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Comment by JasonFruit | Hacker News Reader

I guess I'm not revolutionary enough, but I can't see the problem with this. It makes sense for a private company to protect their reputation, and it makes sense not to provide data to people who run them down in public. They have an agreement to that effect that is provided in advance, and you can opt out be deciding not to participate.

I know I'm supposed to feel rage whenever there are conditions placed on the use of data, but I just can't muster it up in this case. Sorry.

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A private company which is funded by companies which are contracted by the government to provide rail service. As a taxpayer subsidised body, they should have a greater degree of accountability.

By that logic, every contractor hired mainly by government would have to behave like a public organization. I don't think that leads to sensible conclusions, and it's redolent of after-the-fact justification.

> By that logic, every contractor hired mainly by government would have to behave like a public organization.

You say that like it's a bad thing. In fact, on major criticism of outsourcing and privatisation is that it becomes way to shelter dubious activities from Freedom-Of-Information requests that would apply if the work was done by a public organization.

Not so. NRE's raison d'être is to provide information to the public about train services funded by the public. There is no aspect of it's purpose that is not connected to taxpayer funding.

> It makes sense for a private company to....

So the railways in the UK used to be run by the state. They were privatised. sorta. On the grounds that we'd get the best of both worlds. Do you think that we did?

If this was a completely private enterprise situation, ATOC probably wouldn't be going through the motions of pretending to be open like they are.

Of course I wouldn't suggest that you get the best of both worlds — it's clear that you don't. I'm just saying that there's no base for outrage here. (And the status of the railroads themselves, as opposed to the ATOC, is only partly relevant here.)

> there's no base for outrage here

IMHO the basis for outrage (if you want to to call it that) is that the privatisation is shown to be somewhere between problematic and "not in the public interest". It's a relevant topic considering the current UK government's goals, and the extent to which they are connected to people who stand to benefit from privatisation.

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