The MTA in New York is suing a guy for posting train timetables on the iPhone. Stupid. Sure, they want to control their data, and their marketing VP wants to control how people learn about the glories of the MTA.
But copyright law is clear on this. You can't copyright a table of data. You can only copyright expressions that require some scintilla of human creativity. The phone book? Not copyrightable. A list of the planets and their physical specifications? Not copyrightable. World almanacs and the CRC handbook are profitable only because it would be a huge pain to type them up and expensive to print your own. And because the almanac companies have a reputation for accuracy.
Suck it, MTA. Unless your trains and stations have artistic names like "Cornflower" and "Apple Blossom", telling a haiku poem about spring as you go down the line, your timetable is public domain.
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