Tomorrow I go for a week to Germany, and want to take some 360 images while driving in my car. Is this allowed, because Google streetview is not active in Germany because of privacy issues.
Street view is active, but only in specific (the biggest) cities. But as far as I can remember (please correct if I’m wrong) Google decided to restrict street view in Germany by themselves, not by a court’s decision or something; AFAIK they only have been forced to allow people to blur people/license plates. And specific cars and houses/apartments if the owners request so (which they always offered internationally anyways) MS streetside was completely shut down for Germany though.
It’s indeed a difficult topic, but I just googled (in German) for any relevant information on Mapillary and privacy concerns in Germany, and didn’t find anything except for one discussion on OSM forums:
mapillary und Datenschutz / users: Germany / OpenStreetMap Forum (the discussion is in German, but you might use Google translate or similar to read.)
I guess as long as nobody complains it’s fine. And if by any time someone complains and Mapillary would become restricted or even forbidden it’d be an automatic process, so I don’t think you have to worry. But I’d recommend to manually look through all pictures to make sure everything’s blurred correctly.
Edit: This law might be interested aswell:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__59.html
It roughly translates to:
- It’s allowed to duplicate, publish and publicly show works* (in this case photos) of things that are permanently located at public ways, streets or places; the works* can be taken by using drawing, graphics, photography or videos.
- Don’t know the correct translation, I hope it’s still clear.
- is irrelevant for Mapillary.
A long, german detailed description of the “Panoramafreiheit” (Freedom of panorama) can be found here:
English version (covers Germany just minimally though): Freedom of panorama - Wikipedia
Second edit: Oops, just saw how old this topic is. Maybe it’s useful for someone else though.