# Can you copyright a lie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 11, 2020, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343 "2020-09-11T13:16:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/21 "2020-09-12T10:14:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > The Hut might be getting out pizzaed all the time but we can’t tell. If “out pizzaed” has no agreed meaning then any claim to doing this cannot be tested; if the Hut’s claim is not falsifiable then how can it be false? 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/22 "2020-09-12T11:27:51Z")
Talking about copyright traps on maps, I learned about this place not too long ago: > **[Agloe, New York](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > Agloe is a fictional hamlet in Colchester, Delaware County, New York, United States, that became an actual landmark after mapmakers made up the community as a phantom settlement, an example of a fictitious entry similar to a trap street. Agloe was put onto the map in order to catch plagiarism, as it appears only on the original cartographers' map and has a population of one. Soon, using fictional "copyright traps" became a typical strategy in mapmak... A mapmaker put this trap on an Esso road map. Someone happened to build a store at that spot. They found the name on the map and so it became the Agloe General Store. The county put it on their list of localities and Rand McNally got it from them. This all came out when the copyright owners sued Rand McNally. They were unsuccessful. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/23 "2020-09-12T19:18:21Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Indeed facts in and of themselves (whether true facts or false facts) are not protectable at all. Expression of facts is protectable but it’s protection tends to be thinner than expression on non factual material. How does does this relate to news articles and photojournalism? They are ostensibly reporting facts. But I believe that newspapers copyright their stories and photos. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/24 "2020-09-12T21:04:59Z")
Same as anything else. The facts aren’t protected. The expression is protected. (Except for the “hot news “ doctrine, whose viability is in question) With respect to photographs, independent creation is also a factor. Two photographs of a news event might be identical but it’s only infringing if one was actually copied from the other. If two photographers happened to be in the same place at the same time neither one infringed the other. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/25 "2020-09-12T21:09:45Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > If you can’t copyright a lie, thousands of brand slogans might need to be changed. Whole industries are built on bullshit. > > There’s a funny Ron White bit on slogans for diamond companies. “Diamonds are forever” becomes “Render her speechless” becomes “Diamonds. That should shut her up”. > > This interjection, meant to be light hearted, is irrelevant. We now return to a more learned discussion of copyright law. Letters of the alphabet, typography, single words, names, short phrases, and slogans are not protected by copyright law. They’re not sufficiently creative. Brand owners rely on trademark law, not copyright law. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/26 "2020-09-12T21:12:08Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > The form of protection I had heard was that the act of curation of a set of facts is copyrightable. So the overall work is copyright. But within, an individual fact isn’t. > The point that an individual fact was actually deliberately false doesn’t suddenly make the whole entity a work of fiction and the individual entries subject to more close protection. Arguing a special case of creative work for an individual planted trap is probably a very large stretch, especially if the end user is intentionally not told it is false, and is operating under the reasonable assumption that the fact is indeed actually true. The purpose of the trap was to prevent plagiarism of the overall work. One might argue that the purpose of a fact book includes enabling further creative works. It isn’t the fault of the user if they don’t know you have deliberately added a falsehood. Building a game using facts from a curated factbook would seem to be a perfectly reasonable expected use of the work. > If I had written the factbook I would be miffed if I didn’t get credit somewhere in the game documentation, but that is about as much as I would expect to get. Plagiarism and copyright are two different things. Plagiarism standards have to do with giving credit. Copyright has to do with copying. > [@DocCathode](#): > > One of those ‘Get A Star Named After You!’ swindles advertises a lot on the radio news station I prefer. They always mention that their ‘registry’ will be registered at the copyright office. As that’s the one thing in their ad I believe, I’d say you can copyright a lie. > > Re Slogans > > Most slogans would fall into (I think. IANAL) the category of puffery. For example, if I claim my restaurant has ‘the best pizza in town’ I don’t have to back that claim up with evidence. If OTOH, I claim ‘my pizza was voted best in town’ I’m making a factual claim I have to prove. These are kind of irrelevant points. Copyright protections don’t cover lies, just as they don’t cover truths. However they might cover the _expression_ of a lie. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2020, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/27 "2020-09-12T22:50:00Z")
Example: A few years back, there was a newspaper that ran an article about “spaghetti trees” in Italy, and how the harvest was particularly bad this year, and it might have an impact on the price of imported spaghetti in the US. It was false, of course, but it was also creative. If I published a copy of that article without permission, I’d be violating copyright. If, however, I just say that such-and-such town in Italy grows spaghetti on trees, I got that “fact” from the article, but I’m not violating copyright. It’s the expression of the fact that’s copyrighted, not the fact itself. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/28 "2020-09-13T11:43:34Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Plagiarism and copyright are two different things. Plagiarism standards have to do with giving credit. Copyright has to do with copying. Yeah, I got my thoughts crossed. Plagiarism is all anyone can really complain about. The traps give one the clue someone is lifting stuff, but after that it is all a bit of waste of time. If I had written the fact book I would make enough of a fuss that I got credit. It could only help sales of my book, so I would feel somewhat entitled to at least that. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/29 "2020-09-13T12:31:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > A few years back there was a newspaper article Nitpick: it was a BBC news broadcast - and _quite_ a few years back. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/MEqp0x6ajGE/hqdefault.jpg "Is this the best April Fool's ever? Witness - BBC News") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEqp0x6ajGE) ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/30 "2020-09-13T13:03:27Z")
About 15 years ago the author(s) of _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_ sued the publisher of _The Da Vinci Code_ for copyright infringement in a UK court. The judge ruled that because _Holy Blood_ was represented as History rather than fiction, the ideas in it were not protected by copyright. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/31 "2020-09-13T15:38:18Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > Nitpick: it was a BBC news broadcast - and _quite_ a few years back. And clearly a hoax because the spaghetti trees produced bumper crop that year. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/32 "2020-09-13T16:49:30Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > If “out pizzaed” has no agreed meaning then any claim to doing this cannot be tested; if the Hut’s claim is not falsifiable then how can it be false? 🙃 Presumably someone could make a really huge pizza, large enough to surround a Pizza Hut restaurant, and then claim they have out pizzaed the hut 😜. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/33 "2020-09-13T18:59:54Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Presumably someone could make a really huge pizza, large enough to surround a Pizza Hut restaurant, and then claim they have out pizzaed the hut 😜. LOL. I do wonder whether we’re into the advertising realm of “puffery” with that slogan anyway… the slogan cannot be false (for the purposes of false advertising) because no reasonable person would consider it to be true. (Nothing to do with copyright though.) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343/34 "2020-09-14T00:33:11Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > About 15 years ago the author(s) of _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_ sued the publisher of _The Da Vinci Code_ for copyright infringement in a UK court. The judge ruled that because _Holy Blood_ was represented as History rather than fiction, the ideas in it were not protected by copyright. Ideas are never protected by copyright law. A copyright claim must be based on an allegation of copying _expression_. Copying expression, doesn’t always mean word-for-word copying, however. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-copyright-a-lie/920343.md?page=1)