Useful, but is it legal?

William Bright, a a design director at Nerve.com, decided it would be a great idea if people could access subway maps on their iPods. So he chopped the maps into pod sized pieces and offered them for download. Thing is, these images are copyrighted and the copyright holders, the subway authorites, got mad and went after him. (Well, after his site got noticed by a blog, he got noticed by the authorities.)

The sad lesson is, someone may create something imminently useful, perfectly suited to a technological innovation, and free and it still may run afoul of the law.

See Washington Post and wired for further details.

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