360 cam images in Germany

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.

1 Like

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:

  1. 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.
  1. 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.

1 Like