Isn't Google Street View AWESOME?!

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>from <em>The Guardian</em>:</p>

<p>http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google-street-view</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Geez! Landrum, nice research work. You actually taught more here than some photography teachers.</p>

<p>Wonder if Wayne Decker, the photography teacher, learned something new as well from this.</p>

<p>So Doug Rickard shot with his camera his computer screen showing the Google Street Views and posted them as his own in a gallery. Did he have to give attribution to Google or does he have a team of lawyers to fix things?</p>

<p>Didn't have much time to read all those links Landrum posted so if it's in there on how Rickard was able to use content in this way I'ld appreciate pointing me to it. Guess I'm just too lazy.</p>

 

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Didn't have much time to read all those links Landrum posted so if it's in there on how Rickard was able to use content in this way I'ld appreciate pointing me to it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks, Tim. I have not seen anything about that. I was wondering about that myself. Does Google have the same attitude toward these shots as they do toward the Google maps shots (which are of course made from satellite photos)?</p>

<p>Where does Google get those space images, by the way? Do they license them from NASA?</p>

<p>Is there a Google Space Agency that I don't know about? Those shots appear to be made from "stationary" satellites, which is to say those satellites which make one revolution in their earth orbits every twenty-four hours, so as to be synchronous with the earth's rotation? (This can only occur with satellites orbiting at a radius of about 23,200 miles, I believe.) Or perhaps it would actually be not 24 hours, but 23 hrs. and almost 56 minutes, depending upon one' frame of reference? From the earth's perspective, I am guessing 24 hrs. by definition, but from the sun's perspective almost (but not quite) 23 hrs. 56 mins. That is, consider that the stars rise ALMOST four minutes earlier every night, after all, but over the course of a year that amounts to approximately (or is it precisely--by definition--24 hours: four minutes is 4/60=1/15hrs./day = .066667 hours per day. (.066666 x 365 = ~24 hrs., and so after a year the stars come full circle.)</p>

<p>I am proceeding only slightly tongue-in-cheek. Google somehow gets pictures from NASA (for a small fee or a handsome one?), which in turn is funded by WE THE PEOPLE, after which it turns a profit on them--and then puts a copyright on them--so that we cannot copy the damned things?</p>

<p>So, Google DOESN'T EVEN SHOOT ITS OWN SATELLITE IMAGES, but it owns the legal copyright to its "enhanced" images, with street names and all. THOSE LAZY BASTARDS! LET THEM TAKE THEIR OWN DAMNED SPACE PHOTOS! This is plagiarism of NASA'S (which is to say OUR) personal property.</p>

<p>Google Street View shots are <em>not</em> made by satellites, of course. They are made by camera-bearing SUVs. DID WE AND OUR STREETS AND HOUSES CONSENT TO BE GOOGLE'S MODELS? <em> Why is it that I see "Google + the year" stamped increasingly on every recent Google Street View photo?</em> Is it to inform us as to the date of the photo? If so, why is it increasingly stamped ALL OVER the picture, if not in order to render them artistically useless, or to remind us that GOOGLE OWNS THE PHOTOS? From a moral perspective, DO THEY? Who brokered <em>our</em> privacy for <em>Googles's</em> profit?</p>

<p>And of course Google is providing a news feed of sorts to the National Security Agency. Hell, why don't we update our coins to say <strong>"In Google We Trust"</strong>?</p>

<p>Sorry. Got kind of carried away, there. Obsession with property rights can do that to you. . . . I'll try not to let it happen again.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I meant to say that those people who are concerned with OUR pirating Google's pictures might want to inquire as to who gave Google license to take random surveillance photos of the entire population in the first place? Is Google exercising its legal and constitutional rights here? (This is on a capitalist/fascist model of rights and justice, of course, brought to you by the same folks in the Department of the Interior who have been allowing tree harvesting by big lumber companies for many decades.)</p>

<p>It is interesting to see what makes people angry.</p>

<p>I'm not angry, of course, although I am pretending--trying--to be. I'm just having a bit of fun with the legalists here.</p>

<p>As I said, "It is interesting to see what makes people angry." Some people are not troubled by giving corporations the status of persons for legal purposes--thus the <em><strong>legal fiction</strong></em> of Google having "rights." (I liked it better when only individuals had rights, not corporations or governments, which is the core of the Corporate State of collusion between public government and private capital--which some of us bend historical usage a bit for in order to call "fascism.")</p>

<p><strong>VIVA EL CAPITALISMO, donde los gobiernos y las corporaciones tienen todos los derechos, los individuos, nada--ABSOLUTAMENTE NADA.</strong><br /> <br /> <strong><em>¡VIVA!</em><br /></strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p><strong><em>Traducción</em>: Long live capitalism, where governments and corporations have all the rights, individuals nothing--absolutely nothing.</strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[sarah_fox]

<blockquote>

<p>Getting back to the original subject, I found myself on street view, walking to the mail box, a few yards from my house.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>More disturbing (to me), a Google aerial photo sees very clearly through a large skylight over the bed of a former home of mine!</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Sarah, all I can say is,<em> "Ain't Google grand!" </em><br /> <br /> There is also the question of who sees what with regard to persons sunbathing in their backyards--or couples "strolling" through the woods.</p>

<p>I daresay that, if the photos that <em>we</em> can see on Google's satellite view show so much, how much more powerful are the cameras which make images available via satellite to the <em>military and intelligence establishments--</em>or is there any real point in pluralizing "establishment"? By virtue of the National Security Agency (part of the Department of Defense), there seems to be one big agglomeration of government power now.</p>

<p><strong><em>Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?</em></strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

 

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

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>This is on a capitalist/fascist model of rights and justice, of course, brought to you by the same folks in the Department of the Interior who have been allowing tree harvesting by big lumber companies for many decades.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>These are my words (a few posts above), but I made an error: it is the National Forests under the U.S. Department of Agriculture which decides who can cut what in those publicly-owned forests. Trees in the National Parks are under the Department of the Interior--and they are not available for for-profit harvesting--at least not yet.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Landrum<br>You sure do spend a lot of time at the computer.<br>By the way, had you noticed that you returned to legalistic banter?<br><br>Anyway:<br><i>"a mindless machine randomly clicks a shutter. Artists--actual thinking human beings--harvest those random clicks, find something beautiful, and share it with the rest of us."</i><br>First, you call them "artists". That's a fine example of begging the question. What exactly in what they is it that constitutes art?<br>Second - still the same point - those "artists" aren't productive. <i>"Thinking"</i> What are those thoughts they are thinking?<br><i>"Find"</i> and <i>"share"</i> is all that's what this is about. Very much that " a 21st century, lazy, let's-steal-everything-from-the-internet, bum mentality." Just a bunch of lazy people, proud of their ability to discover something. A <i>"mindless machine"</i>... yes. The creative input of these "artists" is even less.<br>Think about that for a while.<br><br>But you like that idea. Think that if you use the word 'art' a bit everything is elevated to some higher plan on which it is not just o.k., but something we should not miss out on.<br>Ah, well... i wish you very many happy days sitting at your computer. You haven't "flunked" that. So there may be something good to say after all. Or is there?

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Q.G., in my youth, I once covered thirty-five miles <strong>in one day</strong> in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I have done many <strong>solitary</strong> hikes in the Andes when I lived in Quito, but as I approach the end of my seventh decade on this planet, I find that my forays outside are limited by blood clots in both calves and both thighs, as well as a left knee that now wants to pop around in its joint. I do try to get up every hour or so and make a few slow laps around the breezeway between my house and my garage, just to keep the blood from pooling up in my legs.</p>

<p>For the record, I like analog shooting better, but I can't shoot everything that way anymore. I have a ton of film in the freezer, 135 and 120, and I keep telling myself that I will shoot it one day. Well, maybe I will, but I might need a new knee first.</p>

<p>Lazy I ain't--intellectually or otherwise.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p><strong>FOR PURPOSES OF DISCUSSION</strong></p>

<p>Tell me, Q.G, does this view of a park in Amsterdam have any artistic value? To whom does it belong? Google or the people of Holland? (Do you perchance live near here?) If it has any artistic value, and if it was taken by a randomly-shooting camera on a vehicle, where does the artistic value come from?</p>

<p>Who owns the rights to this picture, Google or the people of Holland? (I will make no claims here for myself.)</p>

<p>I would appreciate the favor of a sincere and thoughtful reply.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><p><b>Image Removed per the Photo.Net Terms of Use.</b></p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Google Street View halted in India due to possible security violations:</p>

<p>http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/jun/21/google-street-view-india</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[David_Cavan]

<p>Not enough money has exchanged hands yet for the Indian database, but Google has lots of time and money. It will happen.</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Tell me, Landrum, what has been your artistic effort?<br>Get the point? See the difference between someone creating things, and someone being proud that he found something or someone (doesn't matter - what matters is that it was not you) else created?<br>Do you not understand why the PNet TOU prohibit what you do?<br><br>And before you go off on tangents again: that indeed is a sincere and thoughtful reply.

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Do you not understand why the PNet TOU prohibit what you do?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Because Photo.net fears being sued.</p>

<p>Here was the question that you offered that reply to:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Tell me, Q.G, does this view of a park in Amsterdam have any artistic value? To whom does it belong? Google or the people of Holland? (Do you perchance live near here?) If it has any artistic value, and if it was taken by a randomly-shooting camera on a vehicle, where does the artistic value come from?<br>

Who owns the rights to this picture, Google or the people of Holland? (I will make no claims here for myself.)</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I repeat again a part of the question: "To whom does it belong? Google or the people of Holland?"</p>

<p>If you answer "Google," then tell me by what logic Google claims it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Landrum,<br>Then you make an issue about the legal status, then you say you are bored by people distracting from the greatness of your idea by talking about legal issues, then you want to talk about legal issues again...<br>Whether it is because PNet would get sued or not, the TOU only allows posting things you are the author of. <br><i>'Gee, what a rotten policy is that! Don't they know that there is 'ownership' created by finding something (a true intellectual and creative, artistic, achievement after all) someone else is author of?!'</i><br>You're rather good at ignoring the biggest issue with that grandiose idea you though was yours: it is a proposal to be even less creative than mindless machines. A proposal to claim whatever your computer skills allow you to find as yours, and claim that any merrit the thing you found has is yours too for finding it.<br>From whatever way you look at it, it is an ill conceived, abject idea, which flies in the face of anything that deserves to be called creative or even art, promoting laziness and dishonesty, probably also breaking the law.<br><br>Now i'm sure you will again spend some time using Google to find irrelevant things on the web to throw into a PNet thread. Oh irony... ;-)

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Q.G., <em><strong>who</strong></em> created the image? That is the core of the moral issue here, and you have avoided it most assiduously with all your pompous prose.</p>

<p>"Google created it"??</p>

<p>No, Google is a legal fiction. Legal fictions do not create. Only individuals create.</p>

<p>A robotic data-gathering device does not create, either. It only collects data, mindlessly, like the automaton that it is.</p>

<p>Your mind is asleep, Q.G. I am not sure that even God could wake it up at this point. You think that the question is about <em><strong>WHAT</strong> </em>the law is, but it is not. It is about <em><strong>HOW</strong></em> the law came to be what it is. Why on earth, that is, did human beings abdicate the moral high ground and allow for the absurd claim that corporations are persons?</p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood</a></p>

<p>"Google owns it." Yes, that is the absurdity of it. A fictitious entity owns it.</p>

<p>"Google created it." That is even more bizarre.</p>

<p>Do not pretend to be quite as morally obtuse as you appear, Q.G. Surely you see the absurdity of the moral position that you are trying to defend.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Landrum,<br>The only relevant thing about the answer to "who created the image" is the bit that goes "not you".<br>That's the beginning an end of it. Whatever you think Google is. Whoever created these images. And whoever may own the images. The answer to all of those is "not you, Landrum".<br><br>And again you're hiding behind legalistic talk (which by now is quite out of touch with reality). The important bit (how often do you need to be told this before you even begin to understand?) is that your entire role is that of someone looking at an image. Your brilliant idea is nothing but <i>"an exercise aimed at promoting both creative and physical laziness".</i> <i>"You're just promoting a 21st century, lazy, let's-steal-everything-from-the-internet, bum mentality."</i>.<br><br>Why did (and do) you not spend all that energy you put into defending this abject idea into creating something yourself instead? Then you could have earned some respect as a creative person.

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>And again you're hiding behind legalistic talk.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No, I am trying to cut through all the legalistic nonsense, but you keep standing on "THE LAW."</p>

<p>How does one get to this point in one's life that you have never have given any thought to these questions, Q.G.? You've been playing with your shiny artifacts too long.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p><em>"You're just promoting a 21st century, lazy, let's-steal-everything-from-the-internet, bum mentality."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>You're just another hysterical defender of the capitalist status quo, Q.G. You've never had an original thought in your life.<em><br /></em></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Landrum,<br>You really must try to understand. This is not about the law. This is about the absolute lunacy of claiming you are doing something creative, artistic even. You're idea really amounts to nothing but <i>"a 21st century, lazy, let's-steal-everything-from-the-internet, bum mentality"</i>. There is no merit in not doing anything yourself. It is not an achievement to be able to use a computer to find someone that looks nice.<br><br>Remember that image you thought i mangled? The original of it? Not the improved version?<br>That's mine. I found it on the web somewhere. Doesn't matter who made it, or where i found it. Just look at how great it is! All my doing! You must understand (and if you didn't already, me being able to find that image surely proves it!) that i'm very creative.<br><br>Landrum, there is only one way you can claim to be the proud creator of something of artistic value. And that is by creating something of artistic value yourself. Else the credit is not yours.<br>Yes, that's of course very capitalist and all that.

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Let's face it, Q.G. You might have been a photographer once, but you're a collector of historical artifacts now. Your materialism has overwhelmed and extinguished your creative potential.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Landrum,<br>So what, besides the illusion that anything anybody made is something you can claim to be the creator of, have <i>you</i> created again?<br>Oh wait! Not even that illusion is something you, Landrum, created yourself...<br> :-D

[ShunCheung]

I am closing this discussion, at least for a while.