Ask HN: Is this legal? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is this legal?

10 pointsgumbo11 comments

Hi There. I've crafted the last weeks a mobile app (android/iphone) that allow people to know the schedules of trains for the national train company. The company don't have any web service, so how i've done that?

They actually offer on their website a for to query their system but it is not optimized for the mobile and it is so slow. So i've build a proxy on my server that query and cache the schedules it also expose the datas as a REST web service.

The app is already on the app store and android market, but i'm wondering if i'm not violating a law here.

So is this legal in USA?

Thanks in advance.

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It is very unlikely that a large national train company wouldn't have TOS for the info on its website. Have a closer look. It may be in a non-obvious place.

If its TOS is something like Amtrak's, the company may still not have a successful suit against you. Amtrak's TOS require the user to recognize that Amtrak's proprietary right in the data on its website is valid and enforceable probably because the law does not recognize that right by default. I think it is written that way to allow Amtrak's attorneys to make some creative arguments in court if it would need to sue. But to win they would probably need to convince a judge to change the law. Having said that, the company could still sue if it really doesn't want you to provide the app in the hope that you settle before the case reaches trial.

Do consult a lawyer just to get a sense of the likely risk of lawsuit.

Checked everywhere on the website and no TOS anywhere, the only mention regarding Intelectual property is:

Anyway, i'll consult a lawyer and pay 200$ maybe before launching any ad campaign.

You've been all so helpfull.

Thanks.

In my opinion(I'm not a lawyer) it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. So market the app. Then, if the train company tries to harass you, take the app down and open source it. That way, you'll make money between the time you launch, and the time the train co notices you, and you'll have a great reference for your next project. And if they choose not to do anything, even better! Just make sure you back down when their C&D comes. No need spending all your profits on attorney's fees.

Legal yes. It may be against their terms of service or some lame restriction because your showing them to be less competent.

Agree with phlux here, its the 'terms of service' that, if they care, they will come after you with. That being said, did you approach them with an offer to sell them the app?

In the Bay Area we have a variety of 'CalTrain' apps which vary in quality and utility, they all rely on the same data. None (in my opinon) capture the elegant simplicity of the original PalmOS application.

In terms of infrastructure improvement, a generalized mash-up of all public transit combined with location based sensing and destination intent would seem to be the end goal. Maybe with an overflow timeout that links to Uber :-)

I've tried to sell them the app before actually starting to build it without success. I've tried to sell it for month now, but as it is a HUGE company with only old school and out dated tech... i haven't got much luck.

The reason why i'm asking for it legality is because i'm planning to launch a marketing campaign to attract more users (actually have 2769k on iPhone/Android without any marketing): i'm trying to provoke them with the campaign to make them buy the app and rebrand it.

Thanks for the feedback.

They don't have any TOS on their website.

So what happens if they contact him and tell him to stop, and that he doesn't?

In this case, they could cut him off from accessing their data. Out of date train schedules would mean his app wouldn't be worthwhile. But suppose the data was not time sensitive -- imagine if the train schedules never changed.

What then? Once he has the data, what can they do? In the U.S., the Feist v. Rural decision stated that you cannot copyright facts[1]. So it's not covered under copyright, and technically he wouldn't be "using" their website anymore.

What happens then, if the author decided to continue using the data that he gathered against their ToS? Would a civil suit be a (realistic) option for the source company?

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

This is still an emerging area of law. I'm not familiar with Feist v. Rural, but what you are discussing is very similar to Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com, in the case of the latter scraping the former's site for data.

There appears to have been some previous discussion on HN about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411555

The unfortunate part of all of this is that the court system in general does not have its act together with regards to Internet Law. This is largely a function of Congress completely failing to pass any laws related to Internet/software property rights, especially in the area of patents. Which is why the entire patent system is a disaster now with regards to software IP. There are similar problems in the area of data scraping and intellectual property copying online. Basically for every case you can find where the court ruled one way, you can generally find a counter example where a different court ruled in a contradictory manner.

This is actualy what i want to know. i'm asking it here because i've done some search localy and the legislation don't tell anything about this.

I'll go to an athorney maybe but i would like to have some rough ideas on how it work elsewhere before.

You should check with a lawyer, but when you say 'national railroad company' I think of Amtrak, which is a corporation that is 100% owned by the US government. According to their ToS they would be within their rights to cut off your access, but actually launching an infringement suit against you would probably be an expensive waste of their time. I think you would be OK as long as you complied with a cease-and-desist notice if they saw fit to issue one - but I'd say a bigger worry would be making sure you're covered against suits arising out of errors in the schedule you present to users. Again, I'm not a lawyer!

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=AM_Content_C&#...

PS have you considered asking the people at Data.gov to help you out; They've got a reputation for being approachable and the executive mandate to back it up when talking to agencies and quasi-agencies.

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