New York MTA Asserts Copyright Over Schedule

Presto Vivace writes "Greater Greater Washington reports that 'The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority's lawyers are going after a local blogger, and attempting to block an iPhone application showing Metro-North railroad schedules. The blog StationStops writes about Metro-North Commuter Railroad service north of New York City, and often criticizes its operations. Its creator, Chris Schoenfeld, also created an iPhone application to give Metro-North riders schedule information. Now the MTA is insisting he pay them to license the data, and at one point even accused the site of pretending to be an official MTA site.' I can't believe that this the MTA's actions are going to go over well with the public."

Comments

Why would a transit company....

[puppetman]

try to stop someone from making their service more user-friendly?

And the MTA should welcome constructive criticism - it's better than have your customers quietly leave.

I guess being a created-by-legislature, public-benefit company, run by political appointees means that you don't actually have to server your customers.....

I thought this was old news...

[Animaether]

I thought this was old news...
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/089229 ...but I guess that was maps, and this is schedules?

Damn near the same situation, though, although I'd say the MTA stands less of a chance in this case (raw data) than in that case (if one could argue that the map design, layout, coloring, etc. makes it enough of a unique piece to be able to claim copyright... how -did- that case end anyway?)

not ideal but...

[Tim4444]

There is some precedence for preventing private distribution of public material. There was a company in Missouri a few years back charging a large fee to get a copy of freely available documents about your home. Since that was already illegal they got shut down. If it wasn't I suspect you'd end up with so many copy cats that it would eventually be difficult to find the actual government site.

India has a similar problem with all sorts of fake government offices popping up trying to rip off tourists.

Re:Disbarment

[Trepidity]

(Replying to myself with a bit of historical trivia I remembered.)

At the risk of a tangent, the ancient Greeks actually had a specific derogatory word for people who brought frivolous suits for the purpose of extorting settlements or intimidating their targets: that's what the word sycophant originally meant (it now means something else, more like "yes-man" or "toady"). And there was a considerable debate at the time over how widespread the problem was, and what sorts of legal reform, sanctions, or prosecution of egregious offenders could do something about it.