Don't look back in Angers...

... and you'll end up on Google Street View in compromising circumstances!

Do I need to start checking round my front yard for pole mounted cameras? How is this sort of thing legal?

Now we know what The Stig was doing at the side of the A92. Do you think the BBC should sue too?

"If his gate was closed and he couldn't be seen by pedestrians, then he would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, IMO."

This isn't the test under French law merely because it is in US law; you might as well discuss Shariah. The right to one's own image applies in French law, as does the right to have one's dignity preserved. This is an interesting case in that the identity is understandable even though the image of the person is obscured, and means that it could be either an image that denies dignity or an effective news story breaching the right to a private life. French privacy law is really very strong, so discussions of US law have almost no bearing.

Oh noes!

Get Officer Crabtree on it!

(Mine's the one that says "Good Moaning" across the back)

So, never heard of the "Streisand Effect"

So, can we say, pissing in your garden if you have a perfectly good bog indoors is a bit, say, tacky?

Someone passing by sees you and takes the piss.

Someone with a camera sees you, posts it on the interwebs, and lots of people take the piss.

This is something that could have easily been avoided (no pun intended), and down to your own lack of tack. The size of the audience is entirely coincidental. Privacy is dependent on your (and everyone else's) expectation of a private act in a private place. I doubt that that would extent to "in full view of anyone in the street". Having the right to ones image would be a hell of a thing to preserve. You would probably end up with a total prohibition on posessing a camera in a public place.

OK, lots of "piss" in this comment. No wonder I have a shiny 'S' key :)

Street view camera height is way above normal ( 2 metre hedge ) height

Google street view cars have their camera mounted on a tripod/ pole contraption which places the camera at 2.7 metres above road level..or about 8 feet and nine inches above road level for the merkins and the metrically challenged Brits..

Here in France you need planing permission to build your garden wall ( on modern houses ) higher than 2.00 metres ( about 6 feet 6 inches ) ..this is to stop you building bloody great walls and blocking out the light from your neighbors garden or house windows..and you get flak from the local council if you let your hedge etc obscure their light too ..so most garden walls ( on modern homes at least ) stop at around the 2.00m or 6 feet 6 inch mark..

This guy was photographed by the street view car..over the top of an 8 foot, dense hedge ( the man, the house, the garden , the hegde, the lawyer etc, were all on French TV here this evening ) running along side the road that runs by his garden.. the street view camera is not at a height that any pedestrian could see things at..it is incredibly intrusive, and in France it is illegal to photograph someone who is not in a public place without their permission ..blurring them after the fact does not give Google or anyone else the ability to flout the law here..

He was in his own back garden behind his own bloody high dense hedge..he can do what he wants..

Google have also been in trouble for photographing over the tops of cafe style curtains ( the kind that only cover the lower 3/4 of windows, but that stop people less than 2m tall seeing in ) into peoples houses..and even for photographing into their bedrooms on old houses with low first floors..In Japan they had to lower the cameras to the eye level of an average person or as close as they could get to Japanese average ..had to be under 6 feet IIRC..

France takes privacy very seriously..a fact which some of you should be grateful for as the CNIL here seem to be the only ones with the balls to tackle Google and Facebook et al over online tracking, privacy etc..

Cost of doing business; ...

... "peace" on ya Frog.

@Doug Glass

If that was for me ? ..I'm Irish not French..but live in France..

Left te UK ( where I had lived for near 30 years ) in 1987 ( after Thatcher and Major had ruined the Uk it looked to be wanting to go down the same path for the next 20..Maybe John Smith could have made it somewhere worth staying..but then he "cough" died "cough"..so I was time to get out :-)..

traveled around a few years wound up here..

It has it's faults..

But at least it didn't have Blair...and it is waaay less chavvy than the UK...nor is it the de facto aircraft carrier for the US..and it doesn't bend over and hand the lube to Google, Facebook and other US mega corps..

It reminds me of Britain or Ireland in the late 60's..apart from the large cities ..and large cities are crap in every country ..I know..I've lived in many before arriving here..

Haven't you guys heard of...

...slashing your grass?

mon dieu!

To wee or not to wee?

No, don't wee. Hold it till you get to a proper loo.

Life Imitating Art.

The Naked Video (IIRC) Spoof Advert with a urinating Frenchmen for

“The French adore le Piat d'Or”

No one remember that from the 80's - Ohhhh please yourselves!

I've been waiting for this one to come up...

...granted, this isn't quite how I thought it would manifest, but...

"He is suing Google in a court in Angers for infringement of privacy and use of his image without permission. He wants the photo taken off the site and, naturally, he wouldn't mind about €10,000 in damages as well."

Tell me now, is the picture of him his intellectual or creative property? What about the garden he's standing in or the way he has painted his house? If it is, then there is a collision here between privacy (non-privacy) laws and IPR, isn't there? If not (and I can hear lotsa people saying "No reasonable expectation of privacy means footage can be taken") then suddenly art galleries, cinema's and theatres have an issue too, don't they? Those are public locations and thus I am free to take pictures and films?

Even if there is some dubious clause to protect corporate privacy and not private privacy (and I'd hardly be suprised at the existence of such), then I still think its only a matter of time before some company slurps someone's original artistic works and runs afoul of the "artists" IPR.

If I write a message on gmail to someone, and google slurps it, then surely they are in breach of my intellectual property rights, or is it the case that I have no expectation of privacy in my emails and therefore the content can be legally copied by anyone who wants it?

Either way, I see exploits.