drawing from google maps

Today I read about an artist who makes paintings from the street views that he sees in google maps. It's some beautiful stuff and none of it has a google logo.

In the spring, I posted about a beautiful Sunday 'walk' that I took through familiar streets of west Philadelphia. I used Google maps to step from my old Spring Garden Street apartment to a restaurant I once worked at in nearby University City. The walk brought back clear memories and evoked buried longings. Clearly the street view feature of google maps is incredibly powerful and I think we've yet to witness the unfolding of it's impact on the arts and society. I'd included two "photos," screen snaps of the scene, then after reading permission guidelines decided to pull the post.

The Permission Guidelines says,

All uses of Google Maps and Google Earth must provide attribution to Google and our content providers similar to what is shown to the users of our products today. You may not modify, minimize or obstruct copyright attribution text or the Google logo by any means. The attribution text must be legible and must use a font size of 6 points or greater. If for some reason this cannot be done in a screen shot, separate attribution text must be provided in a reasonably apparent location with special permission.

The page includes examples of permitted and not permitted screen shots and mine were outright theft. Further, the Terms of Service adds:

Unless you have received prior written authorization from Google (or, as applicable, from the provider of particular Content), you must not: [snip]
(b) copy, translate, modify, or make derivative works of the Content or any part thereof;

Did Bill Guffey get permission? Does Google know? No mention is made of Google being contacted by the artist or the article's author (pretty big oversight for a reporter...) I'm going to see if I can find anything and if I do, I'll add it here.