iPod subway maps draw legal threats
New York and San Francisco transit officials have cracked down on a website that chopped up transit maps and offered them in a format that fits on an iPod.
I saw this coming. The maps are copyrighted. As BART said in a letter, there is a common belief that documents from public entities are not subject to copyright. Generally this is not true. Under federal law, works from the U.S. government are "works of the United States" and not subject to copyright. However, other governments are free to copyright their works, and so every official transit map I have ever seen is copyrighted. This is why non-official websites with transit maps, such as Stationmasters and nycsubway.org, drew up their own maps. (Of course these are copyrighted too! nycsubway says they don't allow reproduction of their map, so don't bother asking! However, they do offer a link to a public domain subway map by SPUI.)
But it is incredibly stupid of transit agencies to restrict use of their maps. Here is a guy who did all the work of porting the maps and arranging for a site to host them. The transit agencies get free publicity and distribution of their maps in a convenient format that may appeal to new riders. Some riders might forego paper maps, saving the agencies money. Why do they want to stop him from distributing the maps--so the transit agencies can get piddly licensing fees?
Besides, from a public policy standpoint, it seems foolhardy to me to restrict the redistribution of public documents, that were paid for with tax dollars and with fares from the public.
I think that Congress or state legislatures should pass laws declaring that no document from a public agency shall be subject to copyright.
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massysett | 9:17 AM |
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