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UK's National Rail Shuts Down Free Timetable App
JHaselden points to this "sad tale of one developer's trying time with the National Rail, the owners of the UK's train timetable data, which flies in the face of the recent assertion of Chris Scoggins (Chief Executive, National Rail Enquiries) in Wired recently stating that they had 'opened up' their data, 'often free of charge.'" This is a good case for keeping your old emails handy; the app's author uses cut-and-paste to excellent effect in his correspondence with the rail system.
Been there many years ago with television listings presented on a mobile phone. In my case, some of the TV channels felt the listings were copyrighted to them (despite actually encouraging people to watch them!) so I had to pull the service.
In the end, I rewrote the code to screen-scrape the websites in question and released the code as a download. I was no longer running a publically available service and those people who wanted to use it had to download and set up the code themselves - which was nicely covered under the T&C's which stated "personal, non profit use only".
You do get a problem where if they change the layout then you have to re-code but big companies tend to do this very infrequently. For me it was more about the desire to keep the itch that I wanted scratched up and running than anything else.
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We should get the Japanese to run our national rail system. Their services measure lateness of trains in seconds instead of minutes.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This may be a basic question, but is it even legal or enforcable for me to assert that my previous emails to you are confidential and undisclosable, despite the fact that you've read them already and never agreed to any terms or conditions while doing so?
Seriously, the fucking cheek of these bastards. That can't be right. NDAs and confidentiality agreements are, to my mind, an OPT IN process. You can't be forced to abide by terms you never agreed to, surely! Apart from a court gagging order (which sounds more fun that it is, I'm sure).
-- For those who can't reach the story, I'm talking about the CEO's insistence that the chap in question isn't allowed to publish excerpts from his previous email correspondance with the guy in charge of the timetable data. Despite the fact that the disclaimer says *specifically* that only the intended recipient can read or *disclose* the email contents, which again is another "WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA" move from these fuckbags.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Well, nearly: they charge companies for the right to implement the apps for them, who then sell them to the public at £5 a time.
Except when they revoke licenses without warning, and get investigated under competition law. See my other comment further down the page somewhere.
I was sending emails to people about this all last week - if all the people who use the API now get in touch with one another, they might be able to collectively demonstrate just how much NRE is hindering innovation. And then the regulator can step in. (Email me via my website if you're interested!)
I suspect some bean counter realized that as 3rd-party sites like these proliferate, traffic will be driven away from the "official" National Rail site. As a result, the railways will have fewer eyeballs to which to present packages, specials and other similar up-sells which are key to their revenue stream. I realize /. is dramatically anti-ad, but you need to realize the click-through on deals like these from Joe Average is likely fairly good.... So National Rail doesn't want to lose those eyeballs, even if it's to a site that's 100% non-commercial. The stupid part is nobody thought of this before creating the webservice.