
NY Transportation Authority Cites Schedules as Copyrighted Material - naish
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ny_transportation_authority_cites_schedules_as_cop.php
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jimmybot
It's stated in the article that tables of facts/data are not copyright-able.

But additionally, aren't publications of the government by law automatically
made a part of the public domain?

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randomwalker
_A work of the United States government, as defined by United States copyright
law, is "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. government as
part of that person's official duties." The term only applies to the work of
the federal government, not state or local governments._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government)

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danw
In the UK MyRailLite were paying for train live departure data. You could look
up if a train was delayed and which platform to go to.

When the app became successful National Rail pulled their feed and released
their own more expensive and clunkier app iPhone instead.

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DenisM
Which is a reason not to rely on such feeds without a fixed-price contract in
place. I passed on an app idea where the feed provider could potentially
release his own app and shut me off if/when my app becomes popular. The feed
provider refused to enter into a contract, and still has not released his own
app after 8 months - depriving himself and his users of the service. Pity.

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eli
WMATA in DC did a similar thing with Metro schedules, which is why you can't
plot public transit routes on Google Maps

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ilyak
In Russia you can't copyright schedules, I believe. They don't really apply:
they don't have any non-trivial amount of creative in them.

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rw
Maybe an interesting question: what if those schedules were hard to make? e.g.
they resulted from an expensive analysis of a traveling salesman problem.

