"Google may be mapping the streets of the Western world but the good folk of Broughton, in Buckinghamshire, England, don't want a bar of it.
The Google Street View car was blocked from filming last week by angry residents, led by Paul Jacobs, who alerted neighbours after spotting the car from his window.
"I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages. What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home," Mr Jacobs told the BBC.
"We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike."
Mr Jacobs called police, who arrived to find a crowd in dispute with the Google driver, but the car moved on." [Brisbane Times on 6th April 2009]
"Mr [Rupert] Murdoch also questioned whether the newspaper industry should continue to allow online news aggregators such as Google to aggregate newspaper content without being compensated for it.
"Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" [The Australian 4th April 2009]
"Google launched Street View in the U.S. in May 2007, soon visually documenting and uploading the streetscapes of eight other countries to the web. Later that year, crews also embarked on Canadian streets, snapping static shots from camera-mounted sedans embossed with the ubiquitous company logo.
Holding an array of cameras, each vehicle moves along public roads collecting raw images of everything that happens to be in view – including residences, passersby and any other happenstance activity that's trapped by its sophisticated lenses.
It's the 2007 photos that will be showcased in the upcoming release. The reason they're only being posted now is partially thanks to concerns previously raised by the federal privacy commissioner, who feared the easily accessible photos showing some citizens could infringe on their privacy, Denham said.
Canada's privacy laws require that the person being photographed give their consent to the pictures being published, unless they are being taken for "journalistic, literary or artistic purposes."
The company recently approached Denham's office to explain what measures it has taken to alleviate its misgivings. In post-production, Google now subjects all photos to an automated process of blurring people's faces and licence plates." [
"COMPANIES that aggregate mainstream media content without paying a fee are the "parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet" and will soon be challenged, Robert Thomson, the Australian-born editor of The Wall Street Journal has warned.
Thomson, who was holidaying in Australia last week, said companies such as Google were profiting from the "mistaken perception" that content should be free........
"Google argues they drive traffic to sites, but the whole Google sensibility is inimical to traditional brand loyalty," he said.
"Google encourages promiscuity -- and shamelessly so -- and therefore a significant proportion of their users don't necessarily associate that content with the creator.
"Therefore revenue that should be associated with the creator is not garnered." [The Australian 6th April 2009]
"A trademark lawsuit against Google that a lower court had dismissed in 2006 has been given new life.
Rescuecom, a Syracuse, New York, computer services franchising business, sued Google in 2004, alleging that Google has seriously hurt its business by serving up competitors' ads when users search for "Rescuecom" in Google's search engine.
The suit alleges that Google and Rescuecom competitors buying the ads profit without authorization from the Rescuecom trademark, and that the practice can also confuse potential customers and franchisees, resulting in lost business.
In its defense, Google argued that the selling "Rescuecom" as a keyword to competitors that triggers their ads along with search results isn't a trademark infringement under the Lanham Act." [Computer World 6th April 2009]
No comments:
Post a Comment