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Why should we expect WMATA to donate its data to Google so Google can make money off of it while drawing users, and therefore revenue, away from Metro's Web site? Beyond that, WMATA -- along with every other transit agency in America -- doesn't exist to make money for Google.

No, it exists to serve the public. WMATA should donate its data to the public, for the use of the public. That includes Google (whether they serve the public or not) and whoever else wants to use the data for whatever purpose they like, without being required to sign a contract to get it in machine-readable format. We fund WMATA with quite a lot of taxpayer money, we give them sovereign immunity from most lawsuits so they can operate in whatever worst-case liability scenario their lawyers see, and their attempt to copyright and hoard scheduling data is reprehensible.

by Squalish on Jul 25, 2009 2:45 pm • link • report

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