Copy Protection: Difference between revisions
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Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (Copyright traps on maps are not legend. They are common practice. Cannot find documentation for one-per-4-square-inches claim, though.) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (added another example) |
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* It is a common practice among the publishers of paper maps to add "copyright traps" to their maps in order to identify competitors who steal their cartography instead of doing their own. |
* It is a common practice among the publishers of paper maps to add "copyright traps" to their maps in order to identify competitors who steal their cartography instead of doing their own. |
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** The most common of these are [[w:Trap street|"trap streets"]] -- a deliberate misrepresentation of a street, usually in such a way that does not impede navigation (like non-existent bends and curves, an incorrect name, or depicting the street as being a different size from reality. The number of these can be surprisingly large -- one publisher claimed in 2005 that their map of London had "about 100" trap streets on it. |
** The most common of these are [[w:Trap street|"trap streets"]] -- a deliberate misrepresentation of a street, usually in such a way that does not impede navigation (like non-existent bends and curves, an incorrect name, or depicting the street as being a different size from reality. The number of these can be surprisingly large -- one publisher claimed in 2005 that their map of London had "about 100" trap streets on it. |
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** On larger-scale maps, fictional towns or land features can serve the same purpose. |
** On larger-scale maps, [[w:Phantom settlement|fictional towns]] or land features can serve the same purpose. |
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*** When Gousha still made maps, the state map of Minnesota included a huge non-existent bay along the north shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Grand Marais. (It was obviously fake. Highway 61 ran over the 10-mile opening of the bay rather than skirting around its fictional shoreline.) No matter how many people complained, they never corrected the error. |
*** When Gousha still made maps, the state map of Minnesota included a huge non-existent bay along the north shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Grand Marais. (It was obviously fake. Highway 61 ran over the 10-mile opening of the bay rather than skirting around its fictional shoreline.) No matter how many people complained, they never corrected the error. |
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** Amusingly, United States courts have ruled that copyright traps are not, themselves, copyrightable, because to let them be so could a produce a [[Logic Bomb]] situation where an error in listing facts (which themselves are not copyrightable) might result in copying a "false fact" which itself would violate copyright. |
** Amusingly, United States courts have ruled that copyright traps are not, themselves, copyrightable, because to let them be so could a produce a [[Logic Bomb]] situation where an error in listing facts (which themselves are not copyrightable) might result in copying a "false fact" which itself would violate copyright. |
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* Similarly, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference works may include [[w:Fictitious entry|fictitious entries]] intended as copyright traps. For instance, in 2005 the ''The New Oxford American Dictionary'' included an entry for the non-existent word "esquivalience", defined as "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities", as an explicit copyright trap. |
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