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Timetable App Developer Gets Nastygram From Transit Sydney
mikesd81 writes "ZDNet Australia writes that NSW state corporation RailCorp has threatened a Sydney software developer with legal action if he fails to withdraw a train timetable application that is currently the second-most-popular application in its category in Apple's App Store. Alvin Singh created Transit Sydney after he began teaching himself how to program in Cocoa Mobile. Within days of its Feb 18 release, Singh received a cease and desist notice from Rail Corporation NSW, the government body that administers Sydney's CityRail network. The email states: 'I advise that copyright in all CityRail timetables is owned by RailCorp. ... Any use of these timetables in a manner which breaches copyright by a third party can only occur through the grant of a suitable licence by RailCorp.'"
"As a government body, RailCorp information is protected by Crown copyright, a contentious provision in copyright law that has recently been used to block attempts to access information on the location of Victoria's bushfires and even seemingly innocuous information as the locations of public toilets. 'RailCorp's primary concern here is that our customers receive accurate, up-to-date timetable information,' RailCorp spokesperson Paul Rea explained. 'This includes details of service interruptions, special event services, track work and other changes. ... At this stage, it is not possible for RailCorp to grant third-party developers access to our internal passenger information systems. As such, any third-party CityRail timetable application would contain inaccuracies and have the potential to mislead our customers.'"
This seems one of the cases when an Idling corporation wans to get money out of work done by someone else.
The corporation did not have a product that people wanted, a person makes such product and now the corp wants the idea and the money I presume.
I have a feeling that laws should contain a part where the "intent" of the law is stated. In the Copyright law the intent is to give a limited monopoly on the "product" to allow people to produce new books that otherwise would not be viable.
A train timetable is no such thing, yes it is printed, but it is a byproduct of the service, not a product in itself !
IANAL The point is: If laws had a part where it was written what was the general aim of the law than maybe it would be simpler to decide on borderline cases.
Correct. They even give you a receipt to turn into your employer or school explaining that they are responsible for your tardiness.
I seem to recall reading the average delay last year was only 26 seconds.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
So create an app so that it collects real-time data gathering information via GPS, Wi-Fi hub, and cell tower triangulation and uploading it to a central server (similar to Google Latitude). You could even use the accelerometer in the iPhone to detect when trains started moving, since I'm sure that it would be a different profile than walking. After a month or so, you'd have a real database of when the trains run rather than what appears on the schedule, which is more valuable information anyway. They couldn't touch that info, since they don't own it. If I lived Down Under, I'd write it just to tell them where they can stuff their copyright.
Never heard of anyone getting a refund.
They do give out the receipts though, which legally protect you from being tardy. Quite useful because when it rains, the train are guaranteed to be at least 5min late, sometimes up to 30min.
Other common reasons for trains being late are overcrowding and suicide.
Which is also holding back DIY PVR adoption since there is no legal source of TV show timetables.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Couldn't the developer create an application of what yesterday's, or the previous week's, train schedule was? Then, the application would be reporting past events, much like any news agency is allowed to do.
A lot of this is because we have a small population and a LARGE body of old law inherited from English common law. In America, a far greater proportion of what was originally common law has been codified into statutes.
A smaller, less litigious population also means that fewer opportunities arise for courts to apply a modern eye to some of these laws. So I guess the 'refresh rate' of our laws is slower than in larger countries. The right case to challenge a stupid law needs to come before the courts before things will get changed, but that 'right case' might involve some pretty uncommon circumstances.
Also many of these 'stupid-sounding legal issues' as they are reported on Slashdot are sensationalised, or the summary misses a crucial point (or half the story!). This applies to any legal stories on Slashdot, not just ones originating from .AU.
Australian law by and large is well thought-out ... just sometimes a bit slow to get updated to deal with issues surrounding new technologies. Our IP law in particular is in need of an overhaul (although incidentally, it was made a lot worse by the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement signed a few years ago, which required us to adopt some DMCA-style provisions).
The Australian governmental system has its strong points - it's a lot less susceptible to vote-buying and big business influence than the US system. Partly that's because we don't directly elect a head of state resident or even the Prime Minister (which understandably in most Americans' opinion is a bad thing). So we don't have the need to spend huge amounts of money promoting candidates (look at the money spent by Obama/McCain on their campaigns last year ... I'd be surprised if our major parties spent 1% of that when we have elections).
I have used it for successfully to get out at the right stop when I cannot read the station names. You get out when the train is scheduled to arrive at your destination. My experience is that (a) the train is actually stopped within the scheduled minute, and (b) it is at the right destination. Very comforting when the script it complete gibberish to you.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
It's not the most ridiculous thing in the world. Facts could be seen to be more deserving of copyright protection because, unlike creative works, they have to be collected and, depending on the context, kept up-to-date. This takes time and money. I'd be pretty pissed off if I collected large amounts of information, putting substantial resources into making sure it was accurate and up-to-date, with the intention of recovering that investment through advertising (for example) only to have someone reproduce it sans-advertising for free.
Obviously there has to be a distinction between the fact and the collected data, and it probably shouldn't apply to data that already exists, but a knee-jerk reaction against copyright might not be helpful.
Crushing societal pressure to conform?
Which might as well be called common sense. Maybe the average Japanese doesn't want to be a jackass.
IMHO that's a good thing.
Another example: A friend who had spent some time in Japan told me that in large crowds Japanese tend to speak less loudly than usual. Over here, eveybody speaks more loudly, so eventually everybody needs to yell.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Them:
Me:
Them:
Me:
Them:
I have used it for successfully to get out at the right stop when I cannot read the station names. You get out when the train is scheduled to arrive at your destination. My experience is that (a) the train is actually stopped within the scheduled minute, and (b) it is at the right destination. Very comforting when the script it complete gibberish to you.
I tried this in the Swiss Alps once, thinking that "hey, it's Switzerland, these things should be on-time, right?" I forgot how close the Alps are to Italy. Luckily, the mountain trains don't run much faster than walking speed in that place - when the conductor discovered my error (about 5 minutes out of the station), he said "that's your train over there, want to change?" He went ahead of me to give me a hand jumping up, hopped off of one moving train sprinted about 20 yards and hopped onto another moving train. I wonder how often they do that?
There was a case recently where a well-dressed guy with a laptop case passed out on the Red Line. The passengers hit the emergency button, the mid-train conductor came out, took one look at him, said "he's fine, just drunk."
The train went another half a dozen stops, including past Mass General Hospital (literally. The stop is maybe 500 feet from the emergency room), and Park Street, where Boston EMS had been told to meet the train. The train didn't stop at Park- it went all the way to South Station, miles from any hospital.
To put this in context- they had just announced they had put defibrilators in all of the commuter line trains after a guy died because (drumroll please) the conductors refused to stop the train to meet an ambulance crew- they went all the way from Wellesley to South Station, by which time the guy was a vegetable. They got their asses sued, and lost- there should have been manslaughter charges.
Please help metamoderate.
The US murder rate is about 5.9 per 100,000. It hasn't been at 9 per 100,000 in a number of years. The UK's is about 1.4 per 100,000.
The US counts a murder when there's a body and foul play is suspected. The UK counts a murder when there's a conviction.
Japan's is about 0.5 per 100,000.
When a father of five kills his kids, wife, and himself, Japan counts seven suicides, the US counts six murders and a suicide. (Try comparing the sum of the murder and suicide rates in both countries to see whether it's mathematically possible that the US has a lower rate if they were counted the same.)
The murder victimization rate of US citizens of UK descent is lower than that of UK citizens. Ditto for US citizens of African descent vs. Africans, US citizens of Japanese descent vs. Japanese citizens, and for several other regions of origin. (Allowing immigration of people from more violent cultures and letting them keep their cultures until they voluntarily adopt another has the downside of raising the average level of violence - though fortunately {for others} the violence occurs mainly among the groups in question rather than across group boundaries.)
When comparing death rates from murder and drawing conclusions about culture, don't forget to include deaths from war and genocide (including euphemisms like "sectarian violence" and "ethnic cleansing").
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way