No right to privacy
Boring couple Aaron
and Christine have lost their case against Google for invading their privacy by
publishing a snap of the outside of their house on its Google Earth site.
US
magistrate judge Amy Reynolds Hay said that Mr and Mrs Boring had failed to
prove their case. They wanted Google to pay them cash damages for using a
picture of their Pennsylvania property snapped from a private road.
The
charged Google with trespass, negligence, invasion of privacy, and unjustly
enriching itself by profiting from the photo of their property. However Hay
concluded the accusations were legally unsustainable and were based on
inferences unsupported by facts.
She said that the claim failed to meet a
legal standard of "highly offensive to an ordinary reasonable person" and that
there was no convincing proof the couple was harmed by the Street View
picture.
While people might be miffed by the privacy implications of Google
Maps, it is hard to believe that any would suffer shame or humiliation.