Trap street

Trap street

A trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map, who will be unable to justify the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map. On maps that are not of streets, other "copyright trap" features (such as non-existent towns or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.[1]

Trap streets are often nonexistent streets; but sometimes, rather than actually depicting a street where none exists, a map will misrepresent the nature of a street in a fashion that can still be used to detect copyright violators but is less likely to interfere with navigation. For instance, a map might add nonexistent bends to a street, or depict a major street as a narrow lane, without changing its location or its connections to other streets.

Trap streets are routinely denied and rarely acknowledged by publishers. This is not always the case, however. A popular driver's atlas for the city of Athens, Greece, warns inside its front cover that potential copyright violators should beware of trap streets.[2]

In an edition of the BBC Two programme Map Man, first broadcast 17 October 2005, a spokesman for the Geographer's A-Z Street Atlas company claimed there are "about 100" trap streets included in the London edition of the street atlas. One such street, "Bartlett Place", a genuine but misnamed pedestrian walkway, was identified in the programme, and will appear in future editions under its real name, Broadway Walk.

Contents

Legal issues

Trap streets appear not to copyrightable under the federal law of the United States. In Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992, a United States federal court found that copyright traps are not themselves protectable by copyright. There, the court stated: "[t]o treat 'false' facts interspersed among actual facts and represented as actual facts as fiction would mean that no one could ever reproduce or copy actual facts without risk of reproducing a false fact and thereby violating a copyright . . . . If such were the law, information could never be reproduced or widely disseminated." (Id. at 733)

In a 2001 case, the Automobile Association in the United Kingdom agreed to settle a case for £20,000,000 when it was caught copying Ordnance Survey maps. In this case, the identifying "fingerprints" were not deliberate errors but rather stylistic features such as the width of roads.[3]

In another case, the Singapore Land Authority sued Virtual Map, an online publisher of maps, for infringing on their copyright. The Singapore Land Authority stated in their case that there were deliberate errors in maps they had provided to Virtual Map years earlier. Virtual Map denied this and insisted that they had done their own cartography.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ Cecil Adams, "Do maps have 'copyright traps' to permit detection of unauthorized copies?, The Straight Dope, August 16, 1991.
  2. ^ "Αττική" Greek-language map book published by Nik. & Ioan Fotis O.E. (Νικ. & Ιωάν. Φωτής Ο.Ε., http://www.fotismaps.gr), Greek-language warning inside front cover
  3. ^ Clark, Andrew (2001-03-06). "Copying maps costs AA £20m". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/mar/06/andrewclark. Retrieved 2007-09-24. 

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Trap Street — Der englischsprachige Begriff Trap Street (deutsch etwa: Fallenstraße) bezeichnet eine Straße in Landkarten, Atlanten oder Geodaten, die im Gelände nicht vorhanden ist, sondern vom Kartenhersteller als Plagiatsfalle erfunden wurde.… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Trap — A trap is a device or tactic intended to harm, capture, detect, or inconvenience a human or animal intruder, or animal pest or game. Traps may be physical objects, such as cages or snares, or metaphorical concepts. Physical trapsExamples of… …   Wikipedia

  • Trap Muzik — Studio album by T.I. Released August 19, 2003 …   Wikipedia

  • Street Fighter II V — ストリートファイターⅡ V (Sutorīto Faitā Tsū Bui) Genre Ad …   Wikipedia

  • Street Fighter EX2 — Plus Plataforma(s) Arcade, Sony PlayStation Género(s) Lucha Modos de juego Uno o dos jugadores al mismo tiempo Street Fighter EX2 es un videojuego de lucha co producido por …   Wikipedia Español

  • Street Sharks — infobox television show name = Street Sharks caption = A screenshot of the TV show Street Sharks . Clockwise from upper left: Jab, Streex, Slammu, Ripster. format = Animated series Action Adventure Science fiction runtime = 30 min. created by =… …   Wikipedia

  • Street punk — Infobox Music genre name=Street punk bgcolor=crimson color=white stylistic origins=Punk rock Oi! cultural origins=Early 1980s United Kingdom and Sweden instruments=Drums Guitar Bass guitar popularity=Low derivatives= fusiongenres=Psychobilly… …   Wikipedia

  • Geographer's A–Z Street Atlas — Infobox Book name = London Geographer s A–Z Street Atlas title orig = translator = image caption = Cover of 2004 edition author = Geographers A–Z Map Company illustrator = cover artist = country = United Kingdom language = series = subject =… …   Wikipedia

  • Occupy Wall Street — This article is about the protests in New York City. For the wider movement, see Occupy movement. Occupy Wall Street Part of the Occupy movement …   Wikipedia

  • List of A Nightmare on Elm Street characters — Promotional image of several characters from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street film including a young Johnny Depp in his first starring role. From top left to bottom right: Jsu Garcia (as Nick Corri), Amanda Wyss, Depp, Heather Langenkamp… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”