Home opinion-and-analysis Beer Files Sydney RailCorp tells iPhone developer not to help commuters!

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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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Stan Beer

 

Stan Beer co-founded iTWire in 2005. With 25 years of experience working in Australian technology media, Beer has published articles in most of the IT publications that have mattered, including the AFR, The Australian, SMH, The Age, as well as a multitude of trade publications.

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