Silly Tube Maps Get Bullied By The London Underground
Geofftech’s Silly Tube Maps (that I’ve mentioned before on Ektopia) are currently being shit on by Transport for London (the company that runs the London Underground). Geofftech’s happily been hosting remixed tube maps for years on his site without any bother at all till last week. Since then, solicitors acting on behalf of Transport for London have had him remove the maps from his site. Geofftech responded by removing the maps but posting a list of some other places where the maps could be found (and some links to mirror sites) till the solicitors dropped his ISP a note to say, “Hi!” at which point he got a note from them to say, “Take that page down too”.
So what’s going on here? My guess is that since the Guardian produced an excellent remixed map of 20th century music a couple of weeks back (that I had all ready to blog about in my backlog), that can be purchased for £8, they’ve realised that there’s an opportunity to make a lot of money from similar maps. So, fuck Geofftech, the rest of us and the freedom that the internet allows us; why should people be allowed to make (or host) silly, amusing and even useful maps (I have the toilet one on my PDA!) while corporations can spew mundane versions and sell them on for huge profits.
Anyways, Geofftech’s blog page still has a list of maps and mirrors. No doubt his blog pages will be ripped from their rightful place soon so here’s a list of some of the places mentioned there where they are still available. Hawksleyworkman, Flickr, Phoenixproductions, Hrishi, Jonnylyon, ni.chol.as, Freeweb, Scary10, Houseofsteel, Flickr again and Hanzoweb. It’s great that all the maps are still available to us all but really sad that one man’s site has been destroyed due to unnecessary corperate greed.
This all leaves me wondering how Harry Beck would think of all this bullshit. I imagine that he would be horrified. The guy developing his map in his spare time because he felt that there was a need to create an informative and easy to read version of the old clumsy maps that were in circulation at the time. Perhaps the saddest, and most poignant, part of the mix of Harry and Geofftech’s stories can be found on the Wiki for the map’s history. A similarity to electrical circuits was made.
“This approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams; while these weren’t the inspiration for Beck’s diagram, his colleagues pointed out the similarities and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical-circuit symbols and names with terminology: “bakelite” for “Bakerloo”, etc.”
Even during the design phase of the original map people were being playful with it. I’m willing to bet that Harry Beck would have really enjoyed seeing these creations. It’s more than just annoying; it’s a sad story. [via & via]