Cecil once wrote about “copyright traps,” nonexistent streets and such that mapmakers include so they can tell when somebody has copied their map without permission. Lo and behold, they just identified one right here in Dallas.
According to this story in the 9/7/02 Dallas Morning News, a company called Navigation Technologies has placed something called “Bonnie Bell Island” in the middle of White Rock Lake, a small, shallow lake in the eastern part of town. Trust me, there is nothing resembling an island anywhere in the lake. Apparently, since these guys are the leading electronic mapmakers in the country, the fake island is in all kinds of electronic maps, including all on-board car navigation systems.
You can see the copyright trap for yourself by going to Mapquest and entering the street name “Emerald Isle Dr.” for Dallas, TX. Zoom out the map a click or two and just to the northwest of the center will be White Rock Lake and Bonnie Bell Island.
I think the DMN requires free registration, and the strory is only going to stay online for a couple weeks before they ship it over to the paid archives, so I’ll quote a couple excerpts from the story:
There IS an island, Minty–it’s where they keep the black helicopters…
Am I the only one who sees “Bonnie Bell” and automatically thinks “Bonne Bell Cosmetics”?
I used to cycle around this lake. It was around 26 miles from my place, to the lake, around and back. Nice little workout. There is definitely NO island. I’ve even used Mapquest to look up maps of the area and I never noticed an island depicted there. Of course I could have just glazed over it instead of looking at the lake because I KNOW there isn’t anything there and I would expect the map to reflect reality. If the map reflects the situation of an island in that lake then it is clearly SEP(Somebody Else’s Problem) just like that horde of pink elephants charging this wa
As a man in the map-making business, my advice is: always get your maps from State Government or Federal sources. You can get Federal maps online (use your Google, I’m too lazy), and your State Representative or Senator may be able to get you maps free. If not, the costs are usually nominal, especially compared with private sector.
Local gov. maps are usually made by the private sector, & they are garbage.
Although it is a trivial and silly thing, doesn’t putting in a copyright trap open a mapmaker up to civil liability (at the least, with respect to obtaining a refund)? I mean, the $$$ electronic maps I have have all sort of disclaimers for unintentional errors and omissions, but I haven’t seen anything about intentional errors and omissions.
Not that I would ever advocate this, and I think it would be somewhat frivilous to demand a refund over it, but from a legal technical standpoint, isn’t it fraud, if they don’t disclaim it and acknowledge it?
Well, could you use it to get a refund? Some electronic maps run several hundred dollars (the “whole US” 2-CD set for my GPS runs $320, IIRC). Do you need to prove damages to obtain a refund on a deliberately defective product? I’m not being argumentative, I’m honestly asking.
I’m not sure that a map with copyright traps would necessarily be “defective”, though. A defective product is one which can’t be used for one of its intended uses, or in the manner intended. For a road map, the intended use is to enable a person to navigate roads to get from point A to point B, and I see no conceivable way that the presence of a nonexistant uninhabited island in the midst of a rinky-dink lake would impede that use.
I can conceive of other potential copyright traps which might cause problems, though. An omitted real street, or a mislabled one, would obviously be a problem, if you’re trying to find a point on that street. And even an added nonexistant street could potentially cause difficulties, if you’re trying to count “it’s the third intersection past Willow Street”, or some such. But the island one seems perfectly harmless.
