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Apr 5th, 2008, 7:32 am
It would appear that Google is being sued by the owners of a house in the Franklin Park suburb of Pittsburgh because the search giants photographed the property and included it in the Google Maps street view feature.

Why anyone would want to take an interest in the boring house, yes according to the reports the couple who have sued are called Aaron and Christine Boring, is beyond me. It pretty much lives up to the boring tag. However, the complaint states that "a major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy" and it is that privacy which has been violated according to the Borings, along with a devaluation of the property. I am not 100 percent sure how it is devalued, but there you go. They do have a point regarding privacy though, as it would appear the Google snappers had to drive up a driveway clearly marked as private in order to take the photographs.

Of course, the real irony is that no court case was required as Google will happily remove photographs upon the request of the proven owner whereas now that the litigation has attracted publicity there are photos of the house popping up all over the web. Not least the Allegheny County real estate site which reveals information about most every property in the county, including photos. In the case of the Boring house, it tells us how much the couple paid for it, the size of the house and the land attached, how many rooms it has and so on.

Google Street viewers wanting to find something more interesting, such as a headless man and a giant pumpkin, should look no further that the Top 15 Google Street View Sightings page however…
This blog entry was written by Bill Andad, staff writer aka newsguy. It has received 1,608 views, 5 comments, and 31 linkbacks. 3 voters have rated this entry an average of 5 out of 5 stars. It was promoted to featured status Apr 5th, 2008.
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Comments (Newest First)
jbennet | Microsoft Fanboy | Apr 17th, 2008
**** off (test for danis new lang filter)
>shadow< | Posting Pro | Apr 9th, 2008
yeah well its not like google cant afford another lawsuit
Drezta | Newbie Poster | Apr 7th, 2008
yay go big cousin (not BB because BB is the state...)
it is a problem with all organisations when they get to a certain size but did the Borings not realise that by complaining loudly the internet people would just do the opposite...
Mapper99 | Newbie Poster | Apr 5th, 2008
It's a good thing they weren't skinny dipping in their pool like some of these other unfortunate Google Street View victims:

http://streetviewgallery.corank.com
jwenting | duckman | Apr 5th, 2008
it's about time someone did something about Google's ever more intrusive spying into peoples' lives.
And these people probably took that into consideration when they decided to challenge Google's business practice of not asking permission before publishing things they have no right to publish without permission.

Google did the same (or planned to) with their "Google library" where they were to publish the content of entire books online unless the author told them not to afterwards, in the full knowledge that doing so is a breach of copyright law.
But Google thought they could get away with it because they're so powerful, so they don't care about the law.

Of course as soon as someone does something Google doesn't like, they're onto them like a ton of bricks.
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