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

Re:words words

[Desler]

What? You expected that this the editor proofread the submission?

This is will never fly in the courts

[Cutie Pi]

There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.

See, e.g. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)
Link

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Jurily]

Not to mention stupid. It's their own best interest to make that information as widely available as possible.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[UncleFluffy]

There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.

You're assuming that the schedule is a list of facts, as opposed to a work of fantasy. My experience with public transport in the US is that it's generally the latter.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[DutchSter]

Not to mention stupid. It's their own best interest to make that information as widely available as possible.

Not that I agree with what the MTA is doing, but I can see where they might be coming from, if for no other reason from an accuracy standpoint. I'm sure they wouldn't disagree that it is in their best interest to make the information as widely available as possible. However, you'll note that it says that Schoenfeld enters the data manually. What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

Of course they've got other issues where they've supposedly got a deal with some vendor to provide some kind of mobile scheduling service, but I wonder most about the liability MTA could face if people rely on someone's home grown hobby and it goes bad. Sure in the end they'd come out OK, but there'd be lots of bad press and time spent cleaning up the mess.

As one of the posters to the blog pointed out copyright law isn't the proper way to go about this objective. Sadly it's probably just the first thing that came to mind when Director Somensmuck called Legal and said "Johnson? We've got a problem. I want to know what you're going to do about it before you go home tonight."

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Translation Error]

I imagine they believe it's in their own best interest to create and sell an iPhone application themselves or (more likely) somehow get a cut from his.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[TooMuchToDo]

In the US, yes. In Japan, you can set your watch to public transportation.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[tomhudson]

I wonder most about the liability MTA could face if people rely on someone's home grown hobby and it goes bad.

How about the liability anyone faces for 3rd-party actions not under their control (hint - there is none).

A simple disclaimer would suffice - even one written in Engrish, like the "Do not iron clothes while wearing them" on irons.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[richardkelleher]

maybe they displayed the logo?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[richardkelleher]

They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[blackraven14250]

Doesn't matter what press the MTA faces. There's no other way to get that many people all around NYC. Roads are congested as-is. Take away the biggest form of mass transit there, and everyone will run back because nobody can get anywhere.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[blackraven14250]

But the Japanese make all the good watches!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Jurily]

What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

The problem is, a third party service is required to spread the information. In the UK, there are at least 10 different websites, where you can search, book and print anything you could possibly need (including a bus service or a taxi at the destination), and if you're on the move already, you can just send an SMS, and they'll text you back with the information you need.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[omnichad]

get a cut from his? That's the same as saying they own the data. Maybe offer a paid API to get realtime updates to the schedule. If he wants to pay, then it makes his site a better one.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[TheDarAve]

I thought that was the swiss? Or am I thinking of Hot Cocoa again?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[TheDarAve]

Just wondering, is the NY MTA public or privatized? If its public, it's going to get thrown out. There's that whole sticky thing about the government not being able to patent or copyright things made with public funds. (However, this is not true of things made by contractors.) There's a few other public/private quirks in the laws too that I don't know. (IANAL.)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they already do that?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[cpt kangarooski]

No, you're thinking of the federal government, and even then it's not quite what you think it is. Unless the government of the state of New York has a law whereby it disclaims copyrights in works it creates, it has federal copyrights in them. This having been said, it would probably be good for the Copyright Act to make all governmental bodies ineligible for copyright, on the grounds that it's no incentive to them. For example, the MTA's decisions regarding creating and publishing a schedule are going to be made without any concern for copyright. It isn't incentivized to do what it otherwise would not do because of copyright.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[pdabbadabba]

So, business as usual then?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[calmofthestorm]

Reminds me of [insert city with reputation for poorly run transit system\]!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Greyfox]

See the problem is that your argument is well reasoned, grounded in fact and polite.

The correct response to the New York Transit Authority is as follows:

What, are you retarded?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.

That may be true. But as anyone who uses public transport knows, bus and train timetables are clearly creative works of fiction!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[rm999]

"When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life."

Apparently you have never ridden on the New York subway system :P

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[DutchSter]

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

You've obviously never been in a public facing position with an angry New Yorker who's Tom Tom is telling them to go down a road that's closed either. Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats when the situation is caused by something totally out of their control? Particularly if a guy is pointing to a train schedule on his little computer. Do we honestly expect the average station worker to understand that the schedule on the little computer is someone's hobby? It's hard enough to get one of them to tell you where the public toilets are.

The problem is, a third party service is required to spread the information. In the UK, there are at least 10 different websites, where you can search, book and print anything you could possibly need (including a bus service or a taxi at the destination), and if you're on the move already, you can just send an SMS, and they'll text you back with the information you need.

Yes I know...I've been there done that. I don't know how all of those systems play together but I'd be willing to bet that they are not dependent on some well meaning guy sitting down with a copy of the schedule keying in timetables by hand. Chance are there is an official API or some other way for all the third parties to grab the data directly which cuts the risk of human error down significantly. In an ideal world MTA would come up with a way to accommodate what is obviously a public demand for the information.

Again I don't agree with what MTA's doing, but this is the only place where I think they might have a legitimate concern. It does not justify horrid abuses of copyright law however.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[AmberBlackCat]

So why doesn't that precedent apply to sports scores?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[DogDude]

Apparently not. I visited NYC and (tried) to take the trains around the city. Wow. No schedule anywhere. At most, we found one route map on a wall in each station, after you pay to get in. I never once saw a schedule. We couldn't even find maps. The NYC train system is apparently not interested in disseminating any of their secret information.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[HeronBlademaster]

Nope, you're thinking of knives.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[treat]

What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

The problem is, a third party service is required to spread the information. In the UK, there are at least 10 different websites, where you can search, book and print anything you could possibly need (including a bus service or a taxi at the destination), and if you're on the move already, you can just send an SMS, and they'll text you back with the information you need.

I don't even understand the basis for the assumption that a mass transit provider is responsible for notifying riders of issues, providing a reliable up-to-date Internet-accessible map, etc.

Where did this come from? Has any mass-transit system actually been required by law to provide this, or beeen successfully sued for a failure to?

If the MTA does have such a responsibility, the courts won't look kindly upon them attacking a third party for taking over something that they are failing at. And if they don't have such a responsibility, the logic is...what..again?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[subreality]

It's their own best interest...

You're assuming that they're interested in helping people efficiently use their service. Based on my experiences with government employees, I'd say that many are not.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Bigjeff5]

It's not on grounds of inelligibility for copyright as an entity that this will be thrown out (you're right about that, the gov can hold copyright), it's on the grounds that facts cannot be copyrighted. They may have a case for the composition of the schedule, but as far as the dates, times, and train numbers, they've got nothing. So unless he's doing a scan-paste operation to get the schedules on his app (which I can't imagine, but it's possible), he's in the clear. They're just trying to bully him.

If I were him I'd counter-sue on the basis of a frivolous lawsuit and harassment, and seek damages matching any lawyer fees and lost income due to the trial.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Fnord]

If you're referring to the subway, not Metro North, then no, there isn't a schedule. Trains run every 8 minutes. If they were to try and make a schedule with 8 minute intervals, any delays (which are inevitable, its a huge system) would quickly throw that out of what completely. Instead of late trains waiting for the next 8 minute interval, they just leave as soon as they can. New Yorkers know that if you miss a train, the next one isn't that far off.

If you are talking about Metro North like they were in the article, then you weren't looking hard enough. Grand Central has big lit up boards with all the schedules, and pampheletes all over the place. Those trains run once an hour. There a schedule is necessary. With the subway, not so much.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Tired and Emotional]

I don't follow. Having the info available would increase ridership. How is that in the MTA's interest? Its going to make the trains run slower. How can you expect them to keep schedules if the blasted riders keep getting on and off.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[canadian_right]

The license they offer explicitly does NOT guarantee the schedule data supplied to be correct. They are just worried about money.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Registered Coward v2]

They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.

Quick - patent that idea. Oh wait, our local TA already does that. Prior art, never mind.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[nametaken]

"Do we honestly expect the average station worker to understand that the schedule on the little computer is someone's hobby? It's hard enough to get one of them to tell you where the public toilets are."

I get that they're savages, but really why not? In my head it sounds like, "Pal [pointing at the posted schedule], that's the only schedule that counts." One thing those people can do well is be surly.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mikiN]

Has any mass-transit system actually been required by law to provide this, or beeen successfully sued for a failure to?

I believe many European countries have such laws, but I'm afraid many 'merkins will look at those as inhumane Socialist slavery states anyway</humor> At least I believe it to have been so until many mass transit operators got privatized. Service and reliability have been going downhill (sorry about the pun) ever since.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[harlows_monkeys]

You've slightly misstated the precedent. Lists of facts or data CAN be copyrighted under Feist, but the selection or arrangement has to be sufficiently creative. If the selection or arrangement isn't sufficiently creative, you don't have a work of authorship, and so no copyright.

In Feist, the selection was "all people in the area with telephones" and the arrangement was "alphabetical by name", neither of which is creative. No copyright. I'd expect that transit schedules would similarly fail, assuming they are complete an ordered in some logical way, such as by route number.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Bourdain]

Last time I checked, the MTA's schedules are not fact -- just merely their best, but rough estimates of possible train or bus service

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Starker_Kull]

They are afraid terrorists will get a hold of the schedule and to keep that from happening they are going to stealth the whole process. Buses and trains will now be randomized. Numbers and routes will change spontaneously. Sometimes trains will run on bus routes and buses on train routes. Every once in a while one (either a train or bus) will cross over to NJ, drive off in the pine barrens on its own and self destruct on the off chance it is carrying a terrorist. That will solve everything.

The airlines already implemented that plan. Sadly, nobody noticed.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[crankyspice]

There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted. See, e.g. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

Applied in a case pretty similar to this, NAUTICAL SOLUTIONS MARKETING v. BOATS.COM, 8:02-cv-760-T-23TGW (M.D.Fla. 04/1/2004), where the court held that loading a website to extract non-copyrightable facts was a fair use, and that the facts (details of yachts being offered for sale) were, of course, not copyrightable. It's a district court opinion and therefore not binding authority, but could be persuasive. (Although see BUC International Corp. v. International Yacht Council Ltd., No. 04-13653 (11th Cir., 2007).)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Keen Anthony]

What happens when he has a typo or transcribes a column wrong and borks an entire train? Customers get angry because they miss expected connections and blame MTA not Schoenfeld.

I doubt that really is a concern. I imagine that MTA is a bit like Chicago Transit Authority, operating with a "So, what. We're sorry for your inconvenience. Now live with it." MTA surely could care less about Schoenfeld's accuracy. If he has a history of inaccuracy, he will lose readers and his iPhone app will lose users. If they were only suing to force Schoenfeld to make a very clear disclaimer that neither he nor his site and app are associated with MTA, then I'd think MTA did care about inaccuracies. Maybe MTA has an iPhone app of their own in development which they hoped to sell.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[retchdog]

Every station I've been to has a system-wide map before paid-entry (at least at the main entrance; usually not at the unmanned ones). Usually/always a detail-map of the immediate area too. And then there are the route maps by the track. There could be more of these I suppose.

Schedules are another matter. I lived here for four years before I found out the trains (at least in principle) run on a fixed schedule.

I think the trains are pretty easy to use; I at least had a lot more trouble figuring out what direction I was facing, after getting out of the station...

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

Another reason these schedules are not copyrightable is because the MTA is owned by the NY government, and the NY government is owned/funded by the People, therefore the schedules belong to the citizens of New York State. They are free to copy the schedules as often as they desire, especially since they already paid for them via taxation.

This is just yet another case of government forgetting why it exists - to serve us.

All legitimate power flows from the bottom, up, and politicians which forget this need to be fired & replaced.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

>>>Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats

Because that's what they are paid to do. Just the same as when I worked for JCPenney years ago, I was required to put-up with angry customers complaining about broken products, or late fees on credit cards, or whatever. It's called customer service, and you are expected to be patient with the customer, whether he's happy or angry.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Dare nMc]

According to the article their is a issues with their arguments of concern with correct data. MTA doesn't care where he gets the data from, or how it is entered, they only want paid for the app existing. (according to the linked article) If he pays for the license, they might provide him data on a CD, but only when he requests the CD and will make no guarantees to actually provide any data to those paying the license fee (IE they might provide him data on a CD, or maybe not.) It is a valid argument that at some point this app existing might someday cause them harm, since if they succeed in getting apple to pull the app then they will likely have some pissed off customers. Doesn't seam to be the main concern of MTA does it?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[adolf]

I think you mis-translated the Chinglish warning, which should read "Do clothes the wearing while iron not!"

Hope this helps.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[dangitman]

Seeing as the MTA is a public service, paid for by taxpayers, I don't think there is the same obligation to put up with obnoxious users who are a drain on the system. Not that JCPenney has any obligation to put up with angry customers, it's just done for reputation/business reasons.

Would you expect to get away with angrily harassing, say, security workers at an airport? That behavior is likely to get you either ejected or arrested. Society shouldn't be enabling assholes.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[jcr]

Terrorists being notoriously impatient, can be thwarted by denying them up-to-date schedule information! It's brilliant!

-jcr

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Jared555]

This is bullshit. When they arrive at the station and their train is not there, usually they'll ask someone working there or start to complain to someone working there, at which point they'll get informed about the facts of life.

Kind of like the people that sit in a movie theater 45 minutes after the movie is supposed to start before they go ask someone that works there why it didn't start? (True story)

Yes, in my example, intelligent people will look up to the control booth, see if someone is working on something, and if not go talk to someone about 1 minute after the movie is supposed to start (or even before, if there are normally advertisements), but you always have the people who just figure 'oh they will notice eventually' or 'someone else will complain'.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[shentino]

Still though if you can't afford a decent defense long enough to make it to trial you can always be forced into an unfair settlement...

If the guy makes it to court then he'll almost certainly win.

Whether or not he has the resolve and stamina to make it that far is another thing. We are talking about a government entity after all, which are usually ten times worse than corporate ones.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[ctmurray]

Exactly. The "accuracy" problem of the iphone app is nonsense. The printed schedule is not accurate either.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[shentino]

True, but letting people be even BIGGER assholes right back isn't good either.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that it's government-run. It's that it's a monopoly, and you can't go elsewhere. But you can't go installing 2 sets of train-tracks everywhere, so the monopoly is a necessary evil.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[badasscat]

Another reason these schedules are not copyrightable is because the MTA is owned by the NY government, and the NY government is owned/funded by the People, therefore the schedules belong to the citizens of New York State.

Authorities are not "owned" by the NY government. This is one of the big issues with authorities in New York - they were invented precisely because they are independent of state government (they're designed as a workaround for various inconvenient state laws). The state has no direct control over the MTA or any other authority, and the authority's finances are intentionally kept separate. For all intents and purposes, authorities are simply very large non-profit organizations that have been granted broad powers by the state to provide public services, and have governing boards comprised of state and local officials, among others.

Some authorities are actually completely financially independent; they're not subsidized at all. The MTA is not in that category, but it does make more of its own money than any other transit system in the world. Its subsidy is relatively small in percentage terms, and it is not direct government funding, like an agency. It's an agreement that needs to be negotiated and renewed every few years.

I'm not disagreeing that this stuff can't be copyrighted, I'm just saying it's not for the reason you provided. There's no direct link between any NY authority and the taxpayer. There are indirect links, but it's not an unbroken chain between authority and taxpayer.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[badasscat]

This is where one could say, once again, that government-run activities suck.

The MTA is not a government-run agency. It's an authority, an independent organization that relies only partially on a government subsidy. Yes, it takes government money, but more in the way that Blackwater takes government money than the way the US Army takes government money.

Anyway, as these things go, the MTA is not nearly as badly managed as you might think. The NY transit system is massive, it's very old, and it was formed out of disparate lines that had nothing to do with each other whatsoever before the MTA took them over. Consider that the MTA not only runs what is by some measures the largest subway system in the world, but also one of the largest bus systems in the world and two of the largest commuter railroads in the world. And the LIRR by itself has more track miles than the Tokaido Shinkansen line in Japan, so the scale here is not something I think most people outside of New York ever imagine. All things considered, I think they've done a pretty good job getting people where they need to go over the years. Granted, I complain about them as much as anybody in my day to day life, mostly about the fare hikes, but most of that's bills coming due from the 1970's, when government slashed the subsidy and the agency was forced to defer billions in basic maintenance and upgrades. When people demanded better service (as in, for example, elevated stations that did not literally rain rusted steel down on pedestrians below), the government would only give them loans for capital improvements rather than increasing the subsidy.

Also, believe it or not but some New York authorities are actually profitable. The bridge and tunnel authority, which is actually now owned by the MTA, has always been profitable and in fact helps subsidize the rest of the MTA. Without it, the MTA probably could not survive, because the government subsidy it receives is a pittance in percentage terms compared to other transit systems around the country and the world.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[badasscat]

In an ideal world MTA would come up with a way to accommodate what is obviously a public demand for the information.

Try Google Maps.

Seriously, try it. It's pretty neat the way they've integrated MTA schedules, with the MTA's blessing.

(Works with Amtrak too, btw.)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[badasscat]

Just wondering, is the NY MTA public or privatized?

Third time here I'm saying this, but since you actually asked, they're quasi-private. The authority situation in New York is murky, but the whole reason these things exist is so that they are not treated by law as government agencies. They are government-sanctioned and government-subsidized, but privately managed and run, with basically no accountability to any government agency or the public.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[gslavik]

Even those don't count (as they are never accurate anyway). ;) (I've taken my fair share of buses and commute via trains from south Brooklyn to south Manhattan 5 days a week.)

To be fair though, trains do run pretty close to ever 8-10 minutes during daytime and slow down to 20-30 minutes at night. That's the train's schedule afaik and they are pretty good at keeping it.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[syousef]

You've obviously never been in a public facing position with an angry New Yorker who's Tom Tom is telling them to go down a road that's closed either. Why should they require their staff to put up with rude and aggressive asshats when the situation is caused by something totally out of their control?

Because it's public transport, not a gentleman's carriage service. If the public are rude and aggressive enough, you call the police in.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[gslavik]

Walk up to any manned booth and say the following words: "May I have a map, please?"

As for schedule, every 8-10 minutes during the day.

You're welcome. :)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[celtic_hackr]

Of course, this doesn't apply to all countries. This would probably succeed in the UK and has already done so at least once in Australia. Just saying.

I doubt the MTA has a wing and a prayer in this country, Especially if he typed it all in. Of course, it's a government thing too. They may have a copyright on the schedule. But as long as he's not presenting it in the same format and presentation he should be fine. The application is likely ok. It's a transformative work, as long as he's not pulling the data from one of their databases. Unless they have one also, then it could get touchy.

FYI, my legal opinion is illegal, so if it gets you sued or hard time in Sing Sing, don't blame me!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mi]

The problem isn't that it's government-run. It's that it's a monopoly, and you can't go elsewhere.

You are absolutely right. But the two things are closely related — when a private company grows into a monopoly (like Microsoft), it gets more and more scrutiny and additional rules are imposed on it. But government-created monopolies (like AT&T of the past, E-ZPass and Post Office of the present, single-payer health system of the future) get a free pass and enjoy the worst (for the rest of us) of both worlds: government-like monopoly and private business-like mandate to maximize profit.

But you can't go installing 2 sets of train-tracks everywhere, so the monopoly is a necessary evil.

Actually, I don't buy this argument. You don't need train-tracks "everywhere" — you just need it "in some places". For example, I'm moving to NJ, with the house being nearly equidistant from train stations of two different branches of the railroad. If those belonged to different (and competing!) owners, the service/price would've been a lot better on both of them.

The "natural monopoly" argument has run its course — history of Capitalism in the US shows, that the "waste" eliminated by granting someone a monopoly is dwarfed by the losses resulting from the complacency, corruption, and inefficiency of the "lucky" winner. (Stemming, I might add, in no small part, from the corruption and stupidity of the monopoly-granting politicians.)

Yes, it may seem stupid to tear up asphalt to run a parallel set of gas-pipes along the street, but once you realize, that there is no way to force the utility company to up the gas pressure (high-efficiency tankless boilers and heaters, for example, require high pressure to be able to deliver heat on demand), being able to switch to a competitor (without spending years petitioning "Public Utilities Commission") may seem like very good idea...

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[laughingcoyote]

So why doesn't that precedent apply to sports scores?

It does, and I'm not sure why you think it wouldn't. The score a sporting event resulted in is a simple fact and is uncopyrightable. The layout it's presented in could possibly copyrightable if it is sufficiently creative, but to simply say that the score of the X-Y game was 21-10 is a simple statement of fact and cannot be copyrighted. The same applies to sports statistics and the like. You can copyright the fancy flowchart presentation you lay it out in, but you can't copyright the fact that Smith hit 56 home runs last season and struck out 29 times.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mi]

Yes, it takes government money, but more in the way that Blackwater takes government money than the way the US Army takes government money.

Except Blackwater faces real competition (from similar outfits world-wide), while MTA is enjoying government-like monopoly power over millions of people.

In a parallel sub-thread I argue, that benefits of having a single outfit run the "natural monopoly" is dwarfed by the losses from stupidity, complacency, and outright corruption, that inevitably befall such outfits.

One only needs to recall AT&T, and what it did with its monopoly on "long-distance" phone service... But, at least, AT&T was profitable...

The bridge and tunnel authority, which is actually now owned by the MTA, has always been profitable

Their ability to raise tolls at whim surely helps. In Massachusetts, the toll-collector's salary can reach $90K. In New York it is very good money as well — for a job, that requires nothing, but high school diploma. Why does it have to be a cushy union-backed position, rather than something like burger-flipping, that a youngster (or someone down on their luck temporarily) can always count on? It does not have to be this way, of course, but it is, because MTA need not compete with anybody (unlike burger-chains)...

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[moosesocks]

Wrong. There's a schedule.

If you're running a service with 8 minute headways, you'd better be sure that everything runs like clockwork, or else you'll have subways bunching and piling up at stations or at the end of the line*. The driver, his union, and his boss all also want to make sure that his shift starts and ends at a well-established time.

The schedules are especially important at night, when headways increase to 30 minutes in some areas. There are parts of Queens where you do not want to be alone on a subway platform at 3AM.

The MTA's in the process of installing electronic signs that alert passengers of the time of the next arriving train like the ones they have in DC and Paris. Siemens (the contractor) have been working on it for several years, and might finally have the damn thing working in the next year or two.

*This does happen occasionally. Why don't you try managing the world's most complex urban transit system that also happens to be 100 years old, and suffered from extreme neglect and corruption during much of that time. I don't envy the MTA's job one bit. They do a remarkable job given the circumstances.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Landshark17]

As a guy who just left the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 11:32 on a bus scheduled to leave at 11:15, I gotta agree.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Prof.Phreak]

...lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.

Well, the NYC MTA schedule is... a work of fiction.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[benjamindees]

What's the name of that country where they don't make watches at all?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[dangitman]

How is not serving someone who is angry and screaming over a trivial issue being a bigger asshole?

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[vux984]

A simple disclaimer would suffice - even one written in Engrish, like the "Do not iron clothes while wearing them" on irons.

That isn't engrish.

An engrish one would be

"Do not iron worn clothes."

or perhaps:

"Do not wear clothes while ironing."

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[syousef]

How is this a troll? Sticking your head in the sand doesn't make a response less valid.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[pjt33]

I'm sure they wouldn't disagree that it is in their best interest to make the information as widely available as possible. However, you'll note that it says that Schoenfeld enters the data manually.

There is a simple solution here, which I'm sure everyone on Slashdot has already spotted. OTOH paying a lawyer vast sums of money to sue people is easier than paying a programmer moderate sums to add a formatted text download to their website.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[isorox]

The problem is, a third party service is required to spread the information. In the UK, there are at least 10 different websites, where you can search, book and print anything you could possibly need (including a bus service or a taxi at the destination), and if you're on the move already, you can just send an SMS, and they'll text you back with the information you need.

Well if you're looking at the booking side, there's two -- trainline and webtis.

Yes, themacboz had a (free) iphone app offering the information -- after all, it's just the informaiton on the various websites.

After the TOCs figured out they could make money, they shut it down, and launched their own at £5. Customers weren't impressed.

As one person on that page put it, "This strikes me as Ryanair marketing". I can't think of a worse insult.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[AlterRNow]

There are parts of Queens where you do not want to be alone on a subway platform at 3AM.

Unless they are notorious for things dropping on your head, I'd imagine you are safest when you are alone :)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[ivucica]

Is stupidity of people a reason to stifle technology? Don't the smart people have any rights today whatsoever? Here -- I forbid you to play with Lego because small children may choke!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

>>>I imagine that MTA is a bit like Chicago Transit Authority, operating with a "So, what. We're sorry for your inconvenience. Now live with it."

Heh. I can't wait for our Chicago pal Obama to take over:

"So what if you have a broken kneecap and have to wait 12 months to get it replaced. We're sorry for your inconvenience. Now live with it." The UK already has this system:

UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES
8 months - cataract surgery
11 months- hip replacement
12 months- knee replacement
5 months - slipped disc
5 months - hernia repair

SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

Alright.

Well since MTA is a regulated monopoly (like the phone and electric companies) one could argue that in exchange for being granted that monopoly by the State, they are obligated to provide schedules free of charge and without copyright. Else, their monopoly will be revoked, and the monopoly given to someone else to operate, like Conrail.

This is the same argument used to force Comcast, Cox, and other cable monopolies to provide free CSPAN service. "Do as we tell you to do, or else you will lose your exclusive license."

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[plague3106]

Well, even if authorities didn't operate as you explained, just because tax payers pay for something doesn't mean they get access. I'd love to walk on to a military base and use a Comanche for my weekend errands, but I'd be shot on site if I step in the wrong place trying to do so.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[plague3106]

Ever think the high ways for collectors are because it IS a tedius mindnumbing job that they'd have a hard time filling and keeping filled without such high pay? Temporary employees are not great, turnover costs more than having steady employees. Also, with the amount of money collected, you want to be sure these people can be trusted... and that costs money.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[lazyforker]

If you're referring to the subway, not Metro North, then no, there isn't a schedule. Trains run every 8 minutes. If they were to try and make a schedule with 8 minute intervals, any delays (which are inevitable, its a huge system) would quickly throw that out of what completely. Instead of late trains waiting for the next 8 minute interval, they just leave as soon as they can. New Yorkers know that if you miss a train, the next one isn't that far off.

If you are talking about Metro North like they were in the article, then you weren't looking hard enough. Grand Central has big lit up boards with all the schedules, and pampheletes all over the place. Those trains run once an hour. There a schedule is necessary. With the subway, not so much.

Wrong: http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/schemain.htm I'm a New Yorker and although I know there is a published subway schedule I'm not foolish enough to believe it.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[amplt1337]

Actually, the MTA is a public-benefit corporation. I wouldn't be surprised if part of their Frankensteinian monstrosity included being free of copyright law.

Also, I'm not a lawyer or anything, but isn't it works of the Federal government that are legally in the public domain? I'm not entirely sure the same rule applies to the states. Even if you're making an argument based on what-should-be not what-is, your assumption is that the citizens of New York should own the maps. By that logic, we still ought to be able to levy royalties on out-of-state copiers....

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[BronsCon]

"Do not wear clothes while ironing."

That's the rule in MY house.

Now, if I could just figure out why those nice young men on /b/ asked for video of my young daughter ironing... (Disclaimer: I do the ironing, my wife scorches white shirts, and I have no children)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[glenfahan]

There is significant precedent in copyright law that lists of facts or data cannot be copyrighted.

See, e.g. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) Link

That's great. Mr. Schoenfeld may eventually win. But I see the real problem here is a government funded entity "going after" the little guy for something absolutely absurd. MTA has unlimited funds. (thanks to the bottomless pockets of taxpayers) Mr. Schoenfeld may go bankrupt proving his innocence.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mcgrew]

My favorite disclaimer: on a poisonous product "Do not eat." Now some company is going to be sued by an anorexic!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Google Maps.

Seriously, try it. It's pretty neat the way they've integrated MTA schedules, with the MTA's blessing.

Doubtlessly that is why the MTA is making such a fuss.

Companies like Google pay them for the privilege of hosting this information. If a popular freeware app does the same thing, then those companies will be less likely to shell out to the MTA. Those third-party companies will say to the MTA, "Why should we pay you for the scheduling information? That guy there uses the same info but he doesn't have to pay for it; obviously this info is public domain! Plus, nobody is visiting our website for that info anyway, because they are all using the aforementioned application and thus we'll never make back the money we paid you".

The MTA considers their schedules a source of revenue and StationStops is threatening this.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Nevyn]

Actually, I don't buy this argument. You don't need train-tracks "everywhere" -- you just need it "in some places". For example, I'm moving to NJ, with the house being nearly equidistant from train stations of two different branches of the railroad.

If you are trying to say that you'll be equidistant to two train stations which use two completely separate tracks to get you to the same (or roughly the same) destination ... I don't believe you.

Of course even if true, passengers aren't the real custom for any significant amount of train tracks anyway so neither company would be improving their service for you. Commercial goods transportation is roughly 10x the revenue IIRC, so it's likely a non-monopoly would provide even worse service for passengers (from both/all providers).

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mcgrew]

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

I don't think granting copyright to a municipality for a train schedule is in any way constitutional. Of course, as Lessig failed at pointing out to the Supreme Court, neither is a limitless copyright term.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Fnord]

Huh, so there is. Looking at it, it has absolutely no bearing on reality, at least with regard to my line (the A).

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[richardkelleher]

Sydney had trains in 1956! Seattle is only now installing light rail, almost half a century after the Worlds Fair introduced the "Transport of the future" in the form of a monorail that never went any further in all those years!

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[BoothbyTCD]

The argument is wrong anyway. Of course governments can copyright things. Just try and use symbols copyrighted by the NYC gov't and see how sued you get. The correct argument here is that data in and of itself is not copyrightable under US law.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Zero__Kelvin]

"What's the name of that country where they don't make watches at all?"

The United States of America ;-)

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[skeeto]

The solution, if this was the case, would be for the MTA to put the schedules online in a straightforward text format, like XML or CSV. That way the information is accurately widespread.

Since they don't do this, I think it's more about greed.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[tomhudson]

or perhaps:

"Do not wear clothes while ironing."

Don't laugh - check out the warnings on the next deep-fryer you buy. Depending on who made it, it might include a warning to wear clothes while using it, because someone - you guessed it - burned their pecker while making french fries (at lesst that was their story, and they're sticking to it, and I don't really want to know what they were REALLY doing. The late night bar scene is proof enough that some guys are willing | desperate enough to stick their dicks into ANYTHING).

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[FreshlyShornBalls]

For all intents and purposes, authorities are simply very large non-profit organizations that have been granted broad powers by the state to provide public services, and have governing boards comprised of state and local officials, among others.

This is just as much a subsidy as "real" dollars are. The state (read: people) has granted powers to the MTA that allow it to make its own money. Surely no one would seriously argue that the MTA could face real competition and still survive, right?

I think we're all on the same page here, though, and I guess this is somewhat a moot point, but I did feel your reply required this bit of clarification, lest we all begin planning to send Thank You cards to the MTA.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Keen Anthony]

You are either a dupe or a liar, which is it? That little statistic you quoted did not come from any May 2009 BBC source. It came from this BBC article, dated May 27, 2004:

That was more than five years ago. Things have changed. Quality of life as improved. Sadly, the statistics for US wait times vary greatly. It's as if things are so scatterbrained in the US that we can't even properly document our progress.

You got your excellent statistic from Fox News didn't you, you lovable little scamp? Glenn Beck maybe? He's a drug addicted idiot who frequently talks about assassinating public figures. I don't think he's a very reliable source. Especially since he fraudulently attributed those 2004 numbers to 2009.

By the way, the guy he's interviewing is Daniel Hannan, a fringe extremist Tory who is very hardcore about dismantling the NHS and killing universal healthcare, something 95% of Britons are against. A growing number of Britons are becoming dissatisfied with certain aspects of the NHS, and want to see improved management and organization; however, the UK public is still overwhelmingly happy to have their system.

A few more reliable stats for you; unless of course you think those communist Liberals at the CIA are revising not just history, but the future as well:

US infant mortality rate: 6.26 / 1000 (deaths per thousand live births)
US life expectancy: 75.65 / 80.69 (male / female)

UK infant mortality rate: 4.85 / 1000
UK life expectancy: 76.52 / 81.63

CANADA infant mortality: 5.04 / 1000
CANADA life expectancy: 78.69 / 83.91

source: CIA World Fact Book (2009 estimates)

Look, I'm not saying I'm for Obama's system. I think he's a meek president who will, at best, be a transitional president, and at worst be an open and unapologetic continuance of Bush administration policies. However, I would at least like to be presented with some real facts from both sides. And in any case, criticisms of his plan ought to be based on honesty and not Kool-Aid.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

The date provided was accurate - May 2009 on BBC television. And no things have *not* improved, as MEP Daniel Hannan confirmed in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards." Who knows better than one of your own leaders?

>>>It's as if things are so scatterbrained in the US

Yes just as some companies make quality products for the U.S. market (Toyota, Honda) and others don't (Kia, Hyundai). That's the nature of a multiple provider system, but it's still superior than a monopoly because you can saw "screw you" to Hyundai and go buy a Toyota instead.

If Hyundai had a monopoly, then you'd be stuck with it. Just like the East Germans were stuck with their shitty government-made Tribants.

A monopoly is NEVER a better way to run a system.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[commodore64_love]

>>>He's a drug addicted idiot who frequently talks about assassinating public figures.

So too was the Founder of your Democratic Party - Thomas Jefferson. Don't believe me? Go read his writings. Perhaps you should pay closer attention to how your party was born, and what the founders truly believed. I guarantee you, it wasn't "government is good" or "monopoly is good".

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[Keen Anthony]

My party? I never told you I was a Democrat. And that you think I must surely be since I disagree with your reactionary statement shows a fundamental weakness in all water carriers like you.

I'm actually a Reagan Republican. As it stands today, I'm an independent voter. I don't like the Democrats because they're inept when they're not corrupt, and I don't like the Republicans because they're irresponsible and malicious when they're not corrupt.

Pay better attention to the actual words people utter and the point they are making instead of the knee-jerk inferences the lunatic fringe out there want you make.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[mi]

Ever think the high ways for collectors are because it IS a tedius mindnumbing job that they'd have a hard time filling and keeping filled without such high pay?

It is not any more mind-numbing, than, say, a store cashier's job. My wife used to work as one — in a very busy New York department store — while in high school. She was making just above the minimum wage... And graduated valedictorian. I bet, she was nicer to the customers, than most of the "professional" toll-collectors are, too...

Temporary employees are not great, turnover costs more than having steady employees.

Sure. That's true about all jobs. But a small-office secretary, for another example, still makes about $10-15/hour and her pay is linked to her performance, rather than to how long she held the job (which is the deal with union-jobs nation-wide). Only a monopoly can so freely push their costs to the customers. The money wasted by this mismanagement (and outright corruption) would've been enough to finance another bridge or tunnel between New York and New Jersey...

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[AlexiaDeath]

The answer to this is to provide a simple CSV format schedule for apps like this from their own site, perhaps with a limit on number of queries per IP per hour and a disclaimer that its use is responsibility of the user. Simple ain't it. Trying to claim copyright on information is stupid.

Re:This is will never fly in the courts

[plague3106]

It is not any more mind-numbing, than, say, a store cashier's job. My wife used to work as one -- in a very busy New York department store -- while in high school. She was making just above the minimum wage... And graduated valedictorian. I bet, she was nicer to the customers, than most of the "professional" toll-collectors are, too...

Actually it is.. I worked as a cashier as well. For the toll collector, you're isolated your entire shift (most likely). That's the the case with the cashier at the store. Nor can you small talk with your customers in a toll booth... because you'll slow down the line. I was nicer to customers as well.. at first. Then I became exteremly indifferent. The pay was a big part of it... $4.25 / hr wasn't enough to make me want to do more than absolute bare minimum.

Sure. That's true about all jobs. But a small-office secretary, for another example, still makes about $10-15/hour and her pay is linked to her performance, rather than to how long she held the job (which is the deal with union-jobs nation-wide). Only a monopoly can so freely push their costs to the customers. The money wasted by this mismanagement (and outright corruption) would've been enough to finance another bridge or tunnel between New York and New Jersey...

A small office secretary has a lot more independance and responsbilities than a toll collector, and again isn't isolated all day breathing in the lovely emmissions from various cars & trucks. Its also noisy and more exposed to the elements than either of your examples.

I'm not sure how you evaluate performance of a toll collector; either they are on par with everyone else, or they aren't. Not much more in the way of metrics.. and pretty much EVERY job you have you will earn more just for being there longer. I'd be pissed if I wasn't getting a raise every year.

Besides, I'm not really sure what your gripe is.. many lanes are now ezpass only or equivolent, so the number of employees who's pay your bitching about.. well its rather insignificant compared to other costs of running the bridges, roads or whatever.

Disbarment

[DoofusOfDeath]

The MTA lawyers ought to know that they're persecuting the blogger beyond what copyright law allows. They should be disbarred.

Re:Disbarment

[Anonymous Coward]

After being punted around by a lawyer over lots of BS, leading to the loss of my home, its clear to me the bar for disbarment is pretty high.

Re:Disbarment

[michaelhood]

DNRTFA but there's no misconduct in sending what amounts to a cease & desist to someone. Anyone can do this, lawyer or not. A C&D is not a court action, it's just a scary looking letter on expensive paper.

IANAL.

Re:Disbarment

[omnichad]

And it means your claim doesn't have to even be valid. Just scary enough.

Re:Disbarment

[Trepidity]

There's some level of obvious invalidity past which it can become illegal, if it's coupled with monetary demands (doesn't seem to be the case here). If the sender of the C&D knew or should have known that the claim was frivolous, and demanded monetary settlement, at least one case has held that to constitute criminal extortion.

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.

Re:Disbarment

[tinkerghost]

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:

I believe it was Athens that also had a rule that if you brought a case and lost by 2/3, you were prohibited from ever bringing another one. Makes sense --- If you're willing to waste everyone's time once, you'll do it again. I'm sure a similar rule would cut down on the nuisance suits in the courts.

Re:Disbarment

[noidentity]

Anyone can do this, lawyer or not. A C&D is not a court action, it's just a scary looking letter on expensive paper.

Argh, so that's the reason mine never work. Any recommendations on the brand of expensive-looking paper to use? Thanks.

Re:Disbarment

[WNight]

Funny, if you'd shot the lawyer he'd BE disbarred, the state would be paying to house you, and you'd probably still own your house.

Well, not funny.

Re:Disbarment

[amplt1337]

...I think you just convinced me to go buy some expensive paper and take up a new hobby...

Re:Disbarment

[Simetrical]

DNRTFA but there's no misconduct in sending what amounts to a cease & desist to someone. Anyone can do this, lawyer or not. A C&D is not a court action, it's just a scary looking letter on expensive paper.

IANAL.

IANAL either, but even though it's not necessarily illegal to send a false C&D order, you don't have to break the law to get disbarred. It's enough to behave unethically, and deliberately misrepresenting the law to someone is generally unethical. The American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct say, in rule 3.1, that:

A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law. A lawyer for the defendant in a criminal proceeding, or the respondent in a proceeding that could result in incarceration, may nevertheless so defend the proceeding as to require that every element of the case be established.

If a lawyer is licensed to practice law in a state that's adopted the Model Rules, you can file a complaint with the bar association of that state if a lawyer violates them. States that don't use the Model Rules typically have their own code of ethics, which probably contains a similar provision. The bar will theoretically consider your complaint and, if it finds the lawyer did act unethically, may penalize him. Repeated or severe offenses can lead to disbarment.

Of course, this is all on paper. The ones who decide on whether to impose penalties are, of course, lawyers. And most unethical conduct probably isn't reported. But in theory, you could get disbarred for filing cease-and-desist letters that you knew were groundless.

Re:Disbarment

[michaelhood]

...I think you just convinced me to go buy some expensive paper and take up a new hobby...

Funny enough, since that's probably how the firm in question got started. /satireplzdontsueme

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.....

Re:Why would a transit company....

[puppetman]

Not server - serve. Not-very-entertaining Freudian slip

Re:Why would a transit company....

[ducomputergeek]

Leave and go where? It's not like you can get on another subway company in New York.

Re:Why would a transit company....

[radish]

Oh good grief. How about "it'll be fun when we give these people guns and let them run around the world doing what they want". Doesn't make any more sense.

Re:Why would a transit company....

[jmyers]

Most likely because they have ads on their web page. This guy is stealing from a revenue stream (in their mind).

Re:Why would a transit company....

[Cro Magnon]

Somehow, I doubt that Obama would put NY MTA officials in charge of surgery!

Re:Why would a transit company....

[SQLGuru]

It's not like you can get on another subway company in New York.

Except the sandwich making one...... (yeah, yeah, Doctor's Inc. or whatever.....it's a joke)

Re:Why would a transit company....

[blackraven14250]

But he's not. In fact, the App Store has been around long enough for the MTA to have made their own app and started selling it with ads on it. It's their fault for not jumping on an opportunity.

Re:Why would a transit company....

[geekoid]

yes, the customer will quietly leave and use some other subway service~

Re:Why would a transit company....

[jcr]

Maybe they're operating at a loss?

Who knows, perhaps reducing the number of riders will save them money somehow.

-jcr

Re:Why would a transit company....

[fulldecent]

It's a good thing I browse at +5 Troll and can see abuses of the moderation system such as this.

Re:Why would a transit company....

[amplt1337]

Why would a transit company try to stop someone from making their service more user-friendly?

...you've never been to New York, have you?

Re:Why would a transit company....

[Beezlebub33]

I guess I don't understand this argument. Nobody is proposing a govt monopoly on healthcare, just a base option for people that can't afford private insurance.
Do public universities not care about providing good service? Does the post office not care about providing good service? Don't they compete with private companies or universities providing the same service? Have the existence of public universities and the post office driven out of business private competition?
Your argument fails because government supported options do not automatically eliminate private options. Public unviersities and the post office are existence proofs.

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?)

Re:I thought this was old news...

[Ironica]

There's lots of precedent for maps being copyrighted works. Thomas Bros. (now owned by Rand McNally) include deliberate small errors in their maps (such as adding short cul-de-sacs that don't actually exist) to catch unlicensed reproduction.

But, a stream of times that public transit arrives at stops? Yeah, no, not copyrightable.

Re:I thought this was old news...

[tthomas48]

A map is essentially a work of art, like a drawing (well actually a drawing). An analog with maps would be claiming that your competitor couldn't got out and create their own map of an area, because your map essentially had rights over the area.

Re:I thought this was old news...

[Ironica]

More accurate, say a development company builds a subdivision, and then claims that you need a license from them to publish a map of the streets that they built (which have become public streets, not private property).

Re:I thought this was old news...

[langelgjm]

It's not just precedent - maps were explicitly included in the original Copyright Act of 1790.

Re:I thought this was old news...

[gnupun]

But, a stream of times that public transit arrives at stops? Yeah, no, not copyrightable.

How come? Any piece of text or numbers that is human-generated, requires intelligence and creativity, is protected by copyright.

Re:I thought this was old news...

[Ironica]

But, a stream of times that public transit arrives at stops? Yeah, no, not copyrightable.

How come? Any piece of text or numbers that is human-generated, requires intelligence and creativity, is protected by copyright.

Human-created, that's the key. At some point, some human or humans *did* create the time system we currently use, but if it was ever subject to copyright, it has long expired. And most transit scheduling in large urban areas is done by computer systems, not by people.

The actual printed schedules can be subject to copyright, such that it's illegal to photocopy them for redistribution, or to borrow the design for another purpose. They probably also have a trademark on their logos and route names. But the time data? It's DATA, not art.

Huh?

[sheepweevil]

Oh no! Heaven forbid someone knows our train schedule so they can ride our trains! Wait...

Re:Huh?

[interkin3tic]

No no no, it's they want people to PAY for those schedules in a future deal to be made.

The MTA provides its schedules to Google Transit...

Uh... okay nevermind about that.

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:not ideal but...

[easyTree]

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

You can see why that would annoy the government - don't they have a legal monopoly on ripping-off tourists ?

Re:not ideal but...

[fbwhrdpmtajg]

"free" credit reports?

Why pay when paper ones are free?

[Joe The Dragon]

Why pay when paper ones are free?

Re:Why pay when paper ones are free?

[Desler]

Because it means there is less paper schedules that people just dump into the normal trash?

Re:Why pay when paper ones are free?

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Because that represents more to carry/lose/forget?
Because you don't always have the right paper ones for the route you are using?
Because paper ones will eventually crumpled/torn/worn out?
Because paper ones become outdated when names/numbers/routes change?
Because paper ones make you figure out which operating schedule applies to the current date/time ?

Their iPhone app would actually be much more useful if it was location-aware, and could tell you the nearest stops or station, but it doesn't seem to have that capability. (If it did, I would buy it in a heartbeat.) Google Maps has this ability.

Re:Why pay when paper ones are free?

[MartinSchou]

Well, that's not the only reason.

NYC has more inhabitants than Copenhagen and the NYC metro area probably covers more ground than the greater Copenhagen area. As for the number of lines - I've no idea.

Then Copenhagen bus lines alone are comprised of more than 250 different lines. I for one would not want to try and carry that around with me. Much easier to use a computer. And that's only part of Denmark. I've no clue how many different lines there are if you just cover Denmark.

That's why we have Rejseplanen.dk (journey planner). Free of charge, covers all public transportation in Denmark

Re:Why pay when paper ones are free?

[pla]

Because it means there is less paper schedules that people just dump into the normal trash?

So, to repeat the question...

WHO CARES?

[Frosty Piss]

I can't believe that this the MTA's actions are going to go over well with the public.

Unfortunately, very very few people will ever know about this, and even fewer still will give a shit. The MTA lawyers know this, which isn't to say they care who knows.

This is so stupid

[ByzantineAlex]

Where do I apply to patent the street map of the city ?

Re:This is so stupid

[Ironica]

Where do I apply to patent the street map of the city ?

Ok, one, this is about copyright, not patent.

Two, it's about schedules, not maps.

Three, mechanically reproducing a map *is* a violation of copyright. Re-drawing it yourself isn't, but careful... a lot of map printers deliberately include small errors in their maps to catch people who just use their work as a source. You better be prepared to drive the whole terrain and verify it yourself.

I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

You can't copyright "facts." There have been debates and legal wrangling over phone books, schedules and sports statistics over the past 20 years or more to my recollection and every time, the courts decided that "facts" cannot be copyrighted -- only the organization, layout and presentation of the facts can be. All these other things like the blogs and software apps are at the VERY LEAST "derivative works" if anything at all related to the ownership of the data offered up through their original "official" sources.

And if facts ever become a form of intellectual property, you can pretty much kiss ALL human advancement goodbye. Imagine a world where facts and history are no longer available because some jackass corporation decided not to publish because it's not profitable enough.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Ant P.]

No need to imagine, it happens all the time in the drugs industry. If you had a patent on a cure for something, were raking in billions a year by only treating its symptoms, and were an immoral greedy bastard, what would you do?

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Hurricane78]

Well, nature's just trying to invent better idiots. And some of them become lawyers.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Ares]

if you had a patent on a cure for something it would be in your best interests to produce it and make money while the patent is still active. if you had a cure and held it as a trade secret, your best interests (financially at least) are to sit on it. this can, and commonly does, happen in labs all the time. according to my sister, who's in that line of research, there's a cure for the herpes simplex virus out there sitting on a shelf that will never see the light of day because treating the symptoms of herpes is far more lucrative than curing it.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[GumphMaster]

And if facts ever become a form of intellectual property, you can pretty much kiss ALL human advancement goodbye.

Get your kisser warmed up... this rot is already well entrenched. In Australia we have a TV media company claiming that any list of the programs it broadcasts constitutes a derivative work of their schedule and therefore infringing [1], while at the same time refusing to licence their schedule to parties that might make use of it (like MythTV users). While (eventually) our High Court sided with the little guy, I won't have to look far to find other instances where copyright claims on aggregations of facts lead to ridiculous demands for royalties.

[1] http://www.icetv.com.au.nyud.net/news/?p=614

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[gnupun]

You can't copyright "facts."

Are bus schedules really facts in the same way as history or science? They are not true facts because they change every year or so. Bus schedules are human-created place/time tables so the organization may assert copyright over their data. A lot of video games and useful apps contain large human-crated data tables. Are those not protected by copyright? The question is not whether bus schedules can be copyrighted (because they can), but rather can an organization using public funds to create these schedules claim copyright?

Imagine a world where facts and history are no longer available because some jackass corporation decided not to publish because it's not profitable enough.

Well history books are copyrighted and the author may choose to charge you for accessing that piece of history. The facts (if you really believe history books) will always be available if there is demand for it.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

You should really think your argument through. Yes, history books are copyrighted, but the facts they verbalize are not. You or anyone else are able to use the information as reference with which you may create your own history book. Once again, it is the fact that can be copied, not the book.

As for video game data? I would have to say it depends on the data. If it were scores or other statistical data, I would say "no" it's not copyrightable. On the other hand, if the data in a game is an intrinsic part of the game, then it may be copyrightable.

But then again, I have a pretty unconventional sensibility when it comes to what I opine should be copyrightable. In my view, software shouldn't be copyrightable at all. Source code, yes. Copyright to your heart's content, but not executable binaries and most certainly not encrypted data. By having binary executables copyrighted, the work is most certainly lost in the future and will never enter public domain the agreement of copyright is supposed to guarantee. As for binary encoded "art" that's fine so long as the format is open and documented. Binary encoded art can be many things including data for game engines to reference such as maps and models as well as images, video and sound. But statistical data should never be copyrightable and so far, I believe the courts have consistently ruled positively to that notion.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

I believe it has been shown that people may charge you for access to informatonal data, but once the data is acquired, you can pretty much do anything you want with it unless you signed a non-disclosure agreement. Note that people don't get sued for copyright infringement in cases where information is divulged, but usually for breach of an agreement not to disclose. A transit authority would have a hard time trying to get everyone who reads a schedule to agree to one of those! As to TV listings? Well, they might be successful if those conditions applied as a part of the subscription agreement. But then again, they can only go after whoever released the information to non-subscribers and was bound by the NDA (non-disclosure agreement)... they can't really go after people who are not bound by the agreement.

For all this to happen, they would have to create a new form of intellectual property and I'm betting that it won't happen any time soon.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

If the research for that cure for Herpes was even a little bit funded by public dollars, then it's time the public has sued for the release of this information and lawsuits for damages against the company(s) responsible for withholding that information be levied. It would be interesting to know how much truth there is to this assertion and if it can be proven to be true and this cure exists, then some people have a LOT to answer for... and some with their lives.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Bigjeff5]

But then again, I have a pretty unconventional sensibility when it comes to what I opine should be copyrightable. In my view, software shouldn't be copyrightable at all. Source code, yes. Copyright to your heart's content, but not executable binaries and most certainly not encrypted data.

I agree with you, but I see a problem. Software binaries should not be covered under copyright, imho, they should be covered under patents. The problem is, not ALL software can and should be covered under patents, and it should NOT be ok to re-produce the software and distribute it to others. A software producer has a reasonable right to profit from his product, and software is unique among products because it is so easy to copy that it's almost hard not to.

I think pulling software out of copyright (where I don't believe it belongs) would require a new law that would define the sale and reproduction of software. That would actually be kinda nice, because it may end all this EULA bs that goes on with software licenses.

In any case, I can't see pulling software out from under Copyright without throwing some kind of bone to software developers. Otherwise, who would bother to write software? Everything would be in-house, proprietary software and we'd be set back a decade in software innovation.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[jonwil]

In the case of the TV schedules, these are for free-to-air TV and they are distributed quite widely in the TV guides in various newspapers.

What the networks DON'T want is machine readable schedules that can be used by PVRs (MythTV etc) that contain commercial skip features (30-second skip etc) or piracy features (i.e. being able to copy the video content off the device to store on a PC or whatever else)

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

I think this idea needs to be explored and refined quite a bit. Copyright in inappropriate for binary executables and it's not appropriate for patenting either. So how, then, can people profit from their work? License agreements would still be valid without patents or copyrights. If you "buy" the software, you should be issued a complete copy of its source code just like a book... hell, issue it in the FORM of a book for all I care. But when the company dies or sells its assets or whatever or chooses not to support or publish a given work any longer, it would seem reasonable that the people who bought it should be able to continue to have access to it. Having access to something you bought should be a guarantee without a law written to guarantee it. I think it all pretty much works and fits the way I stated it.

Software is not a mechanism in and of itself and the rights of those who buy it are having their rights manipulated, abused and removed by practices under the present paradigm. Protecting the rights of creators to make a living is important, but protecting the rights of the general public are WAY more important. The rights of the world outweigh the rights of the few in the event of conflict.

If someone found a cure for a disease that kills people and kept it secret under some intellectual property law, I think the "right thing to do" is pretty obvious. And when it comes to companies shirk their responsibility of putting things into public domain as part of the agreement of copyright protection, the public is being abused by said companies and that abuse should not be tolerated.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[gnupun]

In my view, software shouldn't be copyrightable at all. ... not executable binaries and most certainly not encrypted data.

Right, let's start pirating software, music and movies boldly. And screw the companies who spent millions building the product.

By having binary executables copyrighted, the work is most certainly lost in the future and will never enter public domain the agreement of copyright is supposed to guarantee.

You're heading into dangerous territory here. The public benefit is privilege offered by the author, not a right. That's because the creator of a product is a free entity or individual, not a slave to society. Freedom is gained by securing rights of all individuals justly, not screwing some individuals to benefit a bigger majority (mob rule). And how can the binaries not enter public domain when millions of people have copy?

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

You are forgetting where "copyright" laws get their power... from the government whose power is derived from the people... aka the public.

Copyright is an arrangement by which specific materials are published with protections afforded by law. In exchange for those protections, the work should eventually be released into the public domain. That's how the balance was struck. But that's not what is happening. The government (AKA the people) is affording protection of works under copyright law, but what about the other side of the bargain?

I think you are a small software developer and you don't understand what copyright is really about.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[erroneus]

Well there you go. They let the genie out of the bottle and expect people to not make wishes.

There is a basic problem with stuff that people sell or even give away. After it is sold or given away, they somehow think they should be able to control what people do with it. They have managed to make their wish into a reality with the passage of laws like the DMCA, but I'm hoping that those will get ruled against or repealed eventually.... hoping, not expecting.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Attila Dimedici]

if you had a patent on a cure for something it would be in your best interests to produce it and make money while the patent is still active. if you had a cure and held it as a trade secret, your best interests (financially at least) are to sit on it. this can, and commonly does, happen in labs all the time. according to my sister, who's in that line of research, there's a cure for the herpes simplex virus out there sitting on a shelf that will never see the light of day because treating the symptoms of herpes is far more lucrative than curing it.

That would be plausible except for two things. One, if you had a patent on the cure, there would be a public record of it. If there is a public record of it, word will get out. Once word gets out the level of public outcry would be such that Congress (or the courts) would grant someone a license to make it (there is precedent for this).
Two, the problem with keeping it as a trade secret is this, you are making lots of money from treating the symptoms, so are your competitors. All of you are getting some money from the people who are suffering from Herpes. The first one of you to patent and sell a cure for Herpes will get all the money and the other guys will stop getting money for just treating the symptoms.
So despite your poor logic, it is not in the drug companies' interest to sit on cures, because if they don't get to market first, someone else will. If someone else starts selling a cure for Herpes, you stop making money off of just selling something that just treats the symptoms.
Oh, yeah, BTW, considering the numbers of tests that a potential treatment for a medical condition has to go through on the way to anyone knowing whether it is a cure or not, by the time, the company knows they have a cure rather than just a new treatment, lots of other people in the business know what they are working on. If the original company stops working on it, someone else would pick it up and start developing a cure.

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[Attila Dimedici]

I disagree about copyrighting software. Current law on copyrighting software is perfectly fine (except for the length of the term, but that's true of all copyright). The biggest problem with Intellectual Property law when it comes to software, is patent law. Software should not be patentable (except possibly in certain very special cases where the software is an inherent part of a particular physical machine).

Re:I thought this was resolved LONG ago

[russotto]

Are bus schedules really facts in the same way as history or science?

No, but they are facts in the same way as phone listings. Which aren't copyrightable.

copyright length insanity

[drDugan]

<< steps up >>

There can be no rational discussion about copyright until people acknowledge
that current copyright laws, created almost entirely to meet corporate interests,
are completely out of whack with people's expectations and with any semblance of
fairness or social good for individuals.

The current norm is "Life + 70 years" with a comprehensive list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_length

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of
the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime
(expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let
you have access to it through licensing or sales. You will die first before
the vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally.

That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was ever
intended to work.

<< / steps down off my soapbox >>

Re:copyright length insanity

[MarkvW]

What it means to me is that talking motion pictures will never go into the public domain by passage of time in my lifetime. That really sucks.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

-- Steps up on Soap box --
What does not having the ability to simply use a work vs being able to license it have to do with the price of coffee at Starbucks?
Why must something be public domain?
What difference does it make?
Why do we have to listen to this discussion ad infinitum
-- Steps down --
This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of
the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime
(expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let
you have access to it through licensing or sales.

Why exactly is this a problem?

Re:copyright length insanity

[Inverted Intellect]

Luckily, I live in a nation where copyright laws specifically only forbid for-profit unlicensed copying of works, and thus non-profit sharing of such works, whether over the torrent protocol, ftp or sneakernet, is strictly licit.

Re:copyright length insanity

[drDugan]

Why exactly is this a problem?

Great question. I don't have a great answer. Not everyone sees the current situation as a problem, which is copyright is the way it is today.

Here is what I think, and from that, others perhaps will understand why I think the current situation is unreasonable.

Intellectual property, like property, is a complete social fiction - its a very useful one, but nonetheless - a fiction.

Property is a big unspoken social agreement we have that assigns resources to individuals and entities and gives them superior rights of control over those resources. This assignment we call "ownership", and is a critical part to nonviolent resource distribution with many independent entities. In civil society it is simply given that this property mapping of things to people/organizations is "real", but in fact it is only supported, like all rules, (both laws and social mores) if people generally agree - both agree that the rules are reasonable, and agree that they each will (in the vast majority) follow those rules. If people don't agree, laws don't work.

Intellectual property extends the idea of this big shared social mapping of resources (property) to intangible "intellectual" creations (written words, music, video and most anything translatable into computer bits). The basic idea of intellectual property says that if one entity (person, company) did a lot of work in creating something, they should have superior rights to control it for a while. By itself, this is a very reasonable idea.

On the other hand, there is no physical basis to support property rights on information objects like there are on working land or creating physical things. Many would argue extremely convincingly that in a highly connected world, most people would be much better off if there were no intellectual property at all. That only those large organizations profiting from culture creation and limiting access to culture would be those harmed by eliminating IP entirely.

However, most important to the debate from my perspective is one of culture. The shared actions of humans that create the beauty, education, entertainment, and everyday existence for human beings is now encoded very often in digital information used to create experiences we all share. The fundamental question at hand is this: are we better off with human experience owned by corporations, or not? To me, this is the essence of the whole copyright debate - it has nothing to do with the specifics of law or legality, the politics of lobbying groups, or even the money people make off IP - it has to do with what kind of entity gets to create and control human culture, and whether it happens primarily by and for individuals in an open way, or whether it happens primarily under corporate ownership in a closed way.

Currently, we unequivocally have the latter. Large corporations primarily own the most valuable and most widely shared cultural elements in all 1st-world countries. The length of copyright basically only benefits and perpetuates corporations now. Governments with WIPO and other treaties are trying to enforce long, strong copyright protections globally. Its not individuals' creative expression driving how we live, how we think, how we get news and information, how we are entertained, how we are educated - but rather (and I'm being extremely general here) - it is corporations. These statements are extremely broad and there are many counter examples, but I'm referring to the largest factors and the most momentum in society.

I see it as unreasonable that culture created today will never be available to me openly and legally in my lifetime. The only reason the system works this way is because large companies profit more from IP working this way than other ways. The social fiction of IP is no longer a good deal for the individual in this case. This basic understanding that this legal fiction is no longer a good deal for individuals is why so many people redistribute mus

Re:copyright length insanity

[gnupun]

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime

So? That creative work took thousands if not millions of dollars to produce and they are willing to sell it to you for $10 to $50 bucks. But you are greedy, selfish and don't care about the welfare of the people who provide a product/service to make a living off copyright. No, you want everything for free. And I'll bet that once it's free nobody will use it or care about it that much in the same way as libraries are full of interesting books but hardly anybody reads them.

That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was ever intended to work.

Au contraire, the public is getting a bargain. That copyrighted work will last almost forever, the profit window only a few decades.

Re:copyright length insanity

[Sabriel]

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime (expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let you have access to it through licensing or sales.

Why exactly is this a problem?

We are shaped by the culture we live in. Would you prefer one based on sharing or selfishness?

Re:copyright length insanity

[tinkerghost]

Au contraire, the public is getting a bargain. That copyrighted work will last almost forever, the profit window only a few decades.

Relatively few copyright works last beyond 50 years. Try finding recordings that are more than 50 years old. Now compare that to the number of recordings released. Most publishers frequently purged their archives because it was too expensive to keep the materials that weren't selling.

Re:copyright length insanity

[gnupun]

Relatively few copyright works last beyond 50 years. Try finding recordings that are more than 50 years old.

Ancient history, they did not have cheap recording technology we have now. So any valuable copyrighted work stored on disk today is unlikely to disapper in 50 to 100 years. It would probably go on some RAID server backed website the minute its copyrights expire.

Re:copyright length insanity

[dangitman]

What the hell does copyright term extension have to do with this story about the MTA and transit schedules? If any post deserves an "Offtopic" mod, it's this one.

Re:copyright length insanity

[pla]

Why exactly is this a problem?

Because your "right" to sing along with the radio, alone in your car, without paying for a license to perform that work, depends entirely on the inability of the RIAA and "interested" congresscritters to catch you.

Because documentary filmmakers regularly "censor" any music or visible brands in something that supposedly presents a realistic snapshot of its subject matter.

Because we like to sing "happy birthday" at parties.

Because none of the "new" media today comes even remotely close to "original" - Indeed, when artists actually do come up with something more than a few percent truly original, it tends to fail miserably.


Because copyright exists for promoting advancement in the arts for MY and your benefit, and to a lesser degree the artists themselves. Not for the benefit of Sony or four generations of the artist's descendants with no value to society beyond "owns the rights to grandpa's book".

Feel free to sell your soul to Mammon. I want - We demand - access to the culture of which we form (however small) a part on our terms. Meet them, or we'll just take, while you piss and moan about "fairness" in a world we rule because of our ruthless ability to consume those who believe in fairness.

Re:copyright length insanity

[Attila Dimedici]

Ancient history, they did not have cheap recording technology we have now. So any valuable copyrighted work stored on disk today is unlikely to disapper in 50 to 100 years. It would probably go on some RAID server backed website the minute its copyrights expire.

What if it isn't valuable today? What if it is something that people 50 years from now think is valuable? There are a lot of copyrighted recordings from the 30s and 40s that would be valuable today, but they weren't in the 60s and 70s, so they are gone.

Re:copyright length insanity

[mcgrew]

Why exactly is this a problem?

Because art, like science and technology, builds on what has come before. If patents were as long as copyright, technological innovation would slow to a crawl.

Take this journal, for instance. At least one slashdotter thought it was good. It illegally uses the lyrics to a 35 year old song, and without those lyrics it would not be nearly as good (or if you don't like it, it would be even worse than it already is).

Isaac Newton borrowed the phrase "If I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants". That applies to art as well.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

Because your "right" to sing along with the radio, alone in your car, without paying for a license to perform that work, depends entirely on the inability of the RIAA and "interested" congresscritters to catch you.
Hmmm I don't see this as a problem in everyday life. Since there is no public present it is not a public performance. Even if it were, this is a ludicrous example. I still fail to see the harm here.


Because documentary filmmakers regularly "censor" any music or visible brands in something that supposedly presents a realistic snapshot of its subject matter.
Hmm another not so useful example. If you want to use it pay for it. Art costs, either in time or licenses you pick. There are cases of fair use where a license is not required if the subject matter is being criticized or used as an example. The law has made provisos for this. No harm seen here.

Because we like to sing "happy birthday" at parties.
Then pay up cheapskate! Or write your own and make it as popular as this one.

Because copyright exists for promoting advancement in the arts for MY and your benefit, and to a lesser degree the artists themselves.
please explain exactly how this impacts your and my life exactly. So far you have simply whined that "Copyright makes things expensive" with no real alternatives and no valid examples of how any of this impacts, affects or influences creativity.

In conclusion I have to say that I fail to see why the failure of what you call "original work" should in any way influence copyright reform. I hear a great deal of whining about what a license costs and no actual examples of egregious harm being done by anyone but the RIAA in their somewhat successful attempts to sue the socks off of people that admittedly were violating their copyrights.

Budding artists who wish to trample the on the shoulders of those giants that went before instead of standing on them to gain perspective are also not a real reason for copyright reform.
Buck up and tell the world, and me along with it what exactly it is that has you so aggravated. I can't see it here.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".

Instead of whining and denigrating someone that has asked you a question to which you seem to know the answer. Please define exactly how the current system does not accomplish this and why exactly shortening copyright terms would do any good? Good is not defined as preventing anyone from making money from art and their work so be specific please.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

Standing on the shoulders of giants, does not mean grabbing pieces of their work and slapping it into your own, for the sake of what, your inability to produce that kind of beat or image yourself. I don't paint distorted Picassos and call them original. Get off of this phrase as a cause celebre.
Standing on the shoulders of Giants means learning how to mix your paints the same way a particular artist did so you can produce original works in his color palette or with the same emotional feel. Learning how to look at the stars and finding a better way to determine if that thing you thought was a star is really an NEO about to slam into the moon. Copyright has nothing to do with the shoulders of giants. All copyright is for is to keep the artist/scientist in beans and bullets long enough to produce more or for his progeny to do the same. The length is really irrelevant as if it's good and stands the test of time great but eventually a work is so old and not nearly relevant enough for anyone to claim it and it becomes PD anyway.
Disney has introduced many new artists that have indeed stood on the shoulders of giants, look at Don Bluth, and Tim Burton as just two that were produced by the Disney millions. I still have not heard an argument that really means anything.

Re:copyright length insanity

[pla]

Because we like to sing "happy birthday" at parties.

Then pay up cheapskate! Or write your own and make it as popular as this one.
(...snip...)
Buck up and tell the world, and me along with it what exactly it is that has you so aggravated. I can't see it here.

So how much have you paid in license fees to sing happy birthday to friends and relatives? I'll presume, of course, that you can provide receipts or some form of proof of your non-infringement...

Sorry, if not for that one, I might have taken you seriously, but you meant your response either as missed sarcasm, or as an outright troll.

Re:copyright length insanity

[webmaestro]

I don't think you can really say that copyright laws have been "created almost entirely to meet corporate interests." Perhaps they have evolved over time to cater to the interests of businesses, but copyright was envisioned in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution (the Copyright Clause); long before the modern notions of a corporation (i.e., ones not chartered by a sovereign) were in existence in the US. Something cannot be created to meet the interests of something else that did not exist at the time.

You also claim that one must acknowledge that the current system is deeply flawed before we can make any progress to a better system. But is the current system only one point on potential copyright spectrum. The discussion must not only take into consideration the public, but the authors and even the interests of corporations, which are ultimately an abstraction of the individual shareholders. Your perspective might be that the system is flawed, and we need to throw out the current system and start over, but I think many would disagree (a good portion of whom were congressmen or senators that wrote the current copyright laws). Any discussion must take in to account the interests of all parties, not just those who "acknowledge that current copyright laws...are completely out of whack."

Re:copyright length insanity

[mcgrew]

I don't paint distorted Picassos and call them original.

You don't paint, period. If you'd ever been to art school or even taken a single art history class you'd know that what you just said was nonsense.

You bring up Disney, you may not be aware the Cinderalla, Snow White, and a hose of other Disney works were not, in fact, originated by Disney but were taken from works in the public domain at the time.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

I don't sing, I have never sung happy birthday to my relatives. There may have been other people present that did, but personally I haven't. Small abuses happen all the time and always will, there is still no valid reason given for the copyright length to be shortened. Show me the harm! Forget the money show me the harm!

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

Yes I am well aware that the works that Cinderella, Snow white and many other works that Disney re-invented were and still are in the public domain. I've seen performances of Snow White and Cinderella that are quite charming but bore no resemblance to what Disney produced. Thank you for pointing that out. Did you have a point there. You are aware that they had been public domain for nearly a hundred years before they were re-used. I saw no real valid reason to increase the copyright term but now I also see no valid reason to shorten it. I see people whining that it costs to much to re-invent a popular fiction or music item. For god's sake invent your own and get over it. Stand on those shoulders, quit watering the fields of creativity with negativity. The same shoulders that most of the modern artists stood on are still there.

Incidentally I am an award winning (linoleum block and wood cut) print and (3D and photo) digital artist and I have sold my works in art shows up and down the west coast. I have taken a photo taken by someone I respect and got permission to re-use it in a digital work but I procured the required license to do this. I have painted copies of Picasso, degas and Rembrandt as well as several other giants and by standing on their shoulders I have learned quite a lot. But never have I painted a distorted or re-worked version of a Picasso and called it art and tried to sell it.

Re:copyright length insanity

[mcgrew]

I've seen performances of Snow White and Cinderella that are quite charming but bore no resemblance to what Disney produced.

If Disney hadn't stolen the stories from the Brothers Grimm, those performances would have been illegal.

Incidentally I am an award winning (linoleum block and wood cut) print and (3D and photo) digital artist

I'm sorry, but your previous comment that showed a complete and utter lack of any education in the arts makes me disbelieve that statement. If you'd had any training at all, you would be acquainted with numerous examples of the same painting by different artists. One comes to mind of a nude reclining on a couch with another clothed women standing. That painting was done by several of what art historians consider to be giants.

Re:copyright length insanity

[sbeckstead]

If you'd had any training at all, you would be acquainted with numerous examples of the same painting by different artists. One comes to mind of a nude reclining on a couch with another clothed women standing. That painting was done by several of what art historians consider to be giants.

Yup and so did I, with a different woman in the nude and a different woman clothed and on a different couch, it occurs to me that I am arguing with a moron, you lose thanks for playing.

MTA has a slam dunk case!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they never run on time, the schedules are clearly a work of fiction and therefore covered under copyright laws as such!

Re:MTA has a slam dunk case!

[megamerican]

A good attorney could argue that it's a list of facts of times to not show up.

Best part of the article:

[SOdhner]

The MTA told the Stamford Advocate that without a license, the iPhone application might provide inaccurate information. [...] Ironically, the MTA's proposed agreement refuses to provide reliable data updates.

I never get tired of listening to the silly reasons people come up with when the *actual* reason is "We hear you're making money off of something. We aren't sure how, but we'd like to be making money off of it instead."

Re:Best part of the article:

[DriedClexler]

LOL! Yeah, exactly. And they get bonus points for the first part:

The MTA told the Stamford Advocate that without a license, the iPhone application might provide inaccurate information.

Uh huh. If you don't give the MTA money, that causes your data to be inaccurate. Thanks for your concern, MTA, but we'll take our chances...

Re:Best part of the article:

[snookums]

The MTA told the Stamford Advocate that without a license, the iPhone application might provide inaccurate information.

Uh huh. If you don't give the MTA money, that causes your data to be inaccurate. Thanks for your concern, MTA, but we'll take our chances...

Reminds me of the landlady I had in London. She told us overnight guests were prohibited because of fire safety. "12 backpackers burned to death in Amsterdam just last week". About a month later we got a message that overnight guests were fine if they paid 10 pounds...

Re:Best part of the article:

[noidentity]

I never get tired of listening to the silly reasons people come up with when the *actual* reason is

It's obviously "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". By keeping the schedule information on their ad-laden web page, they clearly promote progress...

This is what they should do

[bogaboga]

Creators of the application should refer to "MetroNorth" rail-road schedules something else like "Mighty North" rail road schedules then make the time for each station "off" by a minute or so.

With this approach, authorities cannot legally come back to say creators are using their data without a license.

How about that?

Re:Disbarment--ONLY AFTER PAYING HIS FEES

[Nom du Keyboard]

The MTA lawyers ought to know that they're persecuting the blogger beyond what copyright law allows. They should be disbarred.

They should be disbarred only after paying all his legal fees as the prevailing party in the lawsuit.

prior art exists

[swschrad]

london train schedules were copyrighted in the holmes days, too.

Re:prior art exists

[Ironica]

london train schedules were copyrighted in the holmes days, too.

Under US copyright law though?

Referendum

[copponex]

This is why we need the power to compel referendums for city or county wide issues, and make sure the heads of all departments can be kicked out at the next yearly election by direct democratic action.

Get 1% of the population to sign a petition, get your spot on the ballot, and voila! Government officials miraculously stop acting like they own the place. I know they have some similar policies out West, but know of none in the East.

Re:Referendum

[Ma8thew]

Because having referenda for everything has worked out great in California.

Re:Referendum

[copponex]

Because posting snide and hollow comments has worked out great for your argument.

Re:Referendum

[hondo77]

+1 Sad but true

Re:Referendum

[kindbud]

Have fun on your long descent into the madness we enjoy here in California. Don't forget to kick your governor out of office and put Carl Weathers in his place (the only principal actor in "Predator" who hasn't been a governor yet).

Re:Referendum

[stephanruby]

This is why we need the power to compel referendums for city or county wide issues

May be, we could copyright the referendum results too.

BART

[Anonymous Coward]

BART in the SF bay area on the other hand is embracing the developers...
http://www.bart.gov/schedules/developers/

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[e9th]

Sydney, Australia.

Re:copyright length insanityKNOCK THEM OFF

[Nom du Keyboard]

This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime (expected lifetime) unless the people or companies who control the rights let you have access to it through licensing or sales.

Time to start knocking off the creative element in our society so that we can get that 70 clock to start ticking.

Jeopardy

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

I'll take copyright for $200, Alex. Copyright is defined as "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work" What is the MTA schedule? Sorry, that's incorrect.

Re:Jeopardy

[Kirijini]

Copyright is defined as "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work"

Whoa there. I know thats how the American Heritage Dictionary defines copyright, but that's just not right at all. First of all, copyright is not granted to publishers or distributors. They can license copyright from the copyright owner, but unless they paid for the work to be created (ie, "work for hire"), they aren't "granted" a copyright.

Second, "exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of..." is just a terrible way to describe the exclusive rights of copyright. The best way is "exclusive right to make copies." Copyright also grants exclusive rights to public display and performance of the protected work.

Third, that definition doesn't indicate who or how the right is granted. Copyright is created by the legislature. In the US, copyright is granted at the moment of creation.

Fourth "literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work" is a every limited description of what is actually covered by copyright. There is no need for the work to be "artistic" or "literary," etc. The work just has to be an original work of authorship. Per the Copyright Act of 1976: "Copyright protection subsists... in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

Re:Jeopardy

[dkf]

Copyright is defined as "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work"

What is the MTA schedule?

A literary work of fiction, so entirely covered by copyright.

Calling NYCL

[Nom du Keyboard]

This sounds like a case for New York Country Lawyer - Defending the innocent and the oppressed against the ungodly weight of the CCI - Combined Copyright Interests! A force for good wherever he goes.

Re:Calling NYCL

[horatio]

The MTA is a government run entity, right? I didn't think the gov't was allowed to copyright it's work? The idea being that the funding for said work was derived from the taxpayers? If it was a privately owned limo company or something of that nature, I could start to see the argument. On the other hand, wouldn't you want anything that made it easier for "customers" to purchase and use your product? Apparently not when you're the government with no real incentive to actually do things right or have to compete with another company.

Control of Information is Power

[amiga3D]

To allow someone else to utilize this information diminishes the power of the New York MTA. It's really all about control. The more ignorant people are the better off the government and corporations are. Too bad most people choose to be ignorant.

And here I was, thinking that...

[Hurricane78]

...the MTA is owned by the people of New York, and therefore any copyright would mean, that they got the ultimate right... and could maybe even revoke the MTA's right to use it.

Yay for a "free market". :/

Re:And here I was, thinking that...

[Jerry Coffin]

[...] the people of New York [ ... ] could maybe even revoke the MTA's right to use it.

That wouldn't make any difference -- the MTA already seems to ignore it completely!

Re:And here I was, thinking that...

[betterunixthanunix]

More importantly, since the MTA is a public entity, its documents should not be copyrighted at all -- like all government documents, they should automatically be in the public domain.

Of course, this is the MTA. During a contract negotiation a few years ago, when the workers were on the verge of a strike, it was revealed that all of the MTA's claims of budget shortfalls were fabricated -- they had been keeping two sets of books, one showing a deficit, the other showing a surplus. When it came time for a contract negotiation, they would point to the deficit books as evidence that they would not be able to afford any raises; when it came time to ask the city for approval to conduct a construction project, they would point to the surplus figures and declare that they would have no problems completing the project.

Re:And here I was, thinking that...

[Hurricane78]

Or in other words: You let them ignore you. Or do you think they could even defend themselves against 10% of you, rushing into the building and ripping them into pieces? :P

Never say "never"

[jayme0227]

There is ample evidence on Slashdot, if you're not too lazy to look,* of armchair lawyers coming up with perfectly reasonable precedents that the courts seemingly refused to cite in their decisions. Just because the precedent is there and seemingly applicable doesn't mean the court will follow it.

*I am

Re:Never say "never"

[omnichad]

The court? That's the lawyer's job.

Re:Never say "never"

[WNight]

And that's the problem with the system.

*Public* transportation

[nurb432]

Supported in part by public taxes. So, its public data.

Re:*Public* transportation

[macshit]

Supported in part by public taxes.

While that's probably true in this case, note that the term "public transport" does not imply public ownership or support, and in practice there are many private providers of such that do not receive any support from the government.

Re:*Public* transportation

[nurb432]

and the MTA isnt one of them .

Workaround: don't precisely copy.

[smellsofbikes]

So what if he increments every time listed in the schedule by 1 minute? Then it bears little resemblance to the original text but is still useful. The added plus is that in order to show that his schedule is based on their schedule, they have to violate the DMCA.

Re:Workaround: don't precisely copy.

[omnichad]

Even less secure than ROT13, ROT1 is covered under the DMCA!

Re:Workaround: don't precisely copy.

[__aarzwb9394]

Here's another workaround idea: Can this be crowdsourced? Get everyone to agree to inout a certain amount of data?

They owe me.

[Pedrito]

Unless their schedule specifies the seconds, they are infringing on my 1440 time of day copyrights and I simply can't let that stand. I'll be seeing them in court!

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[chrome]

I think that got thrown out of court; rail and bus information is public domain. They're not obligated to provide it in an easily fetchable format, but it's perfectly ok to republish it as long as you make it clear that you're not the original source.

Sure they have a copyright...

[lordsid]

The metro north transit has a copyright on the schedule they produced, i.e. styling, layout but they cannot copyright the data within it. If he scrapes the data by hand entering or even an automatic reading of the page and produces a new schedule with it it is an original work.

IANAL, but this my understanding of copyright law.

I hope he can fight this, perhaps the EFF will step in on his behalf.

Re:Sure they have a copyright...

[gnupun]

I hope he can fight this, perhaps the EFF will step in on his behalf.

Why should the EFF defend scrapers? They are leeches. The author used MTA-created data, and unless it's in the public domain, he should have to pay MTA a portion of his earnings. The $5000 fee at the top is a bit steep though.

Re:Sure they have a copyright...

[lordsid]

So you're saying you've never referenced other work in anything you have ever created?

He shouldn't have to pay them shit. He took a schedule that is public knowledge and made it better, thus the original work.

Any time you read something you are scraping it. By your standards if I then repeat that knowledge to someone else I should pay a license for that privilege. Try again.

The only difference here being is he probably created an automated process to scrape the data.

Imagine if I were to be sued because my grocery list named all the items by their brand name, it would be equally retarded and frivolous.

Bastards

[TheMeuge]

MTA is not a transit company. It's a gathering of extortionists and mobsters. The people cleaning the platforms make nearly 50% more than post-docs at NY research institutions... and the MTA employees are going to be getting something like 4% per year raises for the next 3 years... EVERY YEAR... at a time when mean salaries are plumetting, and the MTA is about to raise the fares twice in one calendar year. Fuck 'em.

Not the first time this has happened

[macraig]

I read about this same tactic being used in another region some years ago. IIRC it involved the efforts of a small group to publish regional transit routes online as a convenience, but the local transit authority freaked out and shut it down.

let me suggest a small correction

[westlake]

You will die first before the vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally

There is damn little that isn't available legally.

It's just that not everything is available for free.

Entry into the public domain does not guarantee you access to the original - to the master prints or recordings.

It doesn't give you access to unpublished drafts, storyboards, concept designs, deleted scenes, sets, props, costumes, etc.

It does not guarantee funding for storage, restoration or distribution.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Two words: employee agreement.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[tinkerghost]

There is damn little that isn't available legally.

Hmm, off the top of my head:

• Concert recordings - most concerts are recorded & the recordings are buried unless the tour company decides to make a tour album. Phish & The Greatful Dead being 2 exceptions since they both have publicly stated they want people to bootleg the concerts.
• Music Recordings from the 20s through the 40s - most don't exist because the masters were thrown away when the music stopped being profitable.
• Many of the original Dr Who episodes - the BBC destroyed the tapes to make room in the vaults. Many episodes are only caught on bootleg audio recordings from the radio.
• Out of print books.

As a point in fact, the Library of Congress has had fights with media companies in the past over trying to transcribe some of their holding to new media.

Entry into the public domain does not guarantee you access to the original - to the master prints or recordings.

No but it guarantees the ability to create a copy before the last original is lost. If I have the last copy of a 1918 club recording, I won't be able to make a preservation copy of it until 2038 - since it's 120 years for corporate copyright.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[pla]

There is damn little that isn't available legally.

In some form, for an ungodly price, you mostly speak the truth. In a convenient form, at a price in the same ballpark as any "popular" example of the same artform, absolutely false. Trivial example - The majority of massed produced wax cylinder recordings, you cannot currently obtain in any form other than to buy an actual original wax cylinder, which would most likely disintegrate if you actually tried to play it. A number of projects have started preserving these digitally, but of course can't make anything produced after 1923 available (without extensive legal searches that usually result in a dead-end with a long-defunct publisher).


It's just that not everything is available for free.

Technically true, but hundreds/thousands of dollars for a single song does not fall into the realm of "reasonable"....

Entry into the public domain does not guarantee you access to the original - to the master prints or recordings.

...Which few people actually want. Some historical-rarities collectors might really want them, and they expect to pay through the nose - Most of us just want a CD or MP3 of, say, the complete recorded works of Willie Dixon. And whether or not enough material exists to provide that, you couldn't release the bulk of it without violating copyright law, despite no commercially available source of the same material.


It does not guarantee funding for storage, restoration or distribution.

No, but it goes a looooong way to guaranteeing exactly that. How many Dr. Who fans would give their left nut for the opportunity to have helped preserve some of the work "purged" by the BBC in the 1970s? And if not one, but hundreds, of devoted fans all have copies, well, even if we lose a semi-mythical "master", at least we'd have the episode itself at some decent level of quality. Instead, we have fan-initiated projects to reproduce those episodes from crappy steel-wire soundtracks and production stills.


And people really have to wonder why some of us have a problem with current copyright law?

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[syousef]

It doesn't give you access to unpublished drafts, storyboards, concept designs, deleted scenes, sets, props, costumes, etc.

You just described the usual extras published on a DVD.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[CODiNE]

Oh yeah? I'd like to see you get a legal copy of X-men the animated series. A fairly popular show that many here are familiar with but has never been sold on DVD and only a few episodes were ever sold on VHS. There's lots of other examples of shows and movies considered unprofitable and simply abandonned. I'm sure more than half of the movies and tv shows of the 80s and before are simply gone. Ever gone into the VHS section of an old movie rental chain? Hundreds of flicks you've never seen before and never will again because they were deemed unworthy of a DVD release.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[amplt1337]

It's more of an issue of the right to create legally unencumbered derivative works.
That can have major implications for the further development of the culture (which is the Constitutional basis for Congress having the power to create copyright and patent law). Ferinstance, Half of what Shakespeare's work was re-workings of plays and plots that were done by his contemporaries; he just did them better. But if they could've asserted control that would prevent him from making legal derivative works, we'd not have had Hamlet.

Re:let me suggest a small correction

[jvkjvk]

[quote]There is damn little that isn't available legally.

It's just that not everything is available for free.[/quote]

Oh really?

Coudl you please tell me how I might go about making a short film with Mickey Mouse? You know, like a simple cartoon. Perhaps set in a Grimm Fairy Tale.

Thanks.

Just drive your car instead?

[gilesjuk]

Honestly, the public transport companies are such losers. Overpriced, overcrowded, inconvenient etc.. etc.. Someone creates a tool which might actually make the use of a train a bit more convenient and the people who stand to profit from this are suing the developer?

Get a life!

Re:Just drive your car instead?

[aaaantoine]

Hah. Hahah. No sane person drives their car into New York City, especially not Manhattan. You get your choice of a $40/day parking garage, or daily bumper abuse when you so happen to find a spot to park. I don't care how crappy the MTA's service is. It is less crowded, less expensive, and more convenient than sitting in traffic and trying to cram your car onto Manhattan island somewhere.

What is the real motive?

[ouder]

There have been a lot of these cases lately. On frequent theme is that the person publishing the schedule is also associated with some type of criticism of the transit authority involved. That suggests that the real reason for the lawsuits is to silence the critic rather than to block publication of the schedules. I haven't seen the proposed agreement in this case, but the license that has been proposed by the other transit authorities usually contains some language that ties access to the schedule data to restrictions on criticism of the transit authority. I wonder if that will happen here.

They're doing it wrong

[pluther]

For an example of how to do it right, take a look at my local transit system, TriMet.

They publish their data in well-defined formats, including real-time location information for all buses and trains, free for anybody to use.

Anyone is free to write their own applications using their data. TriMet maintains links to many of them on their web site.

Re:They're doing it wrong

[sabt-pestnu]

Unless you're talking about some other Trimet, you're talking about the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, centered around Portland, Oregon. ... home of such companies as Tektronix, and host to offices of companies like Intel. Home of Linus Torvalds. Often host to OScon.

Portland is fairly clued in on open source/open information issues.

Re:They're doing it wrong

[pluther]

Yeah, that'd be the one.
(I guess when I say "my" local area, not everyone in the world necessarily knows what I'm talking about.)

Public Service

[Mike Rice]

The MTA is supposedly providing a public service in transporting people from one place to another.

In order for that service to actually be useful, a published schedule is required.

For that published schedule to be useful it must be Accurate, Timely, Accessible, Sufficient, and Understandable to the great majority of the public.

If the MTAs published schedule met these minimum requirements, there would be no viable market for third party involvement.

Since there obviously IS a third party market, it stands to reason that the MTA is not providing one or more of the requirements to be useful, to the public it is supposed to be serving.

So a third party steps in to provide that service. It's the American way, and I say the MTA should spend more effort making sure their published information is actually useful to their customers.

Re:Public Service

[freedom_india]

The MTA is a private company.
Their property is a time schedule.
If you replicate it exactly, then you are violating their copyright.
If your website just puts up the train schedules, in a different format, and says it is not associated to MTA in any way, then you are OK. You are just pointing to the information that already exists.

Re:Public Service

[DNS-and-BIND]

You're thinking about this the wrong way. The MTA boss is embarrassed because someone is doing *his* job, and doing it better than he could. Consider: he's been given a budget, staff, everything he needs to do his job, and he's not doing it due to incompetence, nepotism, corruption, or all the other reasons that Northeastern government has a bad reputation. Now, here comes some blogger who not only does his job better, but does it for free! You can imagine how bad this looks for the boss. And naturally, he isn't fixing the problems (he doesn't see that he has any), but rather going after the person who is making him look bad. And to him, it's perfectly natural that this should happen: after all, plebes shouldn't criticize their betters. Does this blogger have a degree in transportation management? So how he hell does he have any credibility to criticize? It's like you're a book reviewer for the New Yorker, and you read a column in the daily shopper (correctly) pointing out you're full of crap. Are you going to accept that? Hell no!

Re:Public Service

[amplt1337]

In order for that service to actually be useful, a published schedule is required.

That's not really true, exactly. The service would still be useful even if all you know is "there should be a train sometime in the next fifteen minutes." That's how the subway and bus systems generally work (schedules exists, but next to nobody ever checks them, or believes them if they do) and those systems still move millions of people daily.

Quibbling, I know...

Re:Disbarment IT IS COUPLED WITH MONEY

[Nom du Keyboard]

if it's coupled with monetary demands (doesn't seem to be the case here).

But it is coupled with money since it seeks to cut off this young man's income from selling and supporting his app.

BART has similar copyright claims

[stevew]

Thought I would take a look at the local transit system and see if they had similar restrictions.

http://www.bart.gov/siteinfo/copyright.aspx

Sure seems like it!

"Copyright
  All content on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) website (http://www.bart.gov) including the collection, arrangement, assembly and presentation of pages and all logos, maps, text, images, feeds and databases are the property of BART or its content suppliers and are protected by copyright laws.

You may not use the BART logo, the BART map or any other content from the BART website without express written permission in advance from BART."

Re:BART has similar copyright claims

[apenzott]

One hand taketh, another hand giveth.
http://www.bart.gov/developers/
It appears that BART has said to the scrapers; "Here is the data you need in raw form along with some suggested tools you can integrate our schedules into your applications."
On the whole, it looks like BART has embraced these applications rather than raise a stink on them.

Re:BART has similar copyright claims

[michaelwv]

Just because they say it doesn't mean it's true or legally enforceable.

Re:BART has similar copyright claims

[Anonymous Coward]

"Copyright
    All content on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) website (http://www.bart.gov) including the collection, arrangement, assembly and presentation of pages and all logos, maps, text, images, feeds and databases are the property of BART or its content suppliers and are protected by copyright laws.

You may not use the BART logo, the BART map or any other content from the BART website without express written permission in advance from BART."

Read all this shit with the words "in terrorem clause" in mind. They can also claim that it's a sacrilege according to Canon Law in the Roman Catholic Church and must be confessed at your earliest convenience under pain of eternal damnation, but that doesn't make it so.

Some of the items, like layout, etc. may indeed fall under copyright law, but "content" qua "facts" does not.

A more commonly seen case of an in terrorem (to scare or terrify) clause is the practice of dry cleaners posting a sign sating that clothes not claimed for thirty days may be sold for just the cost of cleaning. Come in after 45 days and they'll point to the sign. Most people will be sufficiently cowed to accept the words on the sign.

In fact, state law commonly specifies 60 to 90 days before the clothing can be sold off. Were you to take the cleaner to court for selling your clothes too soon, you'd most likely prevail.

Anyway, BART has been a fiasco since day one -- nothing more than a string of broken promises. Remember that the cars were delivered without hang straps or grab rails? That was because the system was to be so fast and efficient that no one would ever have to stand. Instead, people pack into the cars as if it were the Tokyo subway. If the no-standees promise were enforced today, BART would be out of business by noon tomorrow. Fully half of the capacity of any car during rush hours is standees. They wouldn't be able to handle the revenue loss.

Then there were the 80mph speeds through the tube. When the doors started flying open at speed, they cut the max back to 60. Not so hard a landing, I guess.

Since they could no longer meet the printed schedules, they took the obvious action -- they quit printing schedules.

As for efficiency, I've seen times when a fully-loaded (ten-car, the max) train coming in each direction empties out at Embarcadero. the platform is almost entirely filled. As closely following trains arrive, they actually have to close the station until the platform can be cleared.

This clearing is slow because I've often seen one of the three escalators (of which one must always be going down) out of service. Relatively few people want to trudge the three or four stories up the stairways.

Tell them to read the constitution

[CuteSteveJobs]

The Government can't copyright its work. Unless New York wishes to claim it's not really part of the government, in which case good luck collecting local taxes. The MTA's so-called public servants who dreamed this timetable skirmish up really should be sacked for wasting taxpayers money in the pursuit of inferior service.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law :

"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

The intent of the section is to place in the public domain all work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. 101 as work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties. In most cases, contractors are not employees.

Re:Tell them to read the constitution

[langelgjm]

Uh, you aware that that only applies to works of the federal government, right? Of which Metro-North railroad is most certainly not a part... state laws vary.

Re:Tell them to read the constitution

[brock bitumen]

that's a good point, however, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority_(New_York) the MTA is a "public benefit corporation" and not, therefore, a direct agency of the US gov't, per se.

whether or not it's still affected by your citation, I do not know, however, I would imagine the agency would not have extended legal action without consultation first, and this section of the law would have been a very clear obstacle, if it happens to be relevant, and it's the lawyer who then should be sacked

Re:Tell them to read the constitution

[Attila Dimedici]

The Government can't copyright its work. Unless New York wishes to claim it's not really part of the government, in which case good luck collecting local taxes. The MTA's so-called public servants who dreamed this timetable skirmish up really should be sacked for wasting taxpayers money in the pursuit of inferior service.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law :

"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

The intent of the section is to place in the public domain all work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. 101 as work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties. In most cases, contractors are not employees.

The government of the State of New York and the government of the City of New York are not in anyway a part of the United States Government. They never have been.

Re:Tell them to read the constitution

[fnj]

the MTA is a "public benefit corporation" and not, therefore, a direct agency of the US gov't, per se.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini Quotes

My word

[jmickle]

Im going to copyright the word "time" that way i can sue you all for looking at your watches.....

Re:My word

[mcgrew]

Watches? How quaint!

Everywhere you go these days

[Runaway1956]

Whiney pusses and crybabies. "Oh, I missed the train by a minute and a half, now I'll have to wait for FIFTEEN MINUTES for the next train!!"

Oh boo hoo. He should have pulled his pecker out of - wherever - a few minutes earlier, so that he could have some TIME to catch the train. If his source of information was faulty, well, he had an opportunity to use another source. Why didn't he pick up a dead-tree version of the schedule last month? Finally, I'm forced to ask - who gives a damn if this inept dilrod is late for some stupid appointment, anyway? He's been riding trains most of his life, and hasn't figured out how things work yet? Screw him.

Re:Everywhere you go these days

[BranMan]

Now THERE is a New Yorker. I knew if we waited long enough one of you would post.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[Zordak]

rail and bus information is public domain.

Even more than that, information is in the public domain. You cannot copyright the fact that a particular train is supposed to arrive at a particular stop at a particular time. You may be able to copyright your layout of your brochure, and the nifty graphics you put all over it, but there is no creative expression to the fact of a bus schedule.

And still more, is convenience and efficiency so anathema to government that they feel the need to stamp it out wherever they see it, even if it's not costing them anything? Have they considered that maybe MORE people will ride the rail system if they have schedules conveniently accessible?

Viruses are a goldmine anyhow - why withold?

[JSBiff]

Ok, I may misunderstand the nature of the 'cure', but generally viruses are 'cured' with vaccinations, right? But, viruses mutate and the vaccine becomes either less effective or ineffective, giving the pharma company the possibility to create *another* version of the vaccine (and they probably get a new patent on it), so viruses are a virtual goldmine anyhow. Why would you sit on a vaccine for any virus? It's not like, just because you innoculate people against the currently dominant strain of herpes simplex, that there won't be a new version in 10-20 years (just about the time that revenues are falling off from the current version, and the patent's about to expire).

I see no financial reason *NOT* to sell a vaccine against a virus - it's the perfect product, because you *must* get a new version every few years/decades. (In the case of influenza, they create a new version *every year* because it mutates so fast).

Re:Viruses are a goldmine anyhow - why withold?

[Twanfox]

A vaccination provides you protection against getting the virus. It is not guaranteed protection, but it is better than your chances if you were to come across it without that protection. This is not equivalent to a cure. A cure is a remedy provided to you in order to remove an existing infection from you. Once you have been infected, a vaccination is typically no longer effective, whereas a cure is.

Also to note, not all viruses mutate particularly rapidly, as like the influenza virus. Some, like Chicken Pox, tend to be fairly steady so that a single regiment of the vaccine is sufficient to prevent you from being infected your entire life. Others, as you note influenza, should be had every year because the rate of mutation is that quick.

I was saying why bill the guy for the data when yo

[Joe The Dragon]

I was saying why bill the guy for the data when you make it free?

Yeah, Real hard to tell the difference.

[zippthorne]

<search terms> +site:gov

Done.

Re:Yeah, Real hard to tell the difference.

[Tim4444]

our government's not that tech savvy: jocogov.org

Goose Hunting

[zogger]

The Swiss also make some good goose gear ;)

Re:Australian experience - mk II

[Macgrrl]

Here in Melbourne, the transit authority published two really good iPhone apps, one which in cludes a trip planner and timetable app (Metlink) and one for checking when the next tram will arrive/how long to your stop (Tram Tracker). There was no need for a 3rd party tool because the 1st party tool was promptly available and worked well.

Re:WhyNot? Secret Timetables, Menus, Elevator Butt

[Macgrrl]

Mendicant!

Since when has sense ever mattered to the MTA?

[crovira]

This is the MTA. You don't like it, get out and walk. We survived Robert Moses, so bring it on punk.

We don't care if the facts are against us, we'll argue the law.

We don't care if the laws are against us, we'll argue the facts.

We don't care if the facts and the laws are against us, we'll just give the opposing counsel Hell.

There are eight million riders per day who hate us with every mile they ride. What do we care?

They still pay what ever the hell we charge them.

Piss us off and you'll wake up in Far Rockaway with you briefcase in Bay Ridge and the cops coming to arrest you because all of your clothes and all your ID are on their way to Montauk.

We got YOUR number bub, and it covers the 718 area code, bee-atch.

What about Derle?

[crovira]

Instead of disbarment I wonder of we can try opting for dismemberment. :-)

Re:What about Derle?

[tinkerghost]

That would be trial by arms. Good for everything from treason to divorce.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[X0563511]

I think the problem that they have, is a loss of control over the information.

If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.

MTA dial 311 and get arrested

[dyfet]

A friend of mine used the new 311 line promoted by NYC's new Boss Tweed, Mayor Bloomberg, to complain about Q-Line service, and was arrested last Friday by 4 MTA police officers and held in city jail overnight until his arraignment on Saturday. So at this point nothing surprises me about what the MTA might try to do.

Re:MTA dial 311 and get arrested

[OneSmartFellow]

Hmmm.... I call bullshit on the link between the two events.

Come clean, your friend was having a wank on public transport when he was arrested, wasn't he.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[wstrucke]

I think the problem that they have, is a loss of control over the information.

If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.

That's the first thing I've read here that actually makes any sense as to why the MTA would be doing this, though I adamantly disagree. As was previously stated, this is the city transit authority -- by definition a public entity. They have no business doing anything with copyright, nevermind suing a tax payer for using the information!

This is almost as bad as the news that the tax payer "bailed out" banks are raking in record profits by increasing overdraft and other fees -- talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

Holy Hell!

[celtic_hackr]

I hate PC comments like yours. It should not be anyone's responsibility to warn blazing fools not to put steaming hot coffee in their lap and try to drive, or not to iron clothes while wearing them, or that a jar of peanuts contains (wait for it) PEANUTS! Yeah that last one is a real warning message, pick a jar of peanuts and read it for your self. Anyone ignorant enough to not know that a jar of peanuts contains peanuts needs a lifetime treatment at the local electrical shock therapy center.
I am so tired of this "label anything because someone might sue you for them being an idiot" fad. It should be an affirmative defense of anyone that you are not responsible for other people being too stupid to live. Maybe that was your point. I hope so.

Re:Holy Hell!

[tomhudson]

Anyone ignorant enough to not know that a jar of peanuts contains peanuts needs a lifetime treatment at the local electrical shock therapy center.

Isn't that why we have the Darwin Awards?

Besides, no need to spend money on ECT - just tell them that they can get high licking an electrical socket if they do it right, or that they can have the most ultimate mind-blowing absolute killer orgasm by shoving a plugged-in extension cord up their anus while standing in the bathtub, then using a salt enema.

Throw in some links to toad-licking as a proven way for people to get high (for the electrical socket one), and that the drug companies are in a conspiracy to keep pushing viagra and don't want you to know that it cures erectile dysfunction (for the latter one), and problem solved.

After all, the REAL reason that there are so many idiots in the world is so we can laugh at them.

Re:Holy Hell!

[scot4875]

First, I once believed like you apparently do about the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. I then learned about the facts of the case, and I was wrong, as you are. This rant has been thoroughly debunked many, many times, and I'm not going to do it again, so I encourage you to look it up. It turns out it was a case of the McDonald's owner needing to take personal responsibility for his illegally hot coffee. (It keeps longer that way, he was trying to save a buck.)

Second, NONE of those things you listed are comparable to adding a disclaimer that, "this information might not be accurate and this website is in no way affiliated with MTA." All of those things are common sense, and no reasonable person would think otherwise. If I go to a website that claims to have the MTA schedule and has generally been reliable in the past, it's not unreasonable to believe that its data will be accurate if you don't know that the site isn't actually affiliated with MTA, or that it doesn't get its data directly from MTA in an automated fasion.

Last, I hate overbroad comments like yours. PC is typically a code word for "evil liberals," and your post reeks of accusing the damn libs of removing personal responsibility and common sense from our lives. I'm as liberal as they come, and I think that if anyone needs a warning label that jars of peanuts contain peanuts, they're an idiot and society would probably be better off without them.

--Jeremy

Re:Holy Hell!

[celtic_hackr]

First, I once believed like you apparently do about the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. I then learned about the facts of the case, and I was wrong, as you are.

Then we disagree. I've read up on the case and I've had hot coffee spilled on me. It doesn't have to be too terribly hot. My mother taught me early on to respect hot things. That includes keeping them away from my groin.

This rant has been thoroughly debunked many, many times, and I'm not going to do it again,

Thank God!

Last, I hate overbroad comments like yours. PC is typically a code word for "evil liberals," and your post reeks of accusing the damn libs of removing personal responsibility and common sense from our lives. I'm as liberal as they come, and I think that if anyone needs a warning label that jars of peanuts contain peanuts, they're an idiot and society would probably be better off without them.

--Jeremy

PC is what is overbroad. If you can't recognize Political Correctness when you see it, then you've been successfully brainwashed. I'm pretty far out there on the liberal scale, more so than anyone I know. Which is what makes your comment funny. Of course, I have Conservative traits too, and some in the Middle (your basic blue-purple-red political nightmare). PC isn't owned by Liberals, and the fact that you use the "Lib" derogatory exposes you as a likely Conservative. But who am I to judge. I don't care if you're blue as the blue boy or red as a cherry, I will fight you PC wherever it grows. The "civilized" world of people has survived for more than 10,000 years without PC and we can do just fine without it.

--
Jesus is/was* a fiery radical far beyond the bonds of mere MPG (Mortal Political Guise).
*Depending on your faith or lack there of.

Re:You can only look, but not touch...

[westlake]

But what if I want to make derivative works out of it?
You know, like Disney did with all of Grimm's fairy tales.

Rogers & Hammerstein produced their own musical version of Cinderella for fifties television. Mary Martin had a memorable turn on stage and in live TV as Peter Pan.

What the geek wants is the right to churn out derivatives based on Disney's unique interpretation of these stories - and not at all incidentally the right to use Disney's unique supporting cast of characters, character designs, etc.

This is needed

[Blejdfist]

Me and a few friends did a road trip in USA last year from California to Florida and up to New York. And I must say New York had one of the best public transportation systems of the places we visited during our road trip. But what was really lacking was some form of easy to find time table. I used Google maps on my iPhone to get directions, but ofcourse, if I missed the train I had to walk all the way up to ground level again to get reception so I could find an alternative route. Where I come from (Gothenburg, Sweden) we have monitors at every bus/tram stop that tell you what and when the next bus/tram is coming. And there are charts posted where they all go, and how long it takes to get there.

Re:T-Mobile Sucks

[easyTree]

Also, please bear in mind that IANAL and that I'm in the UK

Re:T-Mobile Sucks

[Second_Derivative]

So, how's your credit score doing these days?

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[mcgrew]

But this isn't Germany. I don't know what Germany's copyright law says about it, but in the US you can't copyright data -- only its representation. Douglas Adams coupd copyright HHGTG, but he could't copyright the act of blowing up the earth, or putting a fish in your ear to translate.

In the US, you can't copyright a phone book, OR a bus schedule. This is the most absurd thing I've heard of all week, and it's Friday.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[hesaigo999ca]

Too bad, its up to them to have a proper website that is maintained properly and up to date at all times which would make these apps really useless, but instead they pinch pennies and make their users suffer the long wait times on the phone to get that info, and have no real website per se...

Re:T-Mobile Sucks

[easyTree]

It's fine.

A contract works both ways. They agree to provide certain services and I agree to pay for them. If they don't provide those services that's their choice but I am under no obligation to continue paying.

Yes, maintaining control of the data IS important

[DVARP]

I won't comment on the legalities of copyright (IANAL) or the tactics MTA is using (they may have shot themselves in the foot), but there are very good reasons for MTA to want to keep control of their schedule information and limit third-party distribution.

Yes, third parties can often get information out to the public in a faster and more accessible manner than transportation companies, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. I should know--I was responsible for the project that first put Amtrak schedules online, back in the Gopher era and then in the early years of the WWW. We also did online schedules for several commuter rail systems, including MTA's, in those early years.

Most important _is_ ensuring that the data is maintained and kept up to date. Having outdated schedules up for download is worse than having no schedules at all. This is not a matter of 'boo hoo, you missed the train by one minute because you were relying on your iPhone--be early next time' as one commenter put it: sometimes the changes can be pretty substantial, especially as a result of construction projects. And yes, the company gets blamed even when the fault is someone else's.

Second, it is _not_ helpful to undercut the system's own communications department. They may not be as fast as you in putting out an app, but they may have something much more useful in process, such as an app that can link to a dispatching database and provide real-time departure information (see NJ Transit's new Departure Vision beta, for example). With all due respect to your programming skill and interface design ideas, users are usually better off with information direct from the source.

Finally, put yourself in the shoes of the system. When we were distributing a downloadable version of Amtrak's timetable, we had a pretty difficult time trying to convince well-meaning individuals not to repost them on their own boards, and getting the ones who had done so to take down outdated editions. They may be dealing with other people who want to do the same thing as you, and all of this at the same time as they're trying to add new features to the official sites.

If you want to do something like this, either as a public service or for profit, the right thing to do is to communicate with the system and get their permission first. Ranting on Slashdot about copyright, government bureaucracies or about the lousy on-time performance of the system's operating side (actually, Metro-North's on-time performance is exemplary--best in the nation) is not constructive. Find out what is in the pipeline, and if you still think there's a need for the kind of information you can provide or the mechanism for delivering it, make the case to the system's customer service people, and you'll probably get a green light and a good deal of cooperation.

Matt Mitchell
Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers
www.dvarp.org

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[Zordak]

If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.

That may be a valid concern, but it still doesn't make the information copyrightable. And if it happens, the response is, "Sir, you will need to contact the owner of your iPhone app. The only official schedule is this printed one, which shows the right times. We don't control that app, and we don't take responsibility for the information on it. Have a nice day."

obvious peanuthood

[epine]

Yeah that last one is a real warning message, pick a jar of peanuts and read it for your self. Anyone ignorant enough to not know that a jar of peanuts contains peanuts needs a lifetime treatment at the local electrical shock therapy center.

There are so many things wrong with this sentiment, from an engineering perspective, I hardly know where to begin. This flies in the face of almost everything we've learned about software development in over the last thirty years. But I'm posting belatedly, so I won't belabour the point.

1. common sense is not common
2. use case blindness: not everyone is standing in a brightly lit retail store, carefully contemplating the interior contents of each individual bottle, with a full slate of ordinary human senses
3. deniability in the edge case (we thought it was just as obvious with these sugar frosted chocolate coated peanut clusters as with the plain roast peanuts, so we didn't put the label on the bottle)
4. adding complexity to little advantage

I just love reading code with lots of condition logic to handle errors were no useful recovery is possible.

Simple: if it has peanuts, label it as containing peanuts

Complex: if it has peanuts, label it as containing peanuts, unless the product is obviously peanuts, and in case the interpretation of obvious ever needs to be litigated, here's fifty pages of criteria to legally define "obvious peanuthood".

Yeah, sure, let's reformulate the entire legal system so we can indulge in brief orgasms of self-satisfaction when the lazy idiot next to us does himself avoidable harm and wails in primal dismay. Let me tell you, I enjoy watching lazy idiots get their comeuppance. There's no greater joy in life than watching some stupid fool attempt to weave his way through heavy congestion with a series of phone-booth lane changes, on reflex and attitude and no anticipation, only to find himself mired at the center of dead stop while everyone he nipped around crawls slowly past in the next lane.

But I don't go around advocating catastrophically stupid engineering practise to enshrine comeuppance as a constitutional virtue.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[X0563511]

Well, I'm not saying they are going about it the wrong way. As someone else posted (but not in response to me) the copyright claim was likely due to a pointy-haired-boss telling a pointy-haired-lawyer to have a solution before the close of business.

I'm just offering a possible reason, besides the ever-popular "yarrr, lets fuck the public" cynicism.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[X0563511]

er, make that right way. bah, bedtime for me.

Unfortunately not true

[Mathinker]

Another reason these schedules are not copyrightable is because the MTA is owned by the NY government, and the NY government is owned/funded by the People, therefore the schedules belong to the citizens of New York State. They are free to copy the schedules as often as they desire, especially since they already paid for them via taxation.

As much as I agree that your reasoning should be valid, my understanding of the legal realities are that unfortunately, only direct works of the Federal government are not copyrightable. State governments have the power to decide for themselves if their direct works are under copyright, and I don't know which of the states have given up copyright for their direct works, except for Florida, and possibly California.

Both state and Federal laws, however, are in the public domain.

Re:Didn't this happen not too long ago..

[FireFury03]

Even more than that, information is in the public domain. You cannot copyright the fact that a particular train is supposed to arrive at a particular stop at a particular time.

You can't copyright facts, however there are database rights that apply. So whilst you can copy a single fact (since there is no copyright), you can't copy a large chunk of the database.

This sort of crazyness goes on with TV listings and post code databases too - the companies want to have their cake and eat it: the TV channels want people to know what shows are on but also want to be able to make money out of selling the listings, the post office wants everyone to use post codes but also wants to continue making huge amounts of money out of selling the database.

Re:T-Mobile Sucks

[FireFury03]

It's fine.

A contract works both ways. They agree to provide certain services and I agree to pay for them. If they don't provide those services that's their choice but I am under no obligation to continue paying.

Sadly the last time I tried to not pay an MNO for illegal charges I was told in no uncertain terms that they would trash my credit rating. Since I didn't have the time to take them to court over it I paid up (if it had been more than a couple of pounds they would've found themselves in the small claims court though).

The way the credit reference system works is completely wrong - the creditors do not have to get a CCJ against you in order to record a default on your credit history. You are assumed to be guilty and you then have to take them to court to prove your innocence.

Re:T-Mobile Sucks

[easyTree]

Agreed - one of many means by which big business has unfair advantages of the individuals who support their existence.

One can't help but wonder how people are able to prevent themselves from laughing out loud when they explain that we live in a civilized society.

I can only imagine the weight of blowback that is currently held back by the dams of unfair laws.