Stan Beer
Friday, 06 March 2009 16:13
Opinion and Analysis
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One has to really wonder how the people who run a public transport
system got their jobs when they start threatening entrepreneurial
technology innovators who try to help their commuters. In the case of
Sydney's RailCorp, the NSW Government should seriously start looking at
getting some new management talent into the organisation.
A
report in the Sydney Morning Herald by Asher Moses about how
RailCorp is threatening to sue third party developers who have built
applications to provide timetable information on mobile devices beggars
belief.
A particular developer has by all accounts developed a very popular and
cheap application that provides RailCorp timetables on iPhones and
other mobile devices.
One would think that in a sensible world this would make RailCorp happy.
Imagine that, a technology entrepreneur who off his own bat has
developed an application that provides a service to RailCorp customers
that costs RailCorp nothing!
All RailCorp has to do is keep on doing what it's supposed to do, issue timetables on its website and run its transport system.
However, instead of thanking this developer and offering to work more
closely with him by say offering to provide up to the minute data feeds
for his application, RailCorp accuses him of stealing its timetable
information.
Apparently, in this crazy mixed up world of digital rights management,
the free timetable information RailCorp's website can't be copied and
repackaged for sale in a useful format by an entrepreneurial developer.
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