iPod subway maps under fire

There are files for the NYC Subay Map here: http://www.thenycsubwaymap.com/NYCSubwayMap.zip Grab them ASAP and share them with others (host them, file share, bit torrent, etc). Good luck.

some guy is upset, because this guy made something good all by himself that this big public company should have already been doing.

The real problem is that, at least here in the northeast with the MTA, they are not actually a public agency in the same legal sense that the people who fix potholes in the road are. The MTA here operates as a seperate legal entity that is designed to be not-for-profit (though this does not preclude them from making large amounts of money -- they can bank it and save for a rainy day). Many other orgs operate in this way. Amtrack, The Port Authority, NJ Transit are all entities of the same type. Now, i'm not a lawyer and I really don't know the implications of this but the fact is that the people from the MTA should be rewarding Bill, offering to pay his hosting costs, linking to his site and probably paying him for his service to them.

When a publicly funded governmental entity publishes documents, they should be required by law to release those documents into the public domain, free of copyright, or with a non-mod Creative Commons at most. The idea that I can't freely distribute information we all bought and paid for is totally ridiculous.

Hey all. Bill here (from iPodSubwayMaps.com) It turns out that the site suspended my account due to the overwhelming traffic I was receiving. This site is currently hosted on my personal web host, and isn't set up to receive the astounding volume of traffic that I've recently received from Wirednews.com, news.com, gawker, and of course, here. :) However, keep clicking and enjoying the maps! If the site goes down again I'll just have to upgrade to a more expensive service... They can't keep this designer down!

brian raises a very interesting point, by its very nature, he can use those maps. He's not making a profit, the service he provides is free, he's part of the public, providing public information to the public. The public owns those, not a private corporation. Anyway, the site is back online.

What are you guys talking about? Not only is the site functional and responding, but about three days ago he posted redrawn versions of all the maps in question. Actually his versions are pretty nice, too!

What are you guys talking about? Not only is the site functional and responding, but about three days ago he posted redrawn versions of all the maps in question. Actually his versions are pretty nice, too!

"Public Transportation" Who paid for the maps to be produced in the first place? Exactly.

God, more self-important ingrates.