Annie Mole's, webmaster of Going Underground, daily web log (blog).
If you like this you'll LURVE One Stop Short of Barking, THE fun and informative BOOK about travelling on the London Underground.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
London Underground Lawyers have too much time on their hands
Some of you probably knew that the anagram Tube map was pulled from its original home by London Underground's lawyers - The Times got onto this story too. Apparently Transport for London said it was "Completely without humour - complete waste of time. We see ourselves as having a duty to protect Harry Beck's legacy." (Funny they didn't mind rejecting most of Harry Beck's maps later on or using one of their PR guys - Harold Hutchison - to produce an unpopular follow up)
Now the Tube's lawyers been in touch with Geoff who has a collection of spoof maps on his site and he has to take most of them down by some time tomorrow, as he says on his blog download them while you can.
A regular visitor to this blog and Geoff's made the following image, which sums up what most of us think of their clamp down:
Admittedly, they're perfectly within their rights to do this, but I wonder why they don't go after all of the knock off T-Shirts and other stuff being sold for a profit, rather than spend time & money picking on easy targets like websites which aren't trying to make any money out of the spoofs.
Perhaps when it's in the name of art it's OK though, or maybe Simon Patterson paid them the couple of hundred quid licence fee before he then went on to win twenty thousand quid by selling The Great Bear at auction and earn loads of royalties selling reproductions of the "spoof" since then.
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