frivolous?? lawsuit of the day.....this one could go either way for me....

[jason]

Married Couple Sues Google For Showing House On "Street View"

April 6, 2008 12:14 p.m. EST

Isabelle Duerme - AHN News Writer

Allegheny, PA (AHN) - A Pennsylvania couple has filed a lawsuit against Internet giant Google for their house, showing up in Google Maps' "Street View" feature.

The married pair, Aaron and Christie Boring, stated that the service led to their home being available for online viewing, thereby threatening their privacy - the very reason why they bought their house.

According to the BBC, the lawsuit stated that Google had entered the driveway of the couple's private property, in order to take pictures to be uploaded on the website.

A Google spokesperson explained that such claims could be forwarded to the company, which would then remove the image from the system.

"Anyone can get Google to remove the images if they have a good reason to back up their request," said Larry Yu, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We absolutely respect that people may not be comfortable with some of the imagery on the site. We actually make it pretty easy for people to submit a request to us to remove the imagery."

The couple, however, decided to skip the request and go straight to the filing of the 10-page suit.

"It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern,"Yu added, "because we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal."

The couple declined to comment on the pending suit, which was filed April 2.


LINK (http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010553530)


i think these people saw dollar signs and jumped the gun - if they just wanted the images off, they could have done so pretty easily...

[waterboy]

I think the premise of the lawsuit was that they didn't authorize the pictures to be on there to start with. I can't say as I blame them. I wouldn't want pictures of my house on there, either. I think that's just plain wrong myself. They shouldn't be allowed to post pictures without the home owner's consent. That's just my opinion, though.

[crzyjournalist03]

it's just like what makes the paparazzi legal though. As long as the photos are being taken from public property (i.e., streets or sidewalks), there's nothing that you can do to legally prevent the pictures from being distributed.

[BreckTxLonghorn]

Originally posted by crzyjournalist03
it's just like what makes the paparazzi legal though. As long as the photos are being taken from public property (i.e., streets or sidewalks), there's nothing that you can do to legally prevent the pictures from being distributed.

In the public area, yes. But these cameras were driving down the driveways--that's crossing the line in my opinion. Smoking Gun did a good writeup on it showing evidence of another how where the camera car drove down a private drive and took pictures from every angle. Compare it to a picture you see on the count appraisal website, and you get A LOT more info from Google Maps.

Its on thing to take it from the street or sidewalk--can't help ya there--but they shouldn't drive down someone's personal driveway.