Timetable App Developer Gets Nastygram From Transit Sydney 378
mikesd81 writes "ZDNet Australia writes that NSW state corporation RailCorp has threatened a Sydney software developer with legal action if he fails to withdraw a train timetable application that is currently the second-most-popular application in its category in Apple's App Store. Alvin Singh created Transit Sydney after he began teaching himself how to program in Cocoa Mobile. Within days of its Feb 18 release, Singh received a cease and desist notice from Rail Corporation NSW, the government body that administers Sydney's CityRail network. The email states: 'I advise that copyright in all CityRail timetables is owned by RailCorp. ... Any use of these timetables in a manner which breaches copyright by a third party can only occur through the grant of a suitable licence by RailCorp.'"
"As a government body, RailCorp information is protected by Crown copyright, a contentious provision in copyright law that has recently been used to block attempts to access information on the location of Victoria's bushfires and even seemingly innocuous information as the locations of public toilets. 'RailCorp's primary concern here is that our customers receive accurate, up-to-date timetable information,' RailCorp spokesperson Paul Rea explained. 'This includes details of service interruptions, special event services, track work and other changes. ... At this stage, it is not possible for RailCorp to grant third-party developers access to our internal passenger information systems. As such, any third-party CityRail timetable application would contain inaccuracies and have the potential to mislead our customers.'"
No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify. This might be one area where we get things right.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Funny)
Advertised train times a fact? In what country is that? Usually, these are pure fiction.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. They even give you a receipt to turn into your employer or school explaining that they are responsible for your tardiness.
I seem to recall reading the average delay last year was only 26 seconds.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Never heard of anyone getting a refund.
They do give out the receipts though, which legally protect you from being tardy. Quite useful because when it rains, the train are guaranteed to be at least 5min late, sometimes up to 30min.
Other common reasons for trains being late are overcrowding and suicide.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
***Quite useful because when it rains, the train are guaranteed to be at least 5min late, sometimes up to 30min.***
No kidding. And you might mention that Tokyo gets around 150cm (60 inches) of rain a year. That's as compared to 40 inches in Seattle and 29 in London.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Funny)
> Other common reasons for trains being late are overcrowding and suicide.
Incorrect correlation direction.
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Oh yes, murder is very a popular social movement in Japan, at about 1.1 per 100,000 per year (the U.S. is around 9 per 100K; UK have 1 per 100K.)
Not likely, so we need to ask you some questions: is this your fantasy? Do you think about murdering people by pushing them in front of trains? When you were a child, was your relationship with your father difficult? How do you feel about your mother?
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Informative)
The US murder rate is about 5.9 per 100,000. It hasn't been at 9 per 100,000 in a number of years. The UK's is about 1.4 per 100,000. Japan's is about 0.5 per 100,000.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did you ever consider that Japan's is so low because so many of the uncounted murders are from people pushing people onto train tracks, making it look like a suicide?
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Interesting)
The US murder rate is about 5.9 per 100,000. It hasn't been at 9 per 100,000 in a number of years. The UK's is about 1.4 per 100,000.
The US counts a murder when there's a body and foul play is suspected. The UK counts a murder when there's a conviction.
Japan's is about 0.5 per 100,000.
When a father of five kills his kids, wife, and himself, Japan counts seven suicides, the US counts six murders and a suicide. (Try comparing the sum of the murder and suicide rates in both countries to see whether it's mathematically possible that the US has a lower rate if they were counted the same.)
The murder victimization rate of US citizens of UK descent is lower than that of UK citizens. Ditto for US citizens of African descent vs. Africans, US citizens of Japanese descent vs. Japanese citizens, and for several other regions of origin. (Allowing immigration of people from more violent cultures and letting them keep their cultures until they voluntarily adopt another has the downside of raising the average level of violence - though fortunately {for others} the violence occurs mainly among the groups in question rather than across group boundaries.)
When comparing death rates from murder and drawing conclusions about culture, don't forget to include deaths from war and genocide (including euphemisms like "sectarian violence" and "ethnic cleansing").
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You don't have to Bush-troll anymore. I know it must be a hard habit to break, but he's not in power anymore.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Funny)
Being late does not make you a retard.
Being late once only makes you a tard, you need to be late at least two times to be a REtard.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Funny)
The rain delay for trains in Spain occur mainly on the plains.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Funny)
El Whoosho.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You realize there is no way to fix that without re-engineering the city's traffic light system, right? The buses leave the stations every 6 minutes, mostly. The bunching up on the road is an emergent behavior of crappy city road network planning, and high traffic density.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I'm aware, Japanese trains have to be within ~2 minutes of the schedule or the passengers get a partial refund.
Sadly, the same is not true in Sydney, where a few years back Railcorp defined "on time" to be anything up to five minutes after the scheduled arrival/departure time.
Naturally, this dramatically improved their "on time" performance statistics, which they then used to justify a fare increase.
With that said, from a technical perspective, their poor performance is apparently due to incompetence, not malice (at least according to my wife, who used to work for an engineering firm with a lot of Railcorp projects).
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Interesting)
That's better than in Boston. An MBTA bus is not late until two hours past its scheduled arrival time. I found this out a couple years back. In January. I'm sure you can imagine my displeasure.
Factual train times (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say Japan. I've been there a few times and have always been amazed as I watch long distance trains pulling into the station exactly when the timetable says they should.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did you bring a watch ..... really?! Are you sure they didn't just change the clock at the other end to make it look like you got there on time? ;-) ;-)
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Re:Factual train times (Score:5, Interesting)
I have used it for successfully to get out at the right stop when I cannot read the station names. You get out when the train is scheduled to arrive at your destination. My experience is that (a) the train is actually stopped within the scheduled minute, and (b) it is at the right destination. Very comforting when the script it complete gibberish to you.
Re:Factual train times (Score:5, Interesting)
I have used it for successfully to get out at the right stop when I cannot read the station names. You get out when the train is scheduled to arrive at your destination. My experience is that (a) the train is actually stopped within the scheduled minute, and (b) it is at the right destination. Very comforting when the script it complete gibberish to you.
I tried this in the Swiss Alps once, thinking that "hey, it's Switzerland, these things should be on-time, right?" I forgot how close the Alps are to Italy. Luckily, the mountain trains don't run much faster than walking speed in that place - when the conductor discovered my error (about 5 minutes out of the station), he said "that's your train over there, want to change?" He went ahead of me to give me a hand jumping up, hopped off of one moving train sprinted about 20 yards and hopped onto another moving train. I wonder how often they do that?
Re:Factual train times (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how often they do that?
In the Italian part ? Probably all the time.
In the German part ? Hell, no. There are rules ...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how often they do that?
In the Italian part ? Probably all the time.
In the German part ? Hell, no. There are rules ...
By the way: I understand that Benito Mussolini didn't really make the trains run on time. Instead he made the papers SAY that he made the trains run on time.
Fascist efficiency at its best.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The curious thing is that RailCorp is claiming copyright on the factual train times, but then says the problem is that it must protect users against the possibility of errors in the data the app provides. It obviously has no copyright claim against erroneous data.
If I were the developer, I'd consider shifting all of the numbers the app provides by an hour or a day or a minute or something--maybe randomly +/- a few minutes. If the table is no longer factual and makes no claim to be, the copyright claim may
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I were the developer, I'd consider shifting all of the numbers the app provides by an hour or a day or a minute or something--maybe randomly +/- a few minutes. If the table is no longer factual and makes no claim to be, the copyright claim may be somewhat weakened--or not. Worth looking into at any rate.
This is what "fake books" do for sheet music, the tunes sound very very familiar, but they are just a little different.
In this particular instance (fake books), I think the spirit of the law has been raped and left in the gutter - there should still be protection against this, just like Lamborghini replicars, etc. On the other hand, copyright law needs every kick in the teeth it can get, things really should go public domain after 30 years or so.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you handle some jackass blocking the door, thereby preventing the train from leaving until security removes the blockage from the doorway?
It might not even be a person blocking the door, a sticker on the door sensors making optical sensors think there is a blockage, and/or a sticky rubber bumped on the mechanical sensors is enough to put a train 2 minutes behind schedule.
Now if you're traveling over a long distance and don't normally travel at 100% of your safe travel speed it's not that hard to make
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Crushing societal pressure to conform?
Human intervention?
Re:Factual train times (Score:5, Interesting)
Crushing societal pressure to conform?
Which might as well be called common sense. Maybe the average Japanese doesn't want to be a jackass.
IMHO that's a good thing.
Another example: A friend who had spent some time in Japan told me that in large crowds Japanese tend to speak less loudly than usual. Over here, eveybody speaks more loudly, so eventually everybody needs to yell.
Re:Factual train times (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Blockage detected...coils charging...removing obstruction in 5...4...3..."
This is Japan after all - they solve everything with lasers over there.
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Their attempts at using lasers to improve their extreme suicide rate has thus far been unsuccessful.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago (~2004-5) there were severe problems but after the government leaned heavily on the train companies management things are running fine with better than 87% of trains less than 5 minutes late.
Considering the Dutch railway system is the most densely used in the world this is remarkable.
Anyway, later this year on the busiest lines trains will start running at fixed 6-10 minutes intervals without a time table, the next one is on it's way!
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Exactly to millisecond? Microsecond? Maybe exactly to a Plank time?
For most purposes +-2 minutes interval is 'exact'.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately the relevant part of Australian intellectual property law is a bit of a relic from the 'olden days' and actually doesn't bother to distinguish between a creative work, and merely publishing a fact. So things like telephone directory data and train timetables CAN in fact be considered copyrighted here.
Yes it's utterly ridiculous. The Australian Law Reform Commission is looking at this as a matter of priority in its review of Australian IP law, and it's likely to get changed within the next 5-10 years. But for now, that's the state of affairs.
Disclaimer: IAAL.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Funny)
Disclaimer: IAAL.
Holy crap, and actual lawyer on slashdot!!!
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
Well I'm qualified as one ... but I don't currently practice law. I'm a university lecturer ... specifically, Information Technology Law and IP Law. So saying 'IAAL' is slightly naughty of me since I'm not actually representing clients et al. at this point, I just have the necessary qualifications.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
So, if you're not doing it for real, you are practicing :)
Re:Many stupid-sounding legal issues in Australia? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you've never seen any reports about Victorian police then.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Who cares what the police did in the nineteenth century?
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could complain to the Minister for Transport" [mailto], David Campbell. Alternatively find your electorate by doing an Electoral District search [nsw.gov.au], then look at this list [nsw.gov.au] to see who your state member is.
For all those in the U.S. - NSW is one state in a big landmass. Not all State governments do this sort of stupidity. NSW is in terminal decline at the moment, it's only a few years till us poor New South Welshmen get to kick them out of government. Unfortunately, my member of parliament is Joe Tripodi [google.com.au]. Oops, did
Re:Many stupid-sounding legal issues in Australia? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of this is because we have a small population and a LARGE body of old law inherited from English common law. In America, a far greater proportion of what was originally common law has been codified into statutes.
A smaller, less litigious population also means that fewer opportunities arise for courts to apply a modern eye to some of these laws. So I guess the 'refresh rate' of our laws is slower than in larger countries. The right case to challenge a stupid law needs to come before the courts before things will get changed, but that 'right case' might involve some pretty uncommon circumstances.
Also many of these 'stupid-sounding legal issues' as they are reported on Slashdot are sensationalised, or the summary misses a crucial point (or half the story!). This applies to any legal stories on Slashdot, not just ones originating from .AU.
Australian law by and large is well thought-out ... just sometimes a bit slow to get updated to deal with issues surrounding new technologies. Our IP law in particular is in need of an overhaul (although incidentally, it was made a lot worse by the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement signed a few years ago, which required us to adopt some DMCA-style provisions).
The Australian governmental system has its strong points - it's a lot less susceptible to vote-buying and big business influence than the US system. Partly that's because we don't directly elect a head of state resident or even the Prime Minister (which understandably in most Americans' opinion is a bad thing). So we don't have the need to spend huge amounts of money promoting candidates (look at the money spent by Obama/McCain on their campaigns last year ... I'd be surprised if our major parties spent 1% of that when we have elections).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Not a theologian, and not a mod on Wikipedia.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone doing DIY PVRs are using shepherd...
uhm maybe not ordinary copyright (Score:2)
As pointed out else where there is database copyright, where the compilation of facts can be copyrighted. E.g. street indexes, phone directories and email addresses published on websites.
IANAL
Re: (Score:2)
We have the same problem in Australia with Channel 9 (or channel US as I call them) copyrighting its tv listings.
These two companies are a joke. Scum, the lot of em. It is what happens when you let lawyers make decisions for you.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the most ridiculous thing in the world. Facts could be seen to be more deserving of copyright protection because, unlike creative works, they have to be collected and, depending on the context, kept up-to-date. This takes time and money. I'd be pretty pissed off if I collected large amounts of information, putting substantial resources into making sure it was accurate and up-to-date, with the intention of recovering that investment through advertising (for example) only to have someone reproduce it sans-advertising for free.
Obviously there has to be a distinction between the fact and the collected data, and it probably shouldn't apply to data that already exists, but a knee-jerk reaction against copyright might not be helpful.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of information/data. Simply collecting existing information doesn't fall under the traditional purposes of copyright even if that collecting is otherwise valuable to society.
Database rights (Score:2)
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify. This might be one area where we get things right.
In Australia (and I think elsewhere) there is such a thing as a "database right". A rough example would be the phone book. It is a collection of facts: people's names and their phone numbers. However, there is a significant investment in collecting these facts, and so the particular *set of facts* (ie, the database) has an associated database right. So, unless the authors of the app independently collected their own data on when trains pass particular stations (eg, by sitting in every station with a wat
Re:Database rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Database rights (Score:5, Insightful)
That, sir, is a very clever idea. If I lived down under, I'd help you write it.
Then again, I've already lived there in the past, and you couldn't force me at gunpoint to make that mistake again.
Re:Database rights (Score:4, Informative)
more or less clever than detecting traffic speeds (and thus jams) by tracking cellphone signals from the stations - as is already used / in trials?
Knowing that -a- train passed by point X at time Y is great... knowing -which- train that is, however, is a lot more important.
In addition, that only gives you the realtime information... if I want to travel tomorrow, how's the situation -right now- going to help me? I'd still want to be able to look at the scheduled time table - no matter how far off that may be from tomorrow's actual situation - so I can at least plan ahead. I can then use the realtime information -tomorrow- to see if the train's actually going to be on time or whether I can stay a bit longer and say my goodbyes to my daughter 5, 10 minutes later.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You sir are a genius. I was going to suggest some kind of random number generator based on some non-copyrighted number sequence (may be, something like the Fibonacci sequence), but your idea is much better -- it's even CSI worthy.
That being said, I think a wiki, or better yet just a couple of handwritten notes of actual times from his user base would actually be enough, at least for now. In the meantime, I'd just post a copy of the letter on the web app, plus I'd post the contact information of all the lawy
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify. This might be one area where we get things right.
In Australia (and I think elsewhere) there is such a thing as a "database right". A rough example would be the phone book. It is a collection of facts: people's names and their phone numbers. However, there is a significant investment in collecting these facts, and so the particular *set of facts* (ie, the database) has an associated database right. So, unless the authors of the app independently collected their own data on when trains pass particular stations (eg, by sitting in every station with a watch -- unlikely), they presumably were using RailCorps' "database" (timetable).
This is currently been tested in the high court, at least as far as TV Electronic Program Guides. See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/18/2037216&from=rss [slashdot.org] for the story.
Re:No Case Under US Law (Score:5, Informative)
It also depends on how the information is retrieved.
For example, some 15 years ago in The Netherlands a company wanted to release a phone book to compete with the monopoly fixed line provider's phone book. This to sell advertisements and so of course. Now to get the telephone numbers, they took the phone book to China, and hired a bunch of Chinese for cheap to manually copy the numbers from paper into a computer, and then printed it. The monopolist of course didn't believe that, and a law suit followed.
The point was: reading and typing the numbers is legal, as the information could not be copyrighted. However directly copying the phone book (e.g. by using a photocopier) would be illegal.
This of course is not Australian law, but I just want to point out that even though the information (telephone numbers, sports results, TV schedules, transport time tables) may not be copyrighted, a certain representation of it may suddenly be copyrighted.
The train company may argue that it is illegal to draw the information from their web site (e.g. screen scraping), even though it is not legal for someone to walk down to the station, look at the published tables, type the information into their PDA, and publish is.
As another poster in this thread points out there is also an issue with TV listings: these are normally drawn directly from a TV channel's Internet site, and that may cause copyright problems. However if someone would gather the information from public sources (printed listings, the newspaper, whatever) then it may be a different matter.
Of course I think it is silly to have these tables copyrighted, and even silly from the train company to prevent this information to be known by as many people as possible (the more people know about when a train runs, the more are likely to actually take it), without knowing the details of how this information is retrieved and how the Australian copyright laws deal with this kind of information we can not say whether they are legally right or not. And whether they are morally right or not, that is a totally different discussion.
Crown copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that they had a report advocating a relaxation of certain provisions in the Crown copyright act "to allow for more easy access to public interest information, but those changes have yet to be implemented".
So for the time being Railcorp can sue the pants of anyone who publishes any part of their railway timetables. And they will since they're p
That's not good (Score:4, Insightful)
block [...] seemingly innocuous information as the locations of public toilets.
something you definitely need when you have transit problems.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I strongly agree, remembering that I once upon a time stayed a whole day on a bridge in Nicosia because there was a comparatively clean public toilet underneath
CC.
tip of the iceberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments all over the world are asserting copyrights on information created with public funding, or even public domain information.
Particularly annoying is when museums and similar institutions assert copyright over images of works that should have fallen into the public domain by now, in direct contradiction of their mission of disseminating those works to the public.
Potentially, governments can also use copyright claims in order to restrict distribution of information that the government finds politically undesirable: statistics, investigative reporting, etc.
Generally, everything a government creates with tax payer money should be public domain.
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I couldn't agree more, and if it's software, it should be open source.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think 5 years is far too short for "anything military", although in general if the government is relying on copyright law to restrict the dissemination of information, then it probably isn't sensitive enough to keep out of the public domain, even within five years.
I wonder if we'll ever know the whole truth about the warrantless domestic wiretap program? I'm not optimistic.
they're not the only ones who lay the hate on (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, a Palm app was "sponsored" by some Palm user group, and the iPod download mysteriously disappeared from their website.
Now, the MBTA is +$6BN in debt and can't afford to do anything like this- or implement the real-time tracking system all the busses are equipped with. It gets worse- Charliecards can't have money or passes loaded on them via the web, nor can you check their balance via the web. The commuter rail system was supposed to switch over a while ago. Student passes? Not able to load them onto Charliecards. They're such fucking morons that when they came up with bike cages that were "secured via charliecard", they neglected to mention that you can't have an existing charliecard granted cage access- not only that, but the bike charliecard can't have anything loaded on it!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But at least you can get off the train, right? Right?
actually, no (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a case recently where a well-dressed guy with a laptop case passed out on the Red Line. The passengers hit the emergency button, the mid-train conductor came out, took one look at him, said "he's fine, just drunk."
The train went another half a dozen stops, including past Mass General Hospital (literally. The stop is maybe 500 feet from the emergency room), and Park Street, where Boston EMS had been told to meet the train. The train didn't stop at Park- it went all the way to South Station, miles from any hospital.
To put this in context- they had just announced they had put defibrilators in all of the commuter line trains after a guy died because (drumroll please) the conductors refused to stop the train to meet an ambulance crew- they went all the way from Wellesley to South Station, by which time the guy was a vegetable. They got their asses sued, and lost- there should have been manslaughter charges.
Idling corporations and working people (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems one of the cases when an Idling corporation wans to get money out of work done by someone else.
The corporation did not have a product that people wanted, a person makes such product and now the corp wants the idea and the money I presume.
I have a feeling that laws should contain a part where the "intent" of the law is stated. In the Copyright law the intent is to give a limited monopoly on the "product" to allow people to produce new books that otherwise would not be viable.
A train timetable is no such thing, yes it is printed, but it is a byproduct of the service, not a product in itself !
IANAL The point is: If laws had a part where it was written what was the general aim of the law than maybe it would be simpler to decide on borderline cases.
Seems to me, then.... (Score:2)
That would put anyone who took a picture of any display in any Sidney train depot that showed any time schedule - on the wrong side of the law as well...pffttt....
add 1 second to the times (Score:2, Interesting)
iTunes link? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously. Links to PDFs are bad enough. I really didn't want iTunes to launch itself.
Facts truly not copywritable? (Score:2)
Wikipedia may not be 100% factual, but data rarely is 100% factual. Anyway, Wikipedia is represented as being a compendium of facts. Does this mean that Wikipedia is not actually copyrighted, and can be used without attribution?
No. (Score:5, Funny)
Posting Yesterday's Train Schedule (Score:4, Interesting)
Couldn't the developer create an application of what yesterday's, or the previous week's, train schedule was? Then, the application would be reporting past events, much like any news agency is allowed to do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But I don't want to catch the train yesteday, I want to catch todays train.
In fact, public transport in Sydney is a joke. Most buses for me stop right at the edge of town, a mile from the center. Each trip costs a ticket, you don't get 2 hours of transport included. And the bus which takes me into town, the only one that actually goes to the center of town, doesn't stop for me on the way back. It keeps going for 20 minutes, to the middle of nowhere, as I discovered at 2am one day. There are also special bus
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Any more than 5 minutes or so late and the timetable becomes useless. People would arrive for the published time of 5 minutes later and miss their train.
Public Servants Snouts in the Copyright Trough (Score:5, Insightful)
* Australian Maps are copyrighted by the federal government's mapping agency AUSLIG.
* Real Estate Data is copyrighted by e.g. Department of Natural Resources. They in turn make exclusive deals to data companies who sling wads of cash their way in exchange for special access. If you a citizen want access you're forced to go through these resellers. The famously greedy Macquarie Bank owns one of these.
* Tide tables are copyright.
* Even Aeronatical data is copyright. The US Department of Defense used to distribute a worldwide database of Aeronautical data, but they had to stop because "Air Services" (a branch of the Australian Government) hated the idea of the public getting for free what they were trying to sell. Instead of doing a worldwide edition without the Australian data, the US Department of Defense simply ended public access.
* Anything and everything. From simple forms to photos taken by government (e.g. a nice photo of that billion dollar aircraft paid for by your taxes) are copyrighted by the government.
* Even *THE WEATHER* is copyright. Print the weather in your local paper or stick it on the website, and you'll get an earful from the Weather Bureau who insists you "purchase a product license".
In all cases the people who run these departments like to think of themselves a private businessmen, but they're not: their capital is provided by the taxpayer and they've got all the protection of being part of the government. They're a monopoly. They can charge what they want. Not like you can go to the government down the road instead. Pigs at the trough.
This is different from the US where under the constitution the US Government does not copyright what it produces, reasoning your taxes paid to collect the data, so why should you be forced to pay again.
In the Sydney case here is the worst part: Their railway system is known as being beyond terrible. Trains don't show up, break down, disappear, bypass stations, ticketing doesn't work, there's bugger all security. There's a real culture of sloth, laziness and corruption there. And here's a guy selling something to help commuters (and offered to give it to the railways department for free) and they threaten him instead.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How the hell do you copyright tide tables? All I need to do is turn up one day, wait till high tide, note the time and date. After that it is a simple matter to calculated the tide times in advance. Heck you can by clocks for it
Clue: if you get on a boat and see the captain consulting one of those clocks, get off again very rapidly.
Your method might give you a rough guide as to whether you'll be surfing or gathering bait. However, even assuming you remember to factor in all that ephemeris data about the relative positions of the sun and moon (which are kinda important, especially if you want to know how deep the water will be) you'll find that the exact times and heights of tides as the water flows around a nice crinkly coastlin
Re:Sounds like the UK.. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, the amtrak is so limited in the number of places it goes that few americans have actually used it to go somewhere. The only time I ever used it on a regular basis was when I lived in California and would head down to San Francisco for the weekend -- the traffic was so bad and the parking in SF so horrendous that it was much easier to do that and take the BART or the MUNI everywhere.
I live in Atlanta now and the main "train station" for this metropolis of 5.6 million people is about the size of just one of the minor stops for a city in europe, there's not even a comparison to one of the hub stations like grand central or union station. It still blows my mind whenever I see it.
Recheck that headline. (Score:5, Informative)
The headline says he got a nastygram from "Transit Sydney".
According to the summary that is, you know, right below it, "Transit Sydney" is the application, not the company. The company is "RailCorp".
Getting a nastygram from an application you developed does occasionally occur (fuck those runtime exceptions), but not in the sense this article implies.
The Scientology Defense (Score:2)
So the information that he is disseminating is both classified and wrong. Sounds like the classic Scientology defense to me. I'm no lawyer, but I have
Please write to the NSW transport minister... (Score:2)
So, change the data. (Score:2)
Change the data so that everything is listed as 3 seconds early. It's no longer the same time table.
The NSW Premier has intervened (Score:4, Informative)
His Twitter page [twitter.com] says "I've asked Minister Campbell to speak to RailCorp. They will meet with the app developers to negotiate how to use the info accurately"
My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Them:
Me:
Them:
Me:
Them:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The official position is that they don't want to confuse customers when timetables are out of date.
Sorry - lets put that right for you:
The official position is that they don't want third parties to confuse customers - that's their job!
Seriously, and lets play devil's advocate here, they do actually have a point. If third parties publish outdated information then its still their employees who get to deal with the irate customers. I've got a little picture of Very (self)Important Businessman waving his Blackberry and spitting foam at the poor underpaind customer service bod - he's not going to be appeased by the little "valid until 1st January 2006" disclaimer on the "About" screen.
A more constructive c
Legal copyright violation! (Score:4, Funny)
Wait a second... "Any use of these timetables in a manner which breaches copyright by a third party can only occur through the grant of a suitable licence by RailCorp."
What that's saying is that you're only violating their copyright if you get a license to do so.
Whoever wrote that letter needs to re-take Remedial Passive Voice.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Facts can't be copyrighted. (Score:5, Informative)
You may wish to compare copyright schemes - In particular, the EU & AU recognise the so-called "sweat of the brow" right extant in databases, which a timetable would qualify under. Times of football matches also seem to qualify.
The controlling law in Australia is Desktop Marketing Systems Pty Ltd [âoeDtMSâ] v Telstra Corporation Limited [2002] FCAFC 112. At paras 253 & 254:
253 It was not their alphabetical arrangement or their designation as headings that attracted copyright protection to the compilation of headings constituting the Headings Books. Rather, it was the labour of building up the collection (of headings). Desktop appropriated the benefit of all or most of that labour.
254 Accordingly, by parity of reasoning with my reasons for concluding above that Desktop reproduced a substantial part of the White Pages Directories and a substantial part of the Yellow Pages Directories, it also reproduced a substantial part of the Headings Books, and so infringed Telstra's copyright in those Books.
So, under Australian law, you can copyright a compilation of facts.
Cheers,
Michael
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL
Clearly. A lawyer would have considered the fact that this is not in the US & US law doesn't apply.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, as you should have nearly as many stories about Mexico City as Australia.
Re:Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
In australia it was:
-proposed more than a year ago
-went through trials
-is having large amounts of public scrutiny
-has not been passed as law yet
and
-will not pass due to public outcry and a shifting sentiment in the senate.
Compare this to the US, where you'd only find out 18 months after it was implemented, and anyone asking about it would have been jailed.