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The MTA is going after an Etsy artist over a New York subway map it didn’t make
- RayMan1 7y agoHe got a free commercial in major news outlets thanks to MTA
- takeda 7y agotrue, but at the same time the link on Etsy was removed...
- unethical_ban 7y agohttps://fiftythree.studio/products/new-york-city-subway-map-print-original-art-poster?_pos=2&_sid=d30d64bc2&_ss=r https://fiftythree.studio/products/new-york-city-subway-map-...
- supernova87a 7y agoSide question -- on the guy's map, what's the meaning of the segmented ends of certain lines? It's where the lines appear to have divisions between stations in the line segment, such as the Z line in Brooklyn, A line in Rockaway, the 5 or B up in Bronx? Is that designating express service? Seems very counter-intuitive to me to illustrate it that way.
- whlr 7y agoIt's rush-hour-only service. He's using the notation from the official map [1], but I think he forgot to put it in the key. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Official_New_York_City_Subway_Map_vc.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Official...
- supernova87a 7y agoYes, thanks! It now makes sense, but I think it's very unsatisfactory visually. The divided segments make it look like the service has some break between stops, or this is very puzzling. And the "O"s mixed with the dividing lines and the subway line letter are highly confusing. And by the way, for his legal case, if there was anything to point to the argument of derivative work, this would be it. It's clearly copying (because it's so confusing) the broken line segments style in the map you just linked.
- matthewowen 7y agoBroken line is pretty common for partial/variable service. For example, here it is on a philly trolley map: https://www.septa.org/maps/trolley/city.html https://www.septa.org/maps/trolley/city.html And you can also see the same sort of thing on this BART map: https://www.bart.gov/system-map https://www.bart.gov/system-map
- supernova87a 7y agoI agree, but I think there's something odd about the way he's put the segments in his map. Maybe the divisions need to be bigger breaks or something.
- hinkley 7y agoOh, gee, they look too similar? You mean like the New York, London, Tokyo and Paris subway maps look similar? Maybe Paris and London should sue the MTA for copying their maps.
- hinkley 7y agoJust so we’re clear, it’s tremendously useful to be able to visit any of these cities and understand the subway maps if you’ve already experienced any of the other three. Suing over a good UX decision is a dick move.
- sbussard 7y ago"we have an obligation to protect on behalf of the people of New York" This is complete BS and they know it. But just in case there's any doubt, why not ask the people of NY what they think?
- gowld 7y agoThis is the sort of thing de Blasio should love getting out in front of.
- acd 7y agoI nicer move would to say to the artist. We really like your work it’s better than the previous map. Let’s pay you for your work. Instead of paying the money for lawyers the could pay the artist.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoExactly. They should embrace stuff like this.
- iamleppert 7y agoA possible explanation is the lawyers share the same office as the graphics designers or cartographers (if you can call them that) who make the maps. I could see (and have seen) some people’s response to identical works, especially one produced by the public that could even be better, as negative. Put simply, they want to maintain control over what they see as “theirs”. This happens internally in companies all the time. I’m sure it was just a matter of this designer CC’ing legal when they came across it. They probably made some bullshit case about maintaining control, liability, prior art, etc. When I was at LinkedIn, it was common for 3rd party designers to redesign the UI of the site and post on their blog. This made a lot of designers who actually worked there angry. I noticed the better the design, the more upset they got. They largely ignored the ones that weren’t that good. They would push to have legal step in and thankfully we had management who could see reason and reel in cry-baby designers. Anyway, this may not be what actually happened but I think it’s a high possibility. People are incredibly petty.
- robbiemitchell 7y agoThe new map fixes the fatal flaw of the MTA's own: it separates each line even when they run together, typically through Manhattan. It's the #1 most confusing aspect of the existing map and I've watched countless tourists get on the wrong train because of it. KickMap (iOS) is another example of a map that improves in the same way. http://kickmap.com/ http://kickmap.com/
- bobbylarrybobby 7y agoEarlier subway maps didn't combine lines that ran together, and the result was that the lines themself took up an absurd portion of the map. By combining them, you can view a lot more street-level info, which is important for navigating once you leave the subway system. Not sure what's confusing about combining them; stations explicitly state which lines stop there, and also indicate whether they are local or express stops.
- robbiemitchell 7y agoHere's an example: https://dsh.re/5677b https://dsh.re/5677b To the unfamiliar, it's not obvious which lines go where. Yes, technically there are tiny numbers next to each station, but they're not as prominent as the bigger, colored bubbles, especially when you're peering at a map from a couple feet away. You only have to watch tourists stare cluelessly so many times, get on the wrong train, go the wrong direction, etc. to understand that something isn't clear. Compare to this view of the same section from KickMap: https://dsh.re/1a003 https://dsh.re/1a003 It's instantly clearer which train goes where.
- dwnvoted2hell 7y agoThis is clearly a problem of showmanship. Government entities desire to be the only authoritative source for things. This is how government often hurts its own citizenry. It doesn't matter if the case is "easy" to win. The citizen will lose simply by a matter of the power and energy the MTA can put into this to bankrupt them with lawyer fees. Governing entities hate for people to make them look incompetent.
- dmix 7y agoDMCA might be the easiest to abuse law in history. It’s an embarrassment. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen stories like this. I had a subreddit with 25k people that got shut down due to a single angry user barraging fake DMCA requests on every post. It got shut down for “repeat copyright infringement” even though he owned none of the content. We tried creating a new one and he did the same and it got shut down even faster since it was a small sub. Reddit admins didn’t give a shit despite our mods efforts. Reddit apparently isn’t in the business of deciding whether or not a claim is legitimate. Same with Etsy, which is the whole problem. It’s impossible to scale for these sites.
- ravenstine 7y agoThe DMCA was designed in an era where the web was more of an actual distributed web, where a "subreddit" was once known as an individual "forum" that had its own server run by the actual forum admin. In an age where web communication is centralized, the DMCA totally sucks.
- soulofmischief 7y agoThe DMCA has always totally sucked. It was anti-user, pro-corporation from the beginning.
- jedberg 7y agoIn reddit's defense, they don't have much choice. They get far too many requests to authenticate and verify them. And the law says that if they do not act quickly on each request, they would lose their protection as a platform. So their only choice is to remove each piece of content and then let you challenge the removal. The real problem is the law itself, which provides no consequences for false claims. If congress would just add a false claims consequence, it would solve a lot of issues with the DMCA.
- ikeboy 7y ago>(f)Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1)that material or activity is infringing, or (2)that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
- lightbyte 7y ago>“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.” >But there is a potentially critical flaw in that logic. The MTA created The Weekender in 2011, two years after Berman created his map, which he uploaded to Wikipedia in 2009. There needs to be consequences for such blatant fraud and abuse of the DMCA, ridiculous claims like this have gotten so common.
- ummonk 7y agoIn fairness, I think the claim (still meritless) would be that he adapted the original Vignelli map, not the version of it that the MTA started using in 2011.
- sitkack 7y agoThe MTA is a government org, how can it even own the copy right to ‘its’ map?
- JackFr 7y agoWhy would they own intellectual property they created any less than they own the trains and the land?
- SamBam 7y agoYou'd be surprised. Some cities even claim copyright over their own laws. https://abovethelaw.com/2017/10/can-you-copyright-the-law/ https://abovethelaw.com/2017/10/can-you-copyright-the-law/
- brenden2 7y agoI wish I could choose how my tax dollars are spent. I'd like to avoid contributing to idiotic campaigns like this. Perhaps some day government will modernize to the point where there's direct democracy and individuals can decide how to vote on policies and spending.
- hellisothers 7y agoLooking at the Prop system here in CA, that’s a double edged sword (with a knife for a hilt)
- trickstra 7y agoLooking at the choices voters regularly make in direct elections, I would be a little careful with that modernization.
- jumelles 7y agoYou choose by voting for people to represent you.
- zentiggr 7y agoDemocracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides? — Robert Heinlein EDIT: found the original text, rather than my somewhat botched memory of it.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI never understand why these agencies hold such tight control over their maps and schedules. I remember there was another case where (I think San Francisco but I am not sure) they blocked an app because they asserted copyright over their schedule. Instead they should embrace and encourage anybody who helps getting them a bigger audience. In general government data should be public domain.
- th0ma5 7y agoThen they might be liable for mistakes. Also, if they don't protect their trademark, trademark law says they could lose it.
- cblades 7y agoI can't imagine a scenario in which the authority could be help liable for mistakes made by a third party in scheduled times for public transport.
- syshum 7y agoSorry no, trademark law does not require companies tirelessly censor internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
- tssva 7y agoThey aren't claiming trademark violations. Copyright and trademark are two very different things with very different laws governing them.
- onion2k 7y agoIf the choice is between blocking a well-made, free app and not blocking it then it's clear that they'd benefit more from not blocking it. Everyone would win. But that's not the choice. It's really a choice between blocking a well-made, free app and hundreds of other apps that vary in quality, price, etc, or not blocking any of them, or trying to assess each app on an individual basis. Not blocking anything means their own app will be lost in a swarm of low-quality rip-offs. Assessing each app is hard, and opens the door to complaints (and maybe law suits) about why one app was allowed and another wasn't. It's far simpler, easier, and dare I say fairer to block everything.
- crazygringo 7y ago> “I'm an attorney by trade,” he said. “So this is something I know something about.” 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_map
- wefarrell 7y agoThey’re not a governmental agency and their governance is much closer to a private corporation.
- JackFr 7y agoWell not quite. 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.
- wefarrell 7y ago"For most purposes" Care to elaborate? That's a pretty vague argument.
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- whoisjuan 7y agoThe MTA probably has some in-house counsels with nothing to do, so they go after trivial stupid stuff to justify their salary. I don't see any other reason for being so petty for something so insignificant.
- tvanantwerp 7y agoWhen I was teaching myself 3D modeling for fun, I made a little blue mailbox like you'd normally see outside on American streets. Nothing fancy--it was low-poly and lacked any text or textures. It was just a blue box on four tiny legs with a rounded top. I uploaded it to SketchFab, because why not? One day I get an email that the US Postal Service had my mailbox taken down from SketchFab via DMCA complaint. Apparently they hold at least two trademarks on the color and shape of their mailboxes. While I think my crappy art fell under fair use, it wasn't worth it to try and fight that. What really makes me angry about the whole ordeal is that the USPS is a consistent money loser. So why are they wasting cash issuing DMCA notices to 3D modelers on SketchFab?
- cartoonworld 7y ago>What really makes me angry about the whole ordeal is that the USPS is a consistent money loser. Insofar that the the USPS is a subsidized service, I don't agree that it is a money loser. Considering that the mail is the way that nearly all bills have been collected, historically, I'd say it has far more than paid for its self.
- AWildC182 7y agoCan I just point out the insanity of 3D models being subject to trademark and copyright? You can take/paint/draw a picture of a mailbox and post it but if you make a 3D model all of the sudden the legal system loses it's goddamn mind. It's been a huge issue in the video game space where companies are suing for licencing whenever someone includes something in a game, including FOSS game efforts (Honda Jet removed from Flight Gear). Why can't we just leave art alone?
- zentiggr 7y agoConvince companies they'll make more money by encouraging unexpected product placement, instead of defending their current income streams by any draconian measure they can devise... /s
- cabaalis 7y agoIANAL, but you do have to protect your trademarks from being genericized, or they can be invalidated.
- jaltekruse 7y agoI am going to go against the grain here a bit. While I do think it is dumb that publicly funded IP isn't shared under a creative commons permissive license, I do think the maps do look very similar. I'm having a little trouble finding the link, but I read an interesting article sometime in the past few years (possibly after it was posted on HN) about the difficulty of designing good metro maps. Geographically accurate maps would be cluttered and confusing, so lots of thought has to go into how geography is manipulated to make an understandable and visually pleasing design. The work that goes I to this is copyrightable, and I do think the two maps share a lot of these elements. Yes the independent map was worked on for 300 hours, but adding up all of the changes over the years probably amounts to thousands of hours to generate the original map. Again I don't necessarily think this is a good use of government funds or time, but I don't believe the copyright claim is compeletely invalid.
- the_watcher 7y ago"Looking very similar" isn't sufficient for a claim of copyright infringement. It can be suggestive of it, and used as support for an element of it, but it's certainly not sufficient on its own.
- greggyb 7y ago> The work that goes I to this is copyrightable I have to pick a nit here. In terms of copyright, effort matters only in a very specific way. Generally, only artifacts matter. The map is a thing. The creator of the map holds copyright. Copyright is also very specific. It is literally the right to make copies. This becomes important when we talk about things like clean room design for reverse engineering. The wikipedia article gives a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design Independent invention is a valid defense in copyright claims. If you can show that two similar artifacts, e.g. a piece of bootloader code or a map, derive from independent work, then there is no violation of copyright, because no copy has been made. The effort matters only insofar as its independence. This stands in contrast to a patent which specifically protects an idea and its application.
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- blackearl 7y ago> The MTA only sent a takedown notice to Etsy, neglecting to contact Berman directly about the shop he runs where the map is also available. The map is still on sale there for $50. The MTA declined to comment on why it only issued a takedown notice for Etsy. Classic DMCA abuse. Don't fight the hard battles, just send the notices and hope the company has some boilerplate process.
- mnm1 7y agoThis is exactly the kind of abuse you can expect given how easy and consequence-free it is to file a DMCA takedown request. If there was a real, financial penalty for filing obviously false and incorrect requests, I doubt they would waste their money on this. Since there isn't, it's clear from looking at the maps that someone at the MTA is pissed that someone outside their organization did a job that is so incredibly better than their work that it makes their map look like an outdated piece of shit from the 1800's. But that's just a matter of personal taste. Taste matters though, especially when someone in power feels like their taste has been offended and decides to use the courts and our extremely generic and consequence-free laws to enforce their own views.
- lmilcin 7y agoI wonder, when somebody finally gets seriously pounded for blatantly exploiting DMCA.
- darklajid 7y agoSometimes Names and occupations are a weird (and amusing) mismatch. Lester Freundlich - the name literally meaning 'Friendly' in German - having to be the ~bad guy~ in this context, going after a private person selling some map online..
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- MeltySmelty 7y agoNYC is a shit hole, what do you expect?
- rolltiide 7y agoAside from the time traveling issues in the MTA complaint, I'm surprised the article doesn't mention how there would still be the derivative works defense, since after all its just a different map.
- JDiculous 7y agoAs an ex-New Yorker, the MTA has a horrible reputation in NYC (at least last time I lived there) due to its complete mismanagement of the subway. It's pathetic that they're devoting their resources to copyright trolling. Intellectual property laws in the U.S. are broken, plain and simple. I hope this case leads to reform of these broken laws.
- rdiddly 7y agoThe WTF question is not "Why does a giant agency care about this tiny issue" but rather "Why does a public agency think it's a private business?" (Sure sure, it's a corporation, but its owners are ultimately the taxpayers.)
- lerie 7y ago300 hours? maybe more time learning to code.