Slashdot Mirror
Controversy Over San Francisco Public Transportation Data
paimin writes "A struggle is breaking out in San Francisco over whether the developer of a publicly-funded installation of real-time tracking for the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency has a right to control the use of data from the system. The situation is not totally clear, but this sure seems like an attempt to use patent threats to hijack public data. The city paid for the system, and the developer claims he lost money on the deal, so now he's shutting down applications like Routesy and Munitime that use data from the system unless they license the 'copyrighted' data from him."
The developer, at least in the linked articles, does not claim that it has lost money on the system. It simply claims to own the data and that it has licensed the exclusive rights (from another private company) to develop with the data. The question becomes, "So, OK, you have paid to develop this data, but why? It is, after all, public data."
It's called 'renegotiation'.
Others call it blackmail.
Whatever. he dude's playing a dangerous game.
It may be bus arrival times in San Francisco today, but this whole notion of data being exclusive property isn't new and isn't going away. And if Bilski stands and ends up partially undermining software patents, then I would hazard a guess that more companies are going to try monetizing the data aggregates and outputs. Even without Bilski as software becomes more of a commodity market, then data and data aggregates will become the value market.
This isn't a new concept. The public pays for scientific research at an institution of higher learning also funded by tax dollars, yet sometimes the only way you could get a copy of the results is pay for an expensive subscription to a scientific journal, which claims copyright on the published data.
This case probably isn't a good example and the developer trying to be the data gatekeeper is going to lose, but it's only the beginning. There will be more.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I also seem to recall a few occations of similar stuff where workers stuff was claimed by their employers, also tended to go in favour of the employer, usually especially so because it was stated in whatever contract
There are, however, limits on those kinds of shenanigans. I worked as a developer back in the eighties for an outfit whose employment contract not only entitled them to ownership of any software or intellectual property that I developed while on company time (obviously I had no problem with that) but ANYTHING I did outside of work, even if in a completely unrelated field, for a period of FIVE YEARS after I left their employment. Naturally I refused to sign that little bastard until they fixed it to my (and my attorney's) satisfaction. Even so, I have the feeling there aren't many courts that would have upheld that contract, but I felt it was best to have the worst portions excised.
The place was run by chimpanzees anyway, with a couple of orangutans in the head office. Yeah, it was a game company, and as employers go they made Electronic Arts look good.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If the data could be copyrighted, ownership would go to the creator of the data. That would be the city of SF, not the programmer. They created the data with the software they contracted him to produce for them, then they ran their software on their hardware, watching their mass transit movements and recording the results on their computers. The programmer could not own the data because he could not create it. He has no mass transit system with which to do so.
In any case, it is highly unlikely anyone could copyright the data. Copyright requires at least minimal creativity. Data produced automatically requires no creativity. In addition, works produced by the government (ie. by the public for their own good via their chosen representatives) cannot be copyrighted.
The programmers actions are likely to be considered by the court (unless he backs down very quickly) blackmail. These days, if the actions threaten public safety, they might even be considered terrorism. Under these charges, even if he backs down the damage is done and he might well be looking at many years in prison. The SF DA could file such charges to scare him as they often do with other charges. But terrorism charges tend to go all the way through once the process is started. To prevent others from trying this stunt, they may well do just this. And I hope they do.
The contract may have given him the right to use the data. There's no doubt it my mind that it did not give him sole use, much less state that he also had sole control over its use. There's no way the SF city attorneys would have allowed that in a contract.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
To me the author of the article is deliberately confusing public timetables with transmissions showing the position and expected arrival times of a bus.
If the position and expected arrival time is calculated on the fly, that's more of a service than just pure publically available data. If the condition of this service being provided is that the data is confidential or restricted to licensees. The provided data is processed real time using their equiptment and code. It's one thing to say "at 2:12pm the bus is 5 miles from transponder 2A, 1/5 mile from 4B and 8 miles from 1E" which is pure statistics (albeit collected from private equiptment), but to say "it's just left the anystreet stop and will arrive at noname plaza in 6 minutes in the current traffic conditions", could be seen as editorialising. If you're able to get as much of this information whenever you want, it then goes beyond fair use too.
An extreme argument of what the author is saying could be this: The fact that Michael Jackson died is public fact, a 400 word article going into the detail of how he died is copyrighted and subject to fair use restrictions. The interesting argument that applies here is, if that same news report was machine generated based on a few facts fed into it and the rest padded out through AI, could you copyright that?
Their motivation is clear, but data is not typically copyrightable. That they have invested money and want to make a profit doesn't change that.
Maps are the presentation of data, not the data itself.
It's just business -- you can't walk into a BMW dealership and demand they give you a new car for $1,000. The seller sets the price, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
But if you do walk into a BWM dealership and ask them for the best price on a BMW complete with a navigation system that lets you see where you've driven, how fast, what your fuel efficience was, etc, etc, etc.
They turn around and sell you a car; but it turns out it was below their cost.
They can't turn then around and say that all the data produced by the navigation system actually belongs to them and that you need to pay copyright license fees in order to see the data your navigation system has been collecting for you... (er for them??).
If I pay to collect the data & generate a database that doesn't mean that I can be forced to give the data away. But also, I can't stop anybody else from collecting the data & making their own database. If you don't want to buy it from me go forth & make your own database
That's an interesting argument, and it's logical from where you're coming from.
But the copyright law comes at it from a different direction.
If you go to a lot of effort to collect data, that's commendable. In copyright law, that's called "sweat of the brow."
But in copyright law, you can't copyright data that you've collected just by sweat of the brow. It also takes some kind of creativity or innovation or judgment.
That's what the Supreme Court decided in Feist. Phone numbers can't be copyrighted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
If NBIS owns (copyright owner) the data, he has to pay whatever they charge. If the San Francisco local government owns the data, then it's probably public data, I'm not sure. NBIS may own copyrights on that data because they have invested tens or hundreds of thousands in employees and installing those transponders.
I work for the company that runs a big chunk of E-ZPass, and even though
Someone in SanFran City Hall is doing a piss-poor job of contract management!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
they cant...you need to pay copyright license fees in order to see the data your navigation system has been collecting for you... (er for them??).
The auto industry is one of the culprits that does almost exactly that with the fault descriptions, and related data logs from "their" controllers. IE many data parameters cannot be looked at our changed with any of the data readers available to non-dealers. Sure they are required to allow these readers to exist and show some standard faults and data in a open format. But most of the data logged on your car, will require you to pay money to a licensed dealer to access. This may be justified while the car is under warranty, but there is no unlocking, or accessing that data for free once the warranty has expired.