Google Street View has blurred (see here and here) the cartoon images of Colonel Sanders that are present on advertising banners outside every KFC restaurant in UK citing a very strange reason.
The privacy laws of UK require Google to blur faces of people on Street View to protect them from recognition and that led to the blurring of the KFC mascot since he too was "a real person."
If that’s true, I wonder if they are also working to blur all those royal statues of kings, queens and politicians that adorn the streets of London like this statue of George Canning at Parliament Square in London.
Canning, like Sanders, was also a "real person" and he can be easily identified through this image on the Google Maps website.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-street-view-blurs-faces/8802/
Tags: feature, google maps, privacy, street view, Internet
Reader Comments
I do not believe that is related with the law. It’s just a logo. Probably, Google’s face detection technology blurred automatically all face images.
Written by Baturalp on 05.25.09
Wow Nice Info… Seems the next target will be Banner Advertisements itself. Since No one Like Free Promotion..
Lot of Things are being said about Street View. I think though street view is a marvel of technology. Seems everybody is making an issue of privacy and stuff.
I don’t know whether its right or wrong. But I love Street View and would love to have my city Kolkata in Street View.
Wish it happens soon.
Written by SnapHow.Com on 05.25.09
Yep, Baturalp has it right; it’s not the law, just that the automatic software identified it as a face and blurred it. In fact, I think that this has happened before with KFC’s logo, and google unblurred the images once it was pointed out to them.
Written by Thinking_Man on 05.27.09