Isn't Google Street View AWESOME?!

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>No, Matt, it means that making fun of some laws can be very serious business indeed.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Google "prostitutes seen in google streetview" and you can get your jollies all day long cleaning up the "metadata" in all those images.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I am more interested in the privacy issues here, John H.</p>

<p>Could Google post such shots with impunity, if they got them? ARE they posting such shots?<br>

<strong><em> </em></strong><br>

<strong><em>How absolute is anyone's "right" to invade another's privacy?</em></strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>John H., I had a wild thought that maybe you weren't joking:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2311727/Mishka-Henner-puts-images-Google-Streetview-prostitutes-display-gallery.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2311727/Mishka-Henner-puts-images-Google-Streetview-prostitutes-display-gallery.html</a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I guess I don't get the point of making fun of copyright laws, especially in this context. As someone who creates images, it matters to me that other people can't spuriously claim to have a right to make derivative works from them.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>How absolute is anyone's "right" to invade another's privacy?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's not absolute, in any sense. But that really doesn't have much to do with the fact that you have no expectation of privacy while out on a public street. Taking photos on the street isn't an invasion of privacy.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Taking photos on the street isn't an invasion of privacy.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>As a friend just reminded me via e-mail (before I even read your post), from a legal perspective taking such photos is "lawful." From an ethical or moral perspective? What the law allows is not always right, Matt, unless one thinks that the law is the locus of morals or ethics. I do not.</p>

<p>It is upon that basis that I say, as a social and political philosopher who teaches ethics from time to time: the law is fair game in such discussions as these. The law on the books is not sacred. A higher moral law just might be.</p>

<p>In any case, I am not the one who is trying to trivialize the thread by taking potshots at the law. The Fugitive Slave Act was the law, but it was not right. Sometimes the law deserves respect, sometimes not, but NEVER simply because it is "the law." That bespeaks reverence for power--might, not right.</p>

<p>Copyright law is serious business, but it is not beyond critique.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>The hell with the law, then. Morally and ethically, you have no expectation of privacy when you're walking around on a public street where people can look at you with their eyes (and their cameras, etc).</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>The hell with the law, then.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That is a totally illogical <em>non sequitur</em>, Matt. I am not following you on this one.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[john_h.1]

<blockquote>

<p>LK: "if Google drives by and takes a picture of <em><strong>MY</strong></em> house, I have to get <em><strong>their</strong></em> permission to use it?"<br /> <br /> JH: "Since they own the copyright to the image, yes. What's seen in the image is irrelevant."</p>

<p>LK: "I am more interested in the privacy issues here, John H."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You obviously weren't when you posted an image of someone else's house.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>LK: I am not the one who is trying to trivialize the thread<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The whole thread IS trivial.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Another<em> non sequitur.</em><br /> <br /> <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29</a><br /></em><br /> --Lannie<em><br /></em></p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Let us assume that you are right, John H.:</p>

<p>Premise I: The whole thread IS trivial. --John H.</p>

<p>Premise II: I am contributing to a trivial thread. --John H.</p>

<p>Conclusion: My contributions are thereby trivial. --John H. (by implication)</p>

<p>It does follow, like it or not, but the conclusion has reduced your initial premise to absurdity, thereby calling that premise into very serious question, to say the very least.</p>

<p>The argument which I have just used against your claim involves a <em>reductio ad absurdum</em>, but it is not something which I have done to you. You have done it entirely to yourself: you have reduced your own utterance to absurdity.</p>

<p>Ain't logic grand!</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<h1 >"Isn't Google Street View AWESOME?!"</h1>

<p>Gosh, I wish that someone would address that affirmative claim on my part.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Non sequitor? Fine, I'll rephrase: because you want to remove a discussion of law from the discussion of whether it's morally/ethically OK to photograph on the street ... fine! I will agree that the topic can be discussed without regard to the law. For purposes of this discussion, the hell with it (as in, never mind it, ignore it, don't take it into account). There: now we're just talking about what's morally and ethically the way to look at your expectations of privacy as you walk down a public street. To wit, <em>there is none.</em> Conveniently, the law happens to also agree with that. Handy!</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Matt, your logical capabilities continue to astound me. I bow my head in your presence.</p>

<p>Did you ever know that you're my hero?</p>

<p><a href="

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>I think (but am not sure, Jeff) that it is defined by the law and adjudged in particular cases (for possible violation) in courts of law.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Unfortunately, the only way to get a definitive answer on whether a particular use is a fair use is to have it resolved in federal court. - See more at: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#sthash.iGRFuaz4.dpuf</p>

[cyanatic]

<p>I am not going to get into PN’s TOA or Google’s copyright claims. Photo.net has every right to set the rules regarding the type of content it will allow. And Google can set forth whatever copyright claims it wants. However, depending on how someone handles the appropriation of a Google street image, a court of law may very well find for the appropriation artist, not for Google.</p>

<p>If Landrum finds an interesting moment on some street through Google street view, turns it to the angle he wants, crops it to emphasize the scene the way he wants, converts it to a grainy black and white, and throws a ragged border around it…guess what? That image may well have now become Landrum’s by virtue of his artistic vision and his transformative adjustments of the original. I might not like it, and a lot of posters in this thread might not like it, but too bad, so sad. He can do it. (Although I have actually done this as an experiment, I do not derive the same satisfaction as I do from photographs that I have taken myself. No surprise there.)<br /><br />Neither Google nor any of us here are as safe and legally protected from appropriation and fair use as some of the opinions expressed in this thread would imply. We can express outrage and rail against “laziness” all we want. But our opinions mean nothing in either the art world or a court of law.</p>

<p>Consider the two images below. At left is a photograph by Patrick Cariou. At the right is an appropriation of the same photograph by artist Richard Prince.</p>

<p><a href="http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Cariou-v-Prince-600.jpg">http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Cariou-v-Prince-600.jpg</a></p>

<p>Cariou sued both Prince and the gallery representing Prince’s work. Initially, the court found in favor of Cariou. But an Appeals Court overturned that decision in the spring of 2013. The link below points to an April 2013 article entitled “Appeals Court Overturns Richard Prince Ruling In Victory For Fair Use & Appropriation Art”. (For those interested in reading about the case, note that the first judge put her own requirement burden upon fair use and appropriation, claiming incorrectly that it must comment upon, or refer back to, the original.)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130425/11554022838/appeals-court-overturns-richard-prince-ruling-victory-fair-use-appropriation-art.shtml">http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130425/11554022838/appeals-court-overturns-richard-prince-ruling-victory-fair-use-appropriation-art.shtml</a></p>

<p>A quote from the court regarding this decision encapsulates the current legal stance on appropriated art in the United States.</p>

<p>“Instead, as the Supreme Court as well as decisions from our court have emphasized, <strong><em>to qualify as a fair use, a new work generally must alter the original with “new expression, meaning, or message</em></strong>.”</p>

<p>This is not the first time that Prince has been involved in a controversial appropriation, nor the first time that appropriation has been discussed on PN. A “spirited” discussion took place between Luis G and yours truly some years ago over appropriated art, Richard Prince, and a million dollar sale of an appropriated Marlboro ad photograph. (A blast from the past for those who have the stomach, time, and inclination to read it: <a href="/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00VHOl">http://www.photo.net/philosophy-of-photography-forum/00VHOl</a> )</p>

<p>But, to get back to the OP: Google Street view can be “awesome” for many reasons, and the possibility exists, legally, for individuals to appropriate some of those views as their own work. <em>Si se puede</em>, as the saying goes…</p>

[leo_papandreou1]

<p>It's <strong><a href="http://geoguessr.com/">fun</a></strong>, too.</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

I'm back again.<br>Landrum,<br><i>"You don't have to, Q.G. That is part of the definition of "fair use."</i><br>So you do recognize that you were wrong when you said <i>"You had already said that "fair use" was legal"</i>. Good.<br>Now, who said it was fair use?<br><br><i>"Educational potential for children"</i>.... You want to teach them that it is o.k. to be unimaginative, that it is o.k. to let others do their work, and that it is o.k. to beg, steal and borrow.<br>Thanks for agreeing that all this indeed amounts to is <i>"an exercise aimed at promoting both creative and physical laziness"</i>.

[Matt Laur]

<blockquote>

<p>Matt, your logical capabilities continue to astound me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>There's only one of us feeling the need to be snarky and sarcastic here, Lanny. It's still not obvious why. What's your actual point, then? We already know what the laws happen to be. But since you bring up morals and ethics, what's <em>your</em> take on the expectation of privacy on a public street? That seems to be a central part of the matter, and you're swinging at the people around you instead of actually addressing it.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Matt, if you don't mind, I would prefer not to beat a dead horse on the legal issue, although Steve's comments and links indicate that the law might be more fluid than I knew. Q.G., you and I will have to agree to disagree, I presume, although I have to concede that this generation seems to get outside infrequently enough as it is, and thus we might not be doing them much of a service to direct them back to sitting in front of a computer screen.</p>

<p>As for the law, I was willing to take <strong><em>Google's ownership of the images as a given</em></strong> and thus my early emphasis on getting permission(s)--not necessarily on a one-by-one basis, but with a possible more general agreement with the PN site. That didn't seem to fly too well. I won't press that issue, either. It was just a wild thought.</p>

<p>What does interest me about the whole Google Street View project is that it seems to approach what one might call "random art," in the same way that Nature offers when one drives down a highway for a couple of hundred miles and suddenly comes over a rise and says, "Holy cow, what a view!" I presume that the people who drive those Google vehicles simply have their cameras programmed to take shots at timed but otherwise random intervals--but I don't know that. Given the degree of randomness, it is no surprise that few of the shots are all that interesting. I posted one on this thread precisely because it did seem to come out of Google's camera almost in finished form--after I cropped it and resized it, it seemed to show a more interesting mood than my own shot of the same house made back in October with a D90 and a kit lens (both shots visible in my "Single Photos" folder). It was only last week that I happened to see the house on Google Street View. I was quite taken with the quality of the Google shot--and a bit disappointed with the quality of my own live shot.</p>

<p>That led me to do a "virtual drive around" of the little town of Walhalla, SC, which I have scarcely noticed on my way to the Chattooga River (of the movie <em>Deliverance</em> fame) or up towards Highlands, NC, which has just outside its city limits the highest cliff in the East in Whiteside Mountain. In my "virtual drive," I found that even the more prosaic "drives" through or near small towns occasionally do lead to "discovery" of a new angle that one might not have noticed when driving through in a real car. Since I live near Charlotte, I don't get over that way very often, and so I was just poking around Walhalla, South Carolina with Google Street View because it was all that I had at the time.</p>

<p>That was the sole inspiration for the entire thread. When I thought about the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of pictures that such Google vehicles have taken, it was obvious that the nearly random photos simply might contain some gems--gems that one sometimes simply cannot go back and see. I also tried "driving" by some camera stores in New York City--that was fun, too. I already mentioned a "drive" from Taos, NM to Dalhart, TX, a drive that I also have done in reality--way back in 1985.</p>

<p>All in all, the whole thing was for me a light-hearted foray into a kind of fantasy land of Google Street View, nothing more, nothing less.</p>

<p>Thanks to everyone for contributing. I don't own the thread, and so wherever it goes, it goes.</p>

<p>So just let me say, one more time,</p>

<h1>Isn't Google Street View AWESOME?!</h1>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>One way that Google uses images uploaded to G+ or Picasa is to augment Google Street View - you can view additional local images of a specific spot on Street View not made by Google.</p>

<p>Things will get a lot more interesting when "inside buildings" using GSV technology becomes more commonplace. It's starting with public and historical buildings including the White House and I'm sure it won't be long before businesses take an interest as a tool to market their presence.</p>

<p>Couple of interesting links: <br /> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/the-northerner/2013/may/03/google-street-view-sheffield-university">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/the-northerner/2013/may/03/google-street-view-sheffield-university</a> - inside Sheffield University<br /> <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/465859/google-maps-goes-inside-the-house-of-commons/">http://globalnews.ca/news/465859/google-maps-goes-inside-the-house-of-commons/</a> - video of SV camera trolley documenting the Canadian House of Commons</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Fascinating links, Michael! I guess that I came to the Google Street View party a bit late. Everyone seems to know more than I did when I recently found it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>Lannie, I can imagine a day when bandwidth permits that Street View will evolve into 360 rolling videos. You set a tour from A-B and watch the variable speed journey in real time with Start-Stop-Pause and Pan-Tilt-Zoom available. Wouldn't that be neat? :-) </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>That would indeed be neat, Michael. Thank you.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>When can the use of a screen shot be considered fair use with regard to this thread topic?</p>

<p>Google street view IS awesome. Just wish this thread was as well.</p>

<p>I was going to post a screenshot of the "Blue Lagoon", the tiniest island out in the middle of no where in the Pacific ocean 175 miles east of Pitcairn Island like I did several years ago in a thread I started similar to this one that didn't seem to bother the moderator at that time, but I'm glad I didn't post this time. "Blue Lagoon" doesn't have a street view anyway. </p>

[cyanatic]

<p>Photographers appropriating Google Street View is not unusual as related in this article:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"The machines and cameras used to collect them have no discretion, much less artistic influence. Through meticulous research, framing, grabbing and reformatting, photographers themselves are assigning photos artistic value"</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/24/street-view-and-beyond-googles-influence-on-photography/#1">http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/24/street-view-and-beyond-googles-influence-on-photography/#1</a></p>

<p>And there are some wonderfully bizarre moments (courtesy of Google) presented in this article:</p>

<p><a href="http://sobadsogood.com/2013/05/22/30-compelling-photographs-taken-by-google-street-view/">http://sobadsogood.com/2013/05/22/30-compelling-photographs-taken-by-google-street-view/</a></p>

<p>Makes you want to vicariously wander the streets of the world in search of interesting moments. I'd prefer doing it in person, with my own camera, but every once in a while it's fun to wander down unknown streets on the computer.</p>

<p><br /> </p>