ProMods

Nico wrote:Nope it's actually not allowed to have dashcams in Germany if Im not mistaken...

Google doesn't use "dashcams" in any case. Their camera(s) are roof mounted!

Michael Rosen wrote:Yes indeed:

Wikipedia wrote:In Germany, while small cameras for personal use in vehicles are allowed, posting footage from them on social-media sites is considered a violation of privacy and thus forbidden. Dashcam footage is also inadmissible as evidence in a German court.

Not quite true: you have to obscure licence plates on video obtained from a dashcam in Germany when posting it in the public domain, but it's not actually forbidden. But, hey, Wikipedia...

Sorry it's off topic but to add my 5cents here in Australia there's talk about making dashcam footage legally admissible in courts for speeding offences and naturally drink driving so along with the roof mounted cameras etc. that we've got it's getting very 1984 big brother ( George Orwell for you younger folk ).
Back to topic I hope sorry to hear about your mishap Mandelsoft have you given tinypics a go, do you want me to send the link via pm?
Regards
Adrian

MandelSoft wrote:It is actually worse: the images were hosted on Majhost. Majhost has been taken down and it is likely I lost all my images from that website (note: this also includes my SimCity 4 and geofiction stuff )

I have quite some of my pics on my hard drive, but I do have to re-upload a lot of them elsewhere...

Oh dear, that's nasty. Why don't you upload them to say, Google Drive or something like that?

When it comes to streetview and Germany: there was quite some uproar in the media when they announced streetview as people didn't want their houses to be visible in the internet for everybody. Because of that, I think, Google decided to keep Street view limited to some major cities. It seems that Germans tend to be more nervous when it comes to privacy related stuff, and perhaps consumer protection in general. For example, there is lots of people opposing TTIP in Germany (me included), it's more of an issue than in many other European states.

M4rkus wrote:people didn't want their houses to be visible in the internet for everybody

Yea and this is such a nonsense argument. Any person with a camera can walk down a public street, take photos and post them on-line.
Furthermore if I wanted to know what a street looked like I could also travel down there and view it in person.
I'm really disappointed in the way the average German feels so paranoid about these technologies.

Anyway Probably should be talking about map improvements

ScuL wrote:

M4rkus wrote:people didn't want their houses to be visible in the internet for everybody

Yea and this is such a nonsense argument. Any person with a camera can walk down a public street, take photos and post them on-line.
Furthermore if I wanted to know what a street looked like I could also travel down there and view it in person.
I'm really disappointed in the way the average German feels so paranoid about these technologies.

Anyway Probably should be talking about map improvements

Agree and agree.

ScuL wrote:

M4rkus wrote:people didn't want their houses to be visible in the internet for everybody

I'm really disappointed in the way the average German feels so paranoid about these technologies.

In the truth it´s only a Little Group who thinking like that.

But in Germany you had to make it right, for EVERYBODY. That´s our Problem.

Actually, I don't think, it's a little group and I can understand it in some ways. It might be really part of the average mentality (as well as bargain hunting). This phenomenon has even been given a name, German angst. It's not everything negative about this, though. In my opinion, German public tends to be rather pacifist these days and conscient of environment matters. Actually, I don't think that's it's too bad to ponder different matters and find compromises. Well, maybe this goes to far, but I wanted to put another direction to that discussion. Sorry for off-topic

Indeed Google already took photos of big parts of Germany. Then they began publishing those views. Soon persons started complaining and Google had to "hide" their houses on StreetView (like in the picture on page 252 posted by Nico). A friend of ours had the same problems so I know this for sure. Because of all this trouble Google stopped publishing the rest of the material taken on German roads and to be honest you don't need StreetView if you're only planning a trip/route. Of course, it's nice for persons like you and me who try to rebuild the country virtually but for the average person StreetView isn't really necessary. That's why I think they considered that it's enough to have StreetView for the bigger cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Leipzig and so on. The only thing that's interesting is the fact that I just saw another car (of Google's) taking pictures (again) in Dresden.
Sorry for off topic, but I had to state this.

Greetings R730_V8