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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.'"
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify. This might be one area where we get things right.
block [...] seemingly innocuous information as the locations of public toilets.
something you definitely need when you have transit problems.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It has been a very long time since I started training to be a lawyer (and stopped later on) but I believe that Australian copyright covers both "ideas" and "information". In this light I would think a fact is considered information. My recollection of the law is a little hazy, so anyone feel free to correct me, but I do recall having this very discussion in a lecture once.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Governments all over the world are asserting copyrights on information created with public funding, or even public domain information.
Particularly annoying is when museums and similar institutions assert copyright over images of works that should have fallen into the public domain by now, in direct contradiction of their mission of disseminating those works to the public.
Potentially, governments can also use copyright claims in order to restrict distribution of information that the government finds politically undesirable: statistics, investigative reporting, etc.
Generally, everything a government creates with tax payer money should be public domain.
Then, a Palm app was "sponsored" by some Palm user group, and the iPod download mysteriously disappeared from their website.
Now, the MBTA is +$6BN in debt and can't afford to do anything like this- or implement the real-time tracking system all the busses are equipped with. It gets worse- Charliecards can't have money or passes loaded on them via the web, nor can you check their balance via the web. The commuter rail system was supposed to switch over a while ago. Student passes? Not able to load them onto Charliecards. They're such fucking morons that when they came up with bike cages that were "secured via charliecard", they neglected to mention that you can't have an existing charliecard granted cage access- not only that, but the bike charliecard can't have anything loaded on it!
Please help metamoderate.
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.
You may wish to compare copyright schemes - In particular, the EU & AU recognise the so-called "sweat of the brow" right extant in databases, which a timetable would qualify under. Times of football matches also seem to qualify.
The controlling law in Australia is Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd [âoeDtMSâ] v Telstra Corporation Limited [2002] FCAFC 112. At paras 253 & 254:
253 It was not their alphabetical arrangement or their designation as headings that attracted copyright protection to the compilation of headings constituting the Headings Books. Rather, it was the labour of building up the collection (of headings). Desktop appropriated the benefit of all or most of that labour.
254 Accordingly, by parity of reasoning with my reasons for concluding above that Desktop reproduced a substantial part of the White Pages Directories and a substantial part of the Yellow Pages Directories, it also reproduced a substantial part of the Headings Books, and so infringed Telstra's copyright in those Books.
So, under Australian law, you can copyright a compilation of facts.
Cheers,
Michael
he should add 1 second to each time and suddenly it's not a fact from their timetable, it's his own creative work that merely HAPPENS to be close to theirs. no harm done.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
Seriously. Links to PDFs are bad enough. I really didn't want iTunes to launch itself.
IANAL
Clearly. A lawyer would have considered the fact that this is not in the US & US law doesn't apply.
My pics.
I'd say Japan. I've been there a few times and have always been amazed as I watch long distance trains pulling into the station exactly when the timetable says they should.
http://www.themeparks.ie
That, sir, is a very clever idea. If I lived down under, I'd help you write it.
Then again, I've already lived there in the past, and you couldn't force me at gunpoint to make that mistake again.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
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.
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify. This might be one area where we get things right.
In Australia (and I think elsewhere) there is such a thing as a "database right". A rough example would be the phone book. It is a collection of facts: people's names and their phone numbers. However, there is a significant investment in collecting these facts, and so the particular *set of facts* (ie, the database) has an associated database right. So, unless the authors of the app independently collected their own data on when trains pass particular stations (eg, by sitting in every station with a watch -- unlikely), they presumably were using RailCorps' "database" (timetable).
This is currently been tested in the high court, at least as far as TV Electronic Program Guides. See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/18/2037216&from=rss for the story.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
This is business as usual in Australia: The Federal Government uses the old archaic copyright practiced by *GREAT BRITAIN* (emphasis is theirs, not mine) where the government holds copyright on everything, and charge like a bull:
* Australian Maps are copyrighted by the federal government's mapping agency AUSLIG.
* Real Estate Data is copyrighted by e.g. Department of Natural Resources. They in turn make exclusive deals to data companies who sling wads of cash their way in exchange for special access. If you a citizen want access you're forced to go through these resellers. The famously greedy Macquarie Bank owns one of these.
* Tide tables are copyright.
* Even Aeronatical data is copyright. The US Department of Defense used to distribute a worldwide database of Aeronautical data, but they had to stop because "Air Services" (a branch of the Australian Government) hated the idea of the public getting for free what they were trying to sell. Instead of doing a worldwide edition without the Australian data, the US Department of Defense simply ended public access.
* Anything and everything. From simple forms to photos taken by government (e.g. a nice photo of that billion dollar aircraft paid for by your taxes) are copyrighted by the government.
* Even *THE WEATHER* is copyright. Print the weather in your local paper or stick it on the website, and you'll get an earful from the Weather Bureau who insists you "purchase a product license".
In all cases the people who run these departments like to think of themselves a private businessmen, but they're not: their capital is provided by the taxpayer and they've got all the protection of being part of the government. They're a monopoly. They can charge what they want. Not like you can go to the government down the road instead. Pigs at the trough.
This is different from the US where under the constitution the US Government does not copyright what it produces, reasoning your taxes paid to collect the data, so why should you be forced to pay again.
In the Sydney case here is the worst part: Their railway system is known as being beyond terrible. Trains don't show up, break down, disappear, bypass stations, ticketing doesn't work, there's bugger all security. There's a real culture of sloth, laziness and corruption there. And here's a guy selling something to help commuters (and offered to give it to the railways department for free) and they threaten him instead.
[citation ne...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The headline says he got a nastygram from "Transit Sydney".
According to the summary that is, you know, right below it, "Transit Sydney" is the application, not the company. The company is "RailCorp".
Getting a nastygram from an application you developed does occasionally occur (fuck those runtime exceptions), but not in the sense this article implies.
In australia it was:
-proposed more than a year ago
-went through trials
-is having large amounts of public scrutiny
-has not been passed as law yet
and
-will not pass due to public outcry and a shifting sentiment in the senate.
Compare this to the US, where you'd only find out 18 months after it was implemented, and anyone asking about it would have been jailed.
I think 5 years is far too short for "anything military", although in general if the government is relying on copyright law to restrict the dissemination of information, then it probably isn't sensitive enough to keep out of the public domain, even within five years.
I wonder if we'll ever know the whole truth about the warrantless domestic wiretap program? I'm not optimistic.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It seems that they had a report advocating a relaxation of certain provisions in the Crown copyright act "to allow for more easy access to public interest information, but those changes have yet to be implemented".
So for the time being Railcorp can sue the pants of anyone who publishes any part of their railway timetables. And they will since they're planning to bring out an app that does the same thing that this app does. Probably within the next 5 years or so, so "no worries mate".
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).
more or less clever than detecting traffic speeds (and thus jams) by tracking cellphone signals from the stations - as is already used / in trials?
Knowing that -a- train passed by point X at time Y is great... knowing -which- train that is, however, is a lot more important.
In addition, that only gives you the realtime information... if I want to travel tomorrow, how's the situation -right now- going to help me? I'd still want to be able to look at the scheduled time table - no matter how far off that may be from tomorrow's actual situation - so I can at least plan ahead. I can then use the realtime information -tomorrow- to see if the train's actually going to be on time or whether I can stay a bit longer and say my goodbyes to my daughter 5, 10 minutes later.
Who cares what the police did in the nineteenth century?
His Twitter page says "I've asked Minister Campbell to speak to RailCorp. They will meet with the app developers to negotiate how to use the info accurately"
Them:
Me:
Them:
Me:
Them:
You sir are a genius. I was going to suggest some kind of random number generator based on some non-copyrighted number sequence (may be, something like the Fibonacci sequence), but your idea is much better -- it's even CSI worthy.
That being said, I think a wiki, or better yet just a couple of handwritten notes of actual times from his user base would actually be enough, at least for now. In the meantime, I'd just post a copy of the letter on the web app, plus I'd post the contact information of all the lawyers, plus all the names and all the phone numbers of the employees/officials with any say on this matter.
If worse comes to worse, he could just use his app, Transit Sidney, as a web app with absolutely no time tables, but just complaints about delays. Such a service would be just as valuable, in my opinion.
Wait a second... "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."
What that's saying is that you're only violating their copyright if you get a license to do so.
Whoever wrote that letter needs to re-take Remedial Passive Voice.
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.
Hah, well at least they have trains that can be late. In the U.S., congress has determined that they would rather subsidize highways and airplanes than trains. For example, our national rail system doesn't even have a dedicated track. It's forced to borrow lines from freight rail, so the Amtrak frequently gets delayed because it has to pull over to let a freight train pass. This was one of the reasons the Accela is such a disaster, the congress refused to give it it's own lines, so it had to satisfy the safety rules for a collision with a freight train. The end result was that the Acela is so heavy it shakes itself apart, that's when it can get up to top speed, which it usually can't because it runs on shitty freight lines designed for 30 mph or so.
Of course, the amtrak is so limited in the number of places it goes that few americans have actually used it to go somewhere. The only time I ever used it on a regular basis was when I lived in California and would head down to San Francisco for the weekend -- the traffic was so bad and the parking in SF so horrendous that it was much easier to do that and take the BART or the MUNI everywhere.
I live in Atlanta now and the main "train station" for this metropolis of 5.6 million people is about the size of just one of the minor stops for a city in europe, there's not even a comparison to one of the hub stations like grand central or union station. It still blows my mind whenever I see it.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Chicago is doing that for their buses: http://www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/home.jsp
even with mobile applications (where you need the information the most).