But instead they're trying to suppress a superior design using faulty copyright arguments.
- Given two stations, is there a line between them, and what is it? Edge to Berman's, as it distinguishes service on the same corridor.
- Given a station on a line, what are the next few stops? Berman's wins, since the MTA map requires reading the lines that stop at each station.
- Weekday service. A push, shown by both maps.
- Weeknight service. Berman's wins, as the MTA map doesn't show it.
- Weekend service. Berman's wins, as the MTA map doesn't show it.
New Yorkers have gotten used to getting the information we need from the MTA map, but let's not confuse familiarity with functionality.
New York City's map shows a variety of out-of-system features which the designer's map doesn't bother with: railroads, avenues, major cross streets, major bus corridors (the original identifies airport link stops but not routes), local commuter rail corridors (LIRR, Metro North), regional rail corridors (Amtrak), ferries, road bridges, tunnels, the Roosevelt Island Aerial Tram, and many more parks.
The MTA map this more effectively answers more-general questions about New York. It can tell you to walk through the park between the Natural History Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This does come at the cost of interfering with several of the more-specific questions you identified.
And don't try to use the MTA map as a guide to New York City, it is woefully geographically inaccurate. But it still looks like it might be right, so it is in fact quite misleading.
The responsibility of a transit system map is to tell you about the transit system. It should do that above all else.
Do you actually live and work in New York? I'll assume not, and your attitude proceeds from ignorance of the situation.
Suppose you work at 1 Pierrepont Plaza (former HQ of Hillary Clinton's campaign, bit of trivia there) and you want to go to Nakamura Ramen on the Lower East Side. You have a subway station right outside the door with the 2345R train, but you'd be a fool to take any of those instead of walking the extra five minutes to Jay St Metrotech for the F.
You are at Broadway - Lafayette St, and you wish to head to the Flatiron Building. The nearest subway to that is the R train. You can take the 6 and transfer at Union Square... but really, you should just walk from the 6 train at 28 St.
You are staying in Fort Greene. The nearest stop is Fulton St (G). The next nearest stop is Lafayette (C). Even if you are headed to Columbus Circle (ABCD1), you might find yourself better served by by walking to DeKalb to catch the B or the Q, which are acceptably close, have more frequent service, and bypass lower Manhattan. (If you are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you will instead walk to Nevins.)
You work at Union Square and live in Williamsburg. A signal problem -- residual damage from Hurricane Sandy when the tunnel was flooded -- prevents the L train from operating. What are your options for getting home today?
Your proposed universal norm actually makes a lot of sense ... for hybrid commuter rail / metro systems, such as the DC Metro, or BART, where questions like these are only minor and occasional. It is far more ambiguous for NYC.
Why do the situations you've proposed have any benefit from the MTA's map? Trying to determine which stations are near your origin or destination based on a system map is a fool's errand, particularly for as large a network as ours. If you're estimating walking times based on distance on the MTA's map, you're going to be very unpleasantly surprised.
The part of those questions that a system map can be useful for is which lines are continuous, which as I mentioned above, is best done when you can see it clearly rather than needing to read it.
I haven't heard this before. I presumed the author simply stopped updating the app. Can you elaborate?
On the other hand, citymapper, google maps, etc. make showing the "outside world" on a subway map less important than in the past, so perhaps it's time to reevaluate.
I think the current map really shines in lower manhattan, where the stops closest to the staring/ending location aren't always the best ones to get on.
Every few years one of his ridiculous filings or C&D letters seem to pop up on a blog or in the news.
[1] https://trademarks.justia.com/786/96/if-you-see-something-sa...
Edit: Wikipedia says the CTA started using it in response to the 9/11 attacks, but the reference goes to a generic security page (probably changed since it was added). Did find a dated reference from 2004 though, over a year before that trademark was filed: https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/cta-metra-beef-up-securi...
But when faced with circumstances such as this - where one is inclined to say "why don't they spend that money on X instead?" - I find it useful to reflect on how organisations, and especially government organisations, work. Feel free to ignore this if you already understand and are just "venting" (quite rightfully I'd add), but what follows would be my "explain like I'm five" for why this sort of thing not only happens, but is almost guaranteed to happen.
See, the thing is, they aren't "spending money on this" in the sense that you or I would, say, spend money on lunch - ie. we have a pot of money, and we choose to take $10 out and buy lunch with it, leaving $10 less to spend on everything else.
The reality is that they have multiple pots of money, and each pot of money is only allowed to be spent on some category of expenditure. It'd be like if we had a bank account each for food, rent, transportation, clothing, utilities, etc, and you were only allowed to spend from each separate account accordingly. Now, when you got paid you put a proportion of your salary into each account - in proportions that you get to set annually. You can't move money between accounts - at best at the end of the year you can take everything that's left over and re-allocate it as a lump sum according to the rules.
Now let's stretch the analogy further - instead of you managing everything yourself, imagine if you were merely one person managing one account, and other people (say, the rest of your family) individually managed each account. Imagine the annual negotiation for doing the apportionment of the monthly income.
Now imagine that you get a personal "allowance" for managing that account, and the size of the allowance is related to the proportion of the total budget that the account encompasses - only fair, given that more money equals more responsibility, right? How do you think that would change the tone of the annual budgeting process?
What we have here in the above tortured analogy is probably a reasonable best case example of budget and monetary management in a big organisation. You can easily make it worse - say, money left over at the end of the year? Your "automatic" starting point for budgetary negotiation next year drops by that amount, for example.
Anyway, back to the point. They aren't "spending the money" as such. It's not like someone had the budget of the entire MTA sitting there and asked themselves "What should I do with this money - should I pay a lawyer to send a copyright letter to this artist, or should I pay someone to clean up some graffiti?"
What they have is a legal department staffed with X people, many of whom are mandatory to have available on staff for when something comes up. But they also have to do something with their days. They are paid regardless of what they do - be it write threatening letters, go to court, negotiate contracts, or browse hacker news. But their boss will definitely notice if they aren't doing something. And the boss' boss will notice too, eventually.
So maybe this kind of nonsense is a warning signal that the legal department is over-staffed and some over-zealous member got bored and decided that this was a better use of their time than writing long-winded HN posts. And maybe this will get the attention of the higher-ups, who might ask the right questions, such as "Are we over-staffed in Legal?" And maybe the legal department budget gets cut by one FTE and that allocation can be spread elsewhere. So maybe the year after next when the maintenance division asks for another graffiti crew, they'll get it.
>“Yes, there are minor differences between your map and the MTA map,” Freundlich wrote in his email. “But given your access to the MTA map on the MTA website, and the substantial similarities of your map to the MTA map, the only rational conclusion is that your map is based on the MTA Vignelli map.”
MTA acknowledges the artist map is based on the MTA map and acknowledges differences no matter how minor.
If the artist gleaned facts from the official MTA map, and re-represented them on his own map, that does not make his a derivative work, even if the facts came solely from the map. The facts also could have come from riding every line and noting the station names and locations.
It's like copying a phone book. You can take numbers from AT&T's customer directory and put them in your own phone book, because that's all facts. There's no creative representation there. If the phone book represented the numbers in hand-drawn calligraphy, that visual representation would be protected, but not the factual content; you could still copy the names and numbers and re-render them in your own typeface.
Fair use doesn't even come into it. Naked facts are non-copyrightable. They have no protections whatsoever. Facts are public domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_T...
In this case I think the MTA is still wrong though, just not for this reason.
The visualization rules for "transit map" are more open to interpretation than for "pie chart", but if you look at the maps for London, Paris, Shanghai, Washington DC, Chicago, etc., they are almost self-evident:
1. Represent major stations as white circles with black outlines.
2. Represent service lines with easily distinguishable colors.
3. Constrain lines to angles divisible by 45 degrees (Paris divisible by 30 degrees).
4. Represent non-standard service with a dashed, dotted, or broken line.
5. Stations that are connected by pedestrian access are connected on the map. Minor stations, without service interchanges, may be represented by a smaller white dot or a tick mark.
Apply the rules to the facts, and the map appears. Some human tweaking may be necessary for clarity, and that is the only opportunity for copyrightable creativity to creep in.
MTA would need to assert a particular map feature that cannot be derived from applying transit map rules to the MTA transit facts. They did not.
A map isn't "naked facts", maps can certainly be copyright protected.
"Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work."
EDIT:
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html [2] https://foundrylawgroup.com/copyright-copywrong-what-are-der...
To clarify my sibling response here, I'm acknowledging that statement was wrong. However, to say that _derivative_ works are "not at all" protected by Fair Use isn't entirely accurate either, as they absolutely can be depending on the the judgement and application of the four-point doctrine of Fair Use. The parent comment here cites part of the copyright law, but Fair Use, which I cited, is a core component of the same copyright law that limits the application of the section they cited.
> Lester Freundlich, an attorney for the MTA, told Berman in an email Wednesday that his subway map was “clearly a derivative work of MTA’s current version of the Vignelli subway map.”
The MTA's attorney literally calls his map a "derivative work" which is something that's protected by Fair Use. When I read that in the article, I immediately thought that the artist's response should have been, "Thanks for clarifying that it's clearly a derivative work; so you'll drop the claim now?"
EDIT: For anyone reading this without additional context, I should clarify, derivative works are protected as long as they're transformative, which this seems pretty clearly enough so to count. So, it's less a point that being a derivative work itself means it's protected, than the point that being a derivative work doesn't mean it's not protected like the MTA's attorney seemed to imply.
That said, I wouldn't even call what I was looking at derivative. I can barely match the transit lines up for most of it, and the styling is completely different. It goes beyond transformative to just being a unique artistic rendering of the same base system. That's the phone book scenario the article raises to a T.
I was definitely being imprecise with my wording though, as I was thinking about a _transformative_ work when I read their attorney say "derivative" work, where a transformative work is a type of derivative work that is protected by [subjective] Fair Use.
I also agree with you though that I wouldn't even necessarily consider this a transformative work of the other map, as that assumes he started with the other map. But just starting with the same facts, which aren't copyrightable, and following standard cartographic conventions while exercising the author's own artistic expression into the final rendition would just be a separate work entirely.
Ex: I write and produce a new SW film, and attempt to sell it without a license from Disney. I'm going to get sued into oblivion, because their copyright still applies, in terms of setting up the setting and characters.
Fair use can apply with derivative works (ex: I make a parody version of Star Wars, such as "Troops"), in which case you may succeed in being able to do stuff with your new SW parody, but you're likely to have to pay a bunch of lawyers a lot of money first if they don't like it. But being derivative doesn't guarantee it's Fair Use.
Laws have chilling effects though, so the fact that one defendant who happens to be well-resourced and legally savvy is able to fight this battle does not mean that everything is OK.
All IP is not the same.
Actually, the MTA is a Public Interest Corporation. There is a difference.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_...
Officially licensed MTA merchandise bearing iconic NYC transportation graphics for tourists and transplants.
They are a public benefit corporation, and their governance is through a 21-member board. Board members are nominated by the Governor, with four recommended by New York City's mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties (the members representing the latter four cast one collective vote). There are also non voting members representing unions and commuter groups.
For most purposes, they are a government agency, except for, and most especially, borrowing money. They have no taxing authority, and debt obligations of the corporation are NOT debt obligations of the state, and thus do not count against statutory limits on state borrowing, nor do they affect the bond rating of the states general obligation borrowing.
Care to elaborate? That's a pretty vague argument.
Other purpose: Their debt is not an obligation of NYS.
My guess is it's one person in a legal department operating somewhat independently trying to make a big splash with some higher-ups. That's the only way it would make sense to me.
I hav a LOT of problems with the MTA, but this isn't one of them.
I'll bite. Because it clearly does not benefit the taxpayers that fund the agency.
The taxpayers paid the MTA to make a map. Assume someone creates a derivative work that makes more sense (mind you, this is clearly not what happened -- if it is not obvious to you, you have not really read the article).
There is absolutely no benefit to the taxpayers to have the "derivative" map removed. The availability of the "derivative" map does not affect the availability of the official map, which is given away for free (not for profit).
In other words, if I pay you to develop software, and someone else writes a better manual for it, you'd be an idiot to take that down, and I will not be happy.
Merely looking for clarification, does playing Lawyer's advocate really work if you've already acknowledged the claim has no merit?
I'm saying it's reasonable to argue as if the claim were valid to make my other point, that they should be a responsible steward of their IP.
"That article also claimed the MTA received $500,000 a year in licensing revenue, a whopping .003 percent of the agency’s 2013 revenue."
Perhaps this isn't from the map, but either way, the logic of my suggestion applies equally to protecting the asset for future monetization as much as current monetization.
Loss of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress protection?
The artist would clearly win his case in court, and sounds like he has the resources to do it, so I'm not worried. And after all, the "geometric" style subway map has prior art as the London Tube map starting in 1931 [1].
But I can't imagine what is going on at the MTA that they felt compelled to try to take this down in the first place. What on earth do they think they're trying to accomplish with it? Is there some kind of legal liability they think they're protecting themselves against? They're a governmental agency for crying out loud.
It truly boggles the mind.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_map