# Copyright Traps revisited

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-traps-revisited/527372>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [February 2, 2010, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-traps-revisited/527372 "2010-02-02T13:52:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2013, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-traps-revisited/527372/41 "2013-12-15T21:07:45Z")

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> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#):
>
> For anyone who’s curious, this is Chatham (Borough), NJ, Vine Street. True connection to Minton Ave, false connection to Talmadge Avenue.

Interesting is that Google Maps has it wrong and Apple Maps has it correct.

Actually, now zooming into it, Google Maps does show that the street _goes through_, but that half way down the block, there’s a barrier. You can use Google Street View to verify that this is true.

A more interesting question is what in the heck is going on between Kenilworth NJ and Cranford NJ? Cranford is located just South of Kenilworth, but you’ll be had pressed to go from one town to the other. You can see in [Google Maps](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d957!2d-74.3017692!3d40.6725933) that either Kenilworth or Cranford put up barriers on all of the streets right at the municipal limits preventing you from going from one town into the next. For example, if you live on Lotus Drive, you’re not getting to Lotus Drive in the other community.

You can even see they’ve went so far as to [plant trees](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-74.301678!3d40.672341!2m2!1f3.1!2f77.27!4f75!2m9!1e1!2m4!1sWQb0Bj6uoKotr3Y4xywN9Q!2e0!9m1!6sLocust+Drive!5m2!1sWQb0Bj6uoKotr3Y4xywN9Q!2e0&fid=5) in the old road right of way just so no one gets the idea that they may one day get through that street once again.

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**Author:** ![Geedavey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f6c823/32.png) [@Geedavey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geedavey)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2013, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-traps-revisited/527372/42 "2013-12-17T18:05:15Z")

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> [@ftg](#):
>
> The main road in our neighborhood is shown on Google Maps as extending well past its dead end. Yet their street view of course stops at the right point. No other map service shows this. I have sometimes wondered if this was a copyright trap. Making a dead end longer than it is wouldn’t really harm anyone following GPS directions. There is no there there.
> 
> As to copyright traps in books: there are copies and then there are copies. I have noticed numerous obvious typos in eBooks that aren’t there in the originals. Some, decades old. I wonder if these are traps in the sense that they uniquely identify a given copy of an eBook so that if it ends up on the Net, the publisher knows whose copy it was that got posted so they can sue someone. Having a couple dozen instances of such typos that may or may not be in a given copy is more than enough.

I always assumed those were OCR (optical character reader) errors off the scanned originals.

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