Japanese group asks Google to stop map service

TOKYO (Reuters) - A group of Japanese lawyers and professors asked on Friday that Google Inc stop providing detailed street-level images of Japanese cities on the Internet, saying they violated privacy rights.

Google's Street View offers ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in 12 Japanese cities and is also offered for some 50 cities in the United States and certain areas in Europe.

The service allows Web users to drive down a street, in a virtual sense, using their mouse to adjust views of roadside scenery.

"We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing deeply violates a basic right that humans have," Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo, told Reuters by telephone.

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Credit: Reuters.com

A roller-coaster ride for wireless

The wireless industry had its share of ups and downs in 2008.

The year started off with a bang as the Federal Communications Commission held its most successful wireless spectrum auction ever, raising a record-breaking $19.6 billion for licenses in the 700MHz band of spectrum. The auction, which began January 24, reallocated wireless spectrum that will be freed up when TV broadcasters stop transmitting analog TV signals over the airwaves in February 2009.

Verizon Communications came out the big winner in the auction, snagging nationwide coverage in the C-Block of the 700MHz spectrum auction. But it was pressure from Google's bidding in the C-Block auction that helped push the price of the licenses above the $4.6 billion threshold to ensure that the open-access rule Google had lobbied for would take effect.

After the 700MHz auction, Google joined other tech companies like Microsoft, in lobbying to free broadcast TV spectrum called "white space" for unlicensed use. In May, Google co-founder Larry Page went to Washington, D.C., to drum up support for "white space" spectrum. But TV broadcasters complained that allowing devices to use this spectrum would cause interference. Despite opposition, the FCC unanimously voted in November to approve rules that would open up the spectrum for unlicensed use.

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Credit: CNET News