Government sues Streetdirectory.com who sued so many people!

Virtual Map, the owner of streetdirectory.com , has made quite a good living enforcing their intellectual property rights against large and small companies in Singapore - when these companies used the unprotected jpg maps from streetdirectory.com, boom! they got threatened with a suit, and they'd settle out of court. And their licensing fees and `penalties' were not cheap. They succeeded against several parties, including the most famous case of all, NTUC! The fees were quite outrageous as I recall.

All the map data was licensed from SLA. They were trading in the license.

And SLA has started an action against Virtual Map, as reported by TODAY here. SLA states that it terminated their licensing to Virtual Map in July 2004.

Well, let's just see what happens. Virtual Map has only gotten hate from what I read in the papers the past few years, with their victims claiming entrapment, inducement, `making a living outta suing people', etc. Nothing flattering coming from the victims of course.

Well, let's see whether the SLA succeeds. If the SLA wins, Virtual Map might have to pay back all the license fees it collected from its clients since July 2004, with interest. Facts from the case and rulings might also put holes in Virtual Map's license even before July 2004, and the payback may extend even before July 2004.

After everything, their victims might hope that somebody might have the bright idea to allege that Virtual Map KNOWINGLY licensed their maps without having valid title.

Let the Discovery process reveal interesting internal emails! This will be fun to watch.

more blogs on this: Cnet Gin's Tonic

ERP accidents-Tougher Penalties Please

Yesterday, I saw a typical accident in the Central Expressway, JUST before the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantry. More than 5 cars were involved and it was the type of accident which in some cars the entire trunk was crushed.

Just a normal ERP accident I thought, where some idiot saw the gantry and stood on the brakes because he didn't have enough funds on his card or his card was not inserted - just to avoid a S$12 fine. I see these kinds of accidents so often, it's become `normal'. Just that in this one, an ambulance was racing to the scene with obvious difficulty since this accident caused a fair bit of congestion.

When I saw a baby in the arms of one of the accident victims, my blood boiled though. The survivalability of a baby without a car seat, is relatively low. Even with a car seat, he'd be traumatized. I know - somebody slammed to the back of my car before and my 4 months old baby went berserk for a few minutes.

First, who in the world took the `easy' decision to eschew collecting monthly payments in favour of the prepaid cashcard system, only he knows whether the blood of accident victims is on his hands. Look - offenders have to be mailed anyway, and mature billing systems exist for almost every public utility and telecommunications service in Singapore, why not have a billing system for the roads? At least it'll minimize ERP accidents!

If the government doesn't budge from this fateful decision, then let's have the government do the easy thing. Slap an enhanced fine on people causing ERP accidents. By no means is this going to be easy - the guy in the front of the pileup is probably not the one who stood on the brakes, it's probably the guy a car or two in front of him. Still, just bring on the big stick. Put them into prison, cane them, whatever. It's the easy thing to do, and hopefully, it'll save a life or two. And reduce all the congestion caused by the damn ERP accidents!