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The Bitter Way™

It’s a milestone in one’s blogging career: their first cease and desist letter!  Since the higher ups at the TTC seem to not have a sense of humour, I’ve been told to remove the Anagram TTC map:

The TTC has not granted, and expressly denies, permission to you or the Website to reproduce or otherwise use TTC intellectual property in whole or in part.  The TTC hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist from using TTC intellectual property on the Website, failing which the TTC will take appropriate legal actions without further notice to you.

This parallels what happened with the original London Tube map.  So I’ve been a good citizen and removed the original map.  But since this was created out of nothing but affection for the transit system, rather than ruin the fun of good wordplay for everyone, I simply drew my own map of the layout of Toronto’s subway stations and refrained from using the TTC’s logos and trademarks:

Anagram Toronto Subway Map version 2.0 (PDF)

(I deny the TTC, though, to tell me they didn’t get a kick out of the map and didn’t forward it around the office!)

UPDATE: BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow, who grew up in Toronto, puts it nicely:

“It’s part of every Torontonian’s experience of the city, a part of the cultural fabric. Culture gets remixed—that’s what happens with it. ... The TTC’s legal bullying here is completely needless—they face no risk and no loss from letting their riders turn the map into their own personal remix.”

Thanks, Cory!

UPDATE: Damn the man; download the original: Anagram Toronto Subway Map version 1.0

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