A couple of weeks ago I saw an article in DT regarding a person who had gone to court regarding the submission of his details for the electoral roll which is compulsory. His argument was that he had no objection to providing information to the council but objected to the council selling electoral roll details to third parties ie mailing lists etc. The website www.192.com has been mentioned before. You can search for persons with limited details and find their personal details and I believe also an aerial photograph of their house. All this information is gleaned from the electoral role.
His argument was that it was a breach of his right to privacy for the council to sell information on.
I wondered if any of 'my learned friends' out there had seen any update on the case as I have not and am interested regarding the outcome.
Andrew.
PS sorry but I will stick to motoring topics in future.
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Andrew,
After the details of someone were published on this site I had a look round to see what you could find about me. Some delving required because there are a couple of things I don't do that make it harder to get a start.
Having said that the site you mention does indeed give an aerial photo of our house with the address details. This is a little fuzzy but it is possible to link to a better one where you can clearly see our two cars on the drive.
In fact some intensive searching with the right keywords finds most of your web activity and you can pull together a seriously good profile of anyone.
Two small things I will never do....take a store loyalty card or fill in one of those detailed shoppers surveys that come in the post.
So yes I would also like to know the legal position. Effectively the Internet has blurred the Data Protection Act as well as Copyright for almost anything.
David
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David
As a writer/editor copyright concerns me quite a bit, but I don't think the web has blurred international copyright laws. In effect they are self-policing. Heavily-used websites carrying unauthorized copyrighted material will get found out. Websites that nobody visits will get away with it. But then who cares about websites nobody visits? I think the photocopier is a far more serious threat to the right of authors to be paid for their work. Incidentally, universities are starting to use some very clever software to catch students who plagiarise from the web, although the only example I've ever knowingly seen of web plagiarism was two students handing in identical essays, one of which had the web address in the footer. Doh.
Chris
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Chris,
OK so perhaps the law isn't blurred but the reality is.
Another two example post!!
I want a photo of Lulu. So I pop round a few fan sites 'till I find the best one. Right click and Save As. Print it out on photo grade paper and frame...perfect. Now this photo will be a copyright one that in reality I could/should have ordered from the company with the image rights and paid them a tenner. But it is all so easy with the net why bother?
Second I write a monthly column for the Citroen Car Club. Much of my member input arrives by e-mail and it is so easy to paste in and edit to compile the column. But also it would be so easy to cut and paste from any other forum or website if I found suitable content. With a scanner and OCR large articles could be easily lifted from books and magazines.
Many households have the tools to do all this and that is where the problems come. Ten years ago we only had the choice of buying the photo from the proper source or typing up our own stuff, now....well.
David
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David Woollard wrote:
Granted, it's easy to copy stuff off the net, but I think the emphasis has changed, and in fact policing has even become easier and more rewarding in some ways. Once it was making the photocopy that was (ineffectually) chased. Now it's publishing (on the web) that is being targetted. For example, people have always ripped off records and CDs. But when Napster offered the service on the net, effectively re-issuing material, the lawyers won. You can bet the music industry is chasing all the others that have followed in its wake - all the rich, successful ones, that is, because they can make big court settlements.
I've recently been working on a short biography of Otto Bettman, founder of the Bettman archive of pictures in New York (one of the best picture agencies). Picture archives are naturally very concerned about people downloading pictures from the net, but most have tacitly accepted that if Joe Punter does it then it's probably fine. If Joe Punter publishes it, that's another matter. Fan sites are in some ways tolerated because they drum up interest in topics so the big clients (the newspapers and commercial publishers) will be interested in buying pictures. But if the fan site becomes a commercial venture (as with Napster), it's tonne of bricks time.
> Second I write a monthly column for the Citroen Car Club.
> Much of my member input arrives by e-mail and it is so easy
> to paste in and edit to compile the column. But also it would
> be so easy to cut and paste from any other forum or website
> if I found suitable content. With a scanner and OCR large
> articles could be easily lifted from books and magazines.
Yup, but if you're publishing it, then the risk of getting caught is high, especially since you are writing in a specialist market. As I said, it's the ability to copy (and scan) and publish material that the industry is bothered about. Once you publish it, you're effectively saying: "Here I am, come and get me."
I'm not going to ask what you're doing with a picture of Lulu on your wall.
Chris
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Chris,
Lulu was the cover to avoid giving away my real musical taste! I'm as likely to have her picture on the wall as rip off anyone elses writing. Not that there's anything wrong with Lulu.......give her a live venue, rock backing band and up-tempo numbers and she'd probably blow away half the current girls. But that's double off topic!
You have some fair points for the larger commercial concerns but I still think the home PC, combined with the net, has given us all an ability to abuse copyright in the domestic enviroment. However I take you point that the larger players are of greater concern to most copyright holders.
David
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Thanks for your feedback on the 'magic petrol treatment' - the same conclusions that I had arrived at.
On the question of privacy, I had occasion a few years ago to contact a family in America -( they'd hosted us during an orchestral tour )- and after trying a few sites a window appeared for a firm who for $25 would find out pretty well anything about anyone in the U.S.- home and work address, financial circumstances, marital details, criminal record and even their school results!
I don't doubt that a similar level of surveillance is possible here. Scary!
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Andrew
If you've got an address (or postcode, or grid reference etc) then Streetmap and Multimap have quite good aerial photos covering most urban areas.
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Yes, we located a long lost relative by paying an online firm £15 to search the entire UK electoral roll. They supplied address, phone number, and all people living at the address. This info is also available at any local town hall for local searches or in London for the whole of the UK.
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I searched 192.com for myself. I was not recorded as i had not filled in electoral register(binned it) or having fixed line(Use mobile). I had not noticed the photo facility before so that was new to me.
By the way anyone with computer related enquiries try www.net4nowt.com. Fast response as some members seem to live on the internet!
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If you go to their site, there's a facility to print off a form that will stop them putting you on their nasty little site.
www.192.com/privacypolicy.cfm#
Go down the page to request a C01 form, fill it in and post it.
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connected with your query but a different news story...
www.gorjuss.com/medicalprivacy/archives/00000048.h...l
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