Transit officials in New York and San Francisco have launched a copyright crackdown on a website offering free downloadable subway maps designed to be viewed on the iPod. IPodSubwayMaps.com is the home of iPod-sized maps of nearly two dozen different transit systems around the world, from the Paris Metro to the London Underground....More than 9,000 people downloaded the map, which was viewable on either an iPod or an iPod nano, before Bright received a Sept. 14 letter from Lester Freundlich, a senior associate counsel at New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority, saying that Bright had infringed the MTA's copyright and that he needed a license to post the map and to authorize others to download it....Last week Bright received a similar cease-and-desist letter from officials with Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, demanding that Bright remove a map of the San Francisco rail system....The New York Times reported in June that the MTA has begun registering its colorful route symbols as trademarks and has sent more than 30 cease-and-desist letters to businesses that had been using the route symbols to sell such items as bagels, perfume, T-shirts and tote bags....BART's letter to Bright read in part, "There is a widespread belief that materials published by public agencies such as BART are in the public domain. This belief is incorrect."
This is an outrageous abuse of governmental power, and it's difficult to believe it's even legal. Federal publications are, by law, not copyrighted -- for the good reason that taxpayers have already paid for the writing. Instead of wasting the public's resources on paying lawyers to go after people who are only helping promote the transit services, the New York and Bay Area governments should grow up and serve the people.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/29/2005 09:41:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
