The 10th Civil Chamber of the Itzehoe District Court, in its judgment of June 11, 2020, dismissed a claim against Google Ireland Ltd. for the pixelation of a property in the Google Earth map service.
Must Google pixelate properties?
The plaintiff sued for the anonymization through pixelation of a property he inhabits within the Google Earth online service. Google Earth, which is accessible, among other ways, via the website https://www.google.de/maps, depicts the world from above and can be viewed by anyone. It features a one-time representation, not a 'real-time' display. In the image, the property is depicted frontally from above in moderate image quality. The roofs of the house and the garden area are visible. Persons, windows, and doors are not discernible. If the address is entered into Google Maps, the marker lands on the street between four properties. An exact assignment to the specific property is therefore not possible. This only occurs when coordinates are entered; then the marker points directly to the specific property.
Does Google unlawfully infringe upon the general right of personality?
The Chamber indeed recognized an infringement of the plaintiff's general right of personality under Art. 2 para. 1 in conjunction with Art. 1 para. 1 of the Basic Law, which also encompasses the right to withdraw into one's private sphere. However, in this specific case, it deemed Google's interference justified. Within the framework of a balancing of conflicting constitutionally protected rights, it considered Google's right to freedom of information, which also covers the provision of information under Art. 5 para. 1 of the Basic Law, as well as the right to freedom to choose and practice one's profession under Art. 12 of the Basic Law, to be of higher value than the infringement of the plaintiff's privacy.
The Chamber primarily justified this by stating that neither persons nor other details from the private life and lifestyle of the plaintiff and his family are discernible in the image. There is no insight into the house itself or its access points, which could be of interest to burglars. Furthermore, the defendant did not 'spy on' the property to obtain and publish information about the plaintiff or his family. Rather, only what would have been visible to anyone from an airplane or helicopter was shown. Additionally, the defendant did not link the plaintiff's data, such as his name, with the address.
On the other hand, the defendant offers a service that enables everyone to gain an impression of the world from above. A claim for pixelation of properties without further interference with privacy in individual cases would render the service unusable. The public interest in obtaining information through this service also had to be considered within the scope of Art. 5 of the Basic Law.
The judgment is not yet legally binding (as of: June 12, 2020)
Source: Press release of the Itzehoe District Court dated June 12, 2020, Dr. Frederike Milhoffer, Press Spokesperson
