Island, Deal, and Mantoloking. http://www.app.com/article/20081220/NEWS/81220018 [app.com]
currently in California, some people have refused t
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I wouldn't think that a reasonable person could consider a dirt driveway to be a public access road. A case obviously existed, but their day in court ended because their lawyer apparently didn't know what s/he was doing.
No there was no case here at all and their lawyer knew it. It was a stupid lawsuit and deserved to be thrown out. The morons raising the lawsuit should have been made to pay for the defendants court costs as well.
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Off the top of my head: beaches are the only thing, in the USA, I can think of that are always public and you can always cross private land to reach.
Upstate New York's Adirondack State Park [wikipedia.org] is over six million acres of forest, mountains, lakes, and streams -- the largest state park in the continental U.S., almost as large as the entire state of Massachussetts. Half of the land in it, is actually privately-owned. Years ago, I hiked and camped there a lot, and frequently hiked along a state trail, only to
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There's a world of difference between an accidental trespasser immediately leaving the property and one posting photos taken of people who have an expectation of privacy then posting them on the Internet.
Once such a photo hits the Internet, just removing it will not magically delete it from everywhere it has been distributed to.
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You are in fact required to post when a public road changes to a private one, if you want no-trespassing laws to be enforced. So yes, you do need to 'lock your door', in this case. (I don't know if this road was visibly posted or not, I'm just noting the general case.)
Re:roadkill (Score:4, Informative)
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:roadkill (Score:4, Interesting)
There are some places - the Scottish Islands are one - where the crime rate is low enough that people routinely leave their houses unlocked. Neighbours can enter the house, e.g. to borrow and return things, at will. Likewise car keys are left in the ignition so that if the car is in the way anybody can move it.
I realise that it is impossibly idealistic to expect this to work in cities. Nonetheless, I wish that the default belief was that you *should* be able to leave your property unguarded, and that city life is, in this sense, a falling off from ideal standards. To institutionalise that idea that the default is that anything not locked or tied down is "fair game" is to bring in a grimmer society, in my opinion.
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Re:roadkill (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Not quite, technically it's grand theft auto in both cases, but in the latter there's also probably a charge for trespass. And if they had to damage a gate getting the car out there's that as well.
this wasn't one of them, though (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that mistakes in sensitive privacy situations can be damaging. But this particular plaintiff, the court found, failed to show that it was damaging in their situation, which is the requirement to sue for damages. They claimed they suffered $25,000 in emotional anguish, and the court held that they didn't provide any plausible legal arguments to support that damage claim.
If we do think, as a matter of public policy, that even harmless violations should be penalized in order to discourage them, there's a way to do that: pass a law that establishes a fine for such violations. The fine, of course, should go to the government, not the plaintiff, unless the plaintiff actually was harmed. Public policy via, you know, actual laws and law enforcement, not ambulance-chasing lawyers and "mental-anguish"-inventing plaintiffs.
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Seems like this should have been fairly simple to resolve. Kick the google van off their property (they did have "no trespassing" signs up) and have google remove the offending issues.
Assigning damaging here is ridiculous, aside from possibly some minor amount to cover the plaintiff's legal costs.
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Funny)
I'll see your deer photo and raise you Pittsburgh Samurai Battle [google.com]
Staged? (Score:2)
It seems as if that short bit of Charlick Way and Sampsonia Street was taken at a different time of the day from the other streets.
Go down federal street and you'll see it's sunny with clear skies (and no battle) till it passes Sampsonia Street, then it becomes wet and cloudy (with the battle) then in the next shot it's back to sunny (and not battle) again. Similarly for Charlick Way.
Maybe they somehow missed that bit in an earlier pass and came back later when coincidentally a battle starte
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Military bases? (Score:2)
One would expect them to worry at least as much and blur the military bases [timesonline.co.uk] of their own and friendly nations... You know, the gals and guys, who ensure that Google (and its, supposedly, privacy-minded insiders) can continue to exist...
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You would expect the US and allied militaries to be on the ball enough to tell them to do so. Google does blur lots of military installations, but can't be expected to blur every possible base because they don't know beforehand where they are. This is a failure by the Pentagon, not by Google.
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The idea is just wrong. The very concept of local and state planning requirements puts the external view of your property as owned by the community around you, as they are the ones who must see it and their property values in turn are affected by it. This goes for commercial as well as residential and of course government properties. Anybody can see as it is on public display and anybody by extension can preserve a memory of it either upon a biological, digital or printed form.
Google certainly should be
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Do you blank out your plates while you're driving? That's on show to the public all the time.
All cleaned up now. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:roadkill (Score:5, Funny)
Street View blurs faces and license plates.
Google maps is also good at respecting the privacy of retired military officers [google.com]!
conflict resolution (Score:2)
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"Strike one" or "Score one"?
This is certainly a case which didn't need to go to court. Google will quite happily remove their pictures if they want. Any anguish suffered was brought on by their own actions. Barely anyone would have seen the pictures had it not been publicised by the court case.
Anyway, the Boorings will probably be slapped with a bill from their lawyer, thus teaching them a very valuable lesson.
The Borings (Score:5, Funny)
Was that because they were too Boring?
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The Borings lost a case but they uncovered a treasure trove of jokes at their expense.
"Hey, it's that Boring kid from school!"
Google blured VP Cheney's house, why not this one? (Score:2)
Google blurred the satellite photo of the US Naval observatory in DC, a public building, in order to protect VP Cheney.
If Google is willing to protect the privacy of a public figure than it ought to be even more protective of the privacy of a private homeowner by burring a photo taken while being a non-invited intruder on that homeowner's own property.
calculated risk (Score:2)
Google blurred the satellite photo of the US Naval observatory in DC, a public building, in order to protect VP Cheney.
If Google is willing to protect the privacy of a man who can shoot you in the face with impunity
FTFY
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Which is exactly what they did, you just need to ask as I'm sure the whitehouse/pentagon/navy/ did.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/faq.html#q6 [google.com]
But seriously taking a still picture from a public place without even using a telephoto lens seems a bit of a stretch to label "intruder".
My vacation snap shots have numerous people I don't know in them, and numerous houses in the background too. The photos of my kid playing in the yard has the neighbors house in it too. Are you seriously suggesting I shou
What is left out of the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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People take pictures of buildings all the time [google.com]. If you took a picture of mine, I probably wouldn't notice... Unless you started doing it frequently. In which case, I may well take a picture of you. People are too paranoid.
Or Just Working... (Score:5, Funny)
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I knew it would be something simple!
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You must have forgotten that you were posting on Slashdot. People here don't have such a thing as a "wife".
Re:Gold digging (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally reasonable. After all, tons of psychos dare the police to catch them before their crimes by doing daylight stakeouts of their potential victims. They always take a ton of photos of the outsides of the houses, it really turns them on or something.
But what you can be sure of is that it wasn't an architecture or art student, a real-estate photographer, a private investigator looking for someone else, bird-watcher checking out the birds in the chimney, or anything harmless.
Certainly it's a danger to your family. Your kids. They're the cutest ones in the whole world and it's amazing psychos haven't found them yet. Act quickly to ensure this breach is rectified.
Remember, for safety, never let anyone photograph your children. In fact, any men (and 10% of women) who see them will likely be driven to extremes of lust - prepare for group attacks where an entire mob tries to seize your children.
Seriously! If you aren't panicking you don't love your children!
Re:Gold digging (Score:4, Insightful)
Why fear? Have you been so brainwashed by the "War on Terror" that someone taking a picture of (what I'm assuming to be) a nice building would make you freak out and fear for your life?
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I bet if I stood out on the street and took pictures of their house and posted them on my blog they wouldn't notice or care. But Google has lots of cash, so they sue them.
Unles you've got a high traffic/pagerank blog, they wouldn't notice or care because very few people would see the pictures.
Google Maps is a very high traffic site and having the pictures on it is not the same as hosting them on your blog.
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Unles you've got a high traffic/pagerank blog, they wouldn't notice or care because very few people would see the pictures.
Streisand effect FTW!
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True, Google Maps is a very high traffic site, but how much traffic does the particular street view location in question get?
Little to none, I'd wager.
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Sometimes you have to wonder if people think things through. My house is on Google, but no one on the internet except me and my neighbors are ever likely to see it. Anyone wanting to see it already knows the address and can catch the 912 bus from my local railway station stop by for Coffee.
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I bet if I stood out on the street and took pictures of their house and posted them on my blog they wouldn't notice or care. But Google has lots of cash, so they sue them.
You must not be a photographer. You have no idea how many weird situations I've gotten into because people are paranoid freaks.
I take photos of industrial architecture and, for lack of a better word, old junk (half torn down buildings, rusted bars that form neat shapes, old tractors without wheels, things like that). I've had plenty of private citizens and rent-a-cops (though no real cops) jump down my throat because they perceive me as some sort of "threat". It's really quite amusing, as if they would actu
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I've had plenty of private citizens and rent-a-cops (though no real cops) jump down my throat because they perceive me as some sort of "threat".
The thing you have to understand is that most people learn about "terrorists" or "evil-doers" through movies and television. What's the first thing the people in movies/television do when planning a big heist? Take pictures. It's a standard movie plot line as it sets up part of the "planning stage" of the movie. Whether REAL "terrorists" or "evil doers" do this
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They would probably get really freaked out if a big black guy with a white camera showed up!
Yeah, I'd ask him why he bought that POS limited edition white Pentax DSLR: http://nexus404.com/Blog/2008/12/17/pentax-limited-edition-k2000-white-dslr-k2000-double-zoom-slr-kit/ [nexus404.com]. I would have told him an Nikon was a much choice. ;)
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Better yet, go with your invisible camera and make a big show of taking lots of pictures. That really freaks them out.
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Come to my private road. I'll beat your ass off of it -- so hard you'll forget the teeth you've lost.
Such strong, aggresive words typed anonymously over the internet from your computer while in your jammies. Maybe have another sippy of cocoa and you will feel better.
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Violence as your primary means of problem solving, that is very American of you.
His crime of trespassing in no way justifies your crime of assault.
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For fuck sake, Google was not standing over the guys bed trespassing in his home. They accidentally drove up a private driveway, then removed the images when asked. Thats it. No invasion of privacy. No break and enter.
It was a stupid lawsuit and deserved to be thrown out.
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Do you have any references for this?
This is from Wisconsin. Here you go: Wisconsin Statute 943.13 [state.wi.us] Trespass to Land.
Your ideals won't save your stupid ass from a beating or a bullet. Wise up.
Your beating or bullet won't save you from a civil suit or jail time. Wise up.
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Your ideals won't save your stupid ass from a beating or a bullet. Wise up. The real world doesn't give a shit about you.
I love how these so called god fearing Christian Republicans will claim they will shoot you for setting one foot on their private property.
You do realize killing someone for simple trespass on your driveway will land you in jail for manslaughter. Or maybe you're too stupid.
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They didn't file a criminal tresspass complaint; they sued them for civil damages. You can see why, though; presumably fines for tresspassing are relatively negligable, probably in the range of three or four digits, so it's not like they'd change Google's behavior. Of course, $25K is equally peanuts for them.
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No, the reason why is that criminal trespass fines would go to the government, whereas civil damages would go to the plaintiffs. They didn't want to set a precedent or punish google or discourage google from going it again. They wanted some cash.
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No. This wasn't a ruling on the merits of the case, but rather a ruling on a failure to follow the rules governing court cases. Someone else could file a suit against Google, and this time not suck at it, and the case would proceed, probably without making any reference to the case discussed above.
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Look at us getting modded down by google fanboys.
Fuck privacy, so long as the company you like is breaching it, right?
If Bush did this, we would have +5 Insightful.
This is killing my faith in slashdot.
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It should go without saying that if your intent is to take pictures of someone's trade secrets, and exploit those somehow, that's a form of industrial espionage that's most certainly illegal in the US. I don't know if the pictures could be confiscated, but that would be the least of your worries, I think.
Re:Copyright infringement? (Score:4, Insightful)
could you make a copyright claim about photos of your house under U.S. Copyright law, as a "3-D work of art"?
No. Taking a picture of your house isn't "copying" it. Taking the plans of your house and building an exact copy of it _might_ be a violation of copyright.
Just thinking this couple didn't think creatively enough here for the proper law that could be used for a suit.
No, the couple are just money grubbers looking for a payday from someone with deep pockets. Sometimes people just have no case.
Re:Copyright infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only common sense reigned, this would be so. See ASMP's page on photographing public buildings [asmp.org]; not every building is impacted, but I've seen cases where museums and the like claimed that the architecture of the building itself constitutes a work of art, and that photography of the same was forbidden.
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See ASMP's page on photographing public buildings
I read the page. The take home is that a douche-bag could sue you (a photographer) and cost you a lot of money for buildings built after 1990, so better get permission first. That's really always the case anyway.
The context we're operating in here is Google, with nearly unlimited resources vs. a couple trying to make a payday. They really have no case here, and never did. There's simply no way to spin this into a big payday.
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No. Taking a picture of your house isn't "copying" it. Taking the plans of your house and building an exact copy of it _might_ be a violation of copyright.
Because we signed the Berne Convention, we recognize copyright in architectural works. However, we make exceptions for photographs, etc., of buildings that are in public places.
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You know, your posts really paint you as an extremely violent and ill-tempered person. I'm going to wager that you are not a violent person, so you may want to try not to come off as such an internet-tough-guy.
That being said, I mostly agree with you. If something like this happened once, by accident, then removal of the pictures and a good talking-to would probably be in order. Its typically not well-advised to sue people or companies over simple accidents that can be resolved amicably. The question in
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It is definitely systematic negligence/disregard. I have observed this personally.
A few months ago, in my local area I was checking out street view and reported for removal 2 separate places that I knew were private roads and are clearly marked as such.
Google got back to me that they had removed it, but that does not change the fact as to what happened. It is quite obvious that their approach is to do what they want, then, if questioned, apologize and attempt to undo it.
I am not an extremely violent perso
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I am a mature and civil adult that will defend privacy to great extent; that is all. If I woke up in the middle of the night and you happened to be in my home
Oh, by privacy you mean safety. Because yes, certainly someone was in your house without your knowledge or permission they could be a threat.
Here we thought you were freaked out by something trivial like someone standing on the street taking pictures that included your house.
Hah hah. How dumb that would be.
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Because that's how the legal system works, and quite rightly so. If I get sick from a bad batch of cornflakes, I sue Kellogg's, not the guy who was working at the factory that day, even if it was his sneezing in the flakerator that made me sick. I happen to think that's good public policy: it will encourage Kellogg's to make sure its operations prevent this kind of thing from happening again. If the only person I could sue were the employee, there would be no incentive for Kellogg's to clean up their act an
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Google, as a company, is responsible for the actions it makes. In this case, the standard operating procedure involves negligent disregard for privacy.
Maybe google will hold its individual car drivers' responsible, but since they are not enforcing such respects for law/privacy, they should as a whole be accountable for such actions.
Re:So does this mean that... (Score:4, Insightful)
That stupid car shows up on my private property and they'll be lucky to leave with all their blood.
I've heard that in several european countries, Scotland for one, there is no law against walking onto someone else's land, provided you don't damage it. It seems a bit more complicated and debatable than that, but it seems clear that you can hike through someone's farmland and they have no legal right to shoot you. Not the case obviously in the US. What's with our trespassing obsession? I step foot on your land, you'll injure me just because you can? Is it that we think everyone is out to get us?
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yes, I recall that the queen of England one had a trespasser in her house, but they could only remove him from the home and not file trespassing charges.
don't forget, The USA had to deal with having to house the British during a war to gain the independent. it's manifested itself within the trespass laws.
I myself have a no trespass sign on my walkway, and a gate. The gate is rigged so that when you open it at night a dog starts barking . I think it's funny, but if it keeps barking or my porch alarm hits I g
Re:So does this mean that... (Score:4, Informative)
In sweden all general land areas are per definition public, only exception is the imediate surroundings of a house, farming fields with crops growing and of course military/industrial sites. But the later are not realy a problem, typicaly they are fenced.
Mostly it works quite ok, if you walk through the forest and happen to come upon a house, you just keep more or less out of sight, or at least outside the parts where they have cut the grass short. In the rural areas people quite often doesnt bother with fences, unless they want to keep animals out or in.
So its a nice country for trecking!
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it seems clear that you can hike through someone's farmland and they have no legal right to shoot you. Not the case obviously in the US.
I don't know of any jurisdiction in the US where someone has a legal right to shoot you for ordinary trespassing. Not even Texas. Many states have "Castle Doctrine" laws, which say that if you break into a residence the owner can shoot you, but that's entirely different from walking on someone's fields.
Further, no US state that I'm aware of (and I've read the relevant laws of a lot of them) allows trespassing charges to be brought unless it has been made clear to the trespasser that he or she should not
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And this, ladies and gentlemen, explains our violent, gun-crazy culture here in the good ole USofA. Paranoia, insecurity and materialistic tendencies--mixed with a dash of nationalism, and some whacked out views on gun rights...voila!
You know, our daughters used to be able to go door-to-door and sell Girl Scout cookies, but now days, they are more likely to be assaulted than a homeowner is. You privacy freaks suffer from a completely out-of-proportion reaction to a made-up threat. It's like wearing a p