# Has anyone encountered problems when the accidentally treated a "copyright trap" as real? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 23, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071 "2013-01-23T04:26:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**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:** [January 23, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/21 "2013-01-23T16:23:48Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > How about dictionaries? Has a writer ever been fired or a student given a low grade because they saw this neato word they had never heard of before and used it in their writing, not knowing the word was a copyright trap that nobody actually used? What kind of editor would fire a writer over using an unfamiliar word? That makes no sense. Editors and writers (and teachers and students, I should think) actually _talk_ about things like this. There would be a discussion about it. > [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > I think courts neutered copyright traps in the US a couple of decades ago, so even if copyright traps _were_ a big thing here, they aren’t really anymore. > [@Mr\_Downtown](#): > > As noted, the 1991 _Feist_ decision made copyright traps pointless in the US. Nearly all of what people think are traps are merely mistakes. That’s not my understanding of _Feist_ at all. Copyright traps are still potentially useful as a way to prove copying, which is a necessary element of a copyright infringement claim. _Feist_ is not about proving whether copying has occurred, but rather on what kind of work or what aspects of a work is protected by copyright law. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Then, the tour guide writer is called out by his boss for letting a false statement get into the tour guide. Tour guides are not known for their rigorous standards. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/22 "2013-01-23T16:28:59Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > (At LAX flights normally come in, and take off, low over the sea, deliberately, for safety reasons.) They take off and land into the wind, which is usually in from the sea, so take offs are over the sea but landings aren’t. Final approach takes planes right over the top of Inglewood. > [@njtt](#): > > I once had a street map of Pasadena, California and the surrounding towns (I probably still have it somewhere) that showed a whole area of several streets to the north east of Altadena that does not exist. I once wasted an hour or two (when I had nothing better to do) driving round looking for it. > > I am not sure if this was really a copyright trap. It seems a bit elaborate for that: not just one street but several blocks in an area that is really undeveloped land. It was a “Realtor’s Map” and perhaps this was a development that was once planned but never actually got built. If you still had that map, I’d be very interested to see a photo or scan. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/23 "2013-01-23T16:51:43Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > … > > That’s not my understanding of _Feist_ at all. Copyright traps are still potentially useful as a way to prove copying, which is a necessary element of a copyright infringement claim. _Feist_ is not about proving whether copying has occurred, but rather on what kind of work or what aspects of a work is protected by copyright law. > … I think this is right. The [court](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service) ruled that the purpose of copyright under the US Constitution was to promote science and art, not reward people who gather information. Being able to prove that someone copied your list of towns in Oklahoma or your list of names, birthplaces, and batting averages of all US professional baseball players in 1985 is irrelevant to a copyright claim because those kinds of lists are not protected by copyright law. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/24 "2013-01-23T17:15:06Z")
I think it has to be remembered that paper streets are “real” – like a new corporation, they have legal existwnce, even if there’s not yet anything there to point to. That is, the city, county, or whatever municipal authority gives approval to laying out of streets, has done so, and the developer may build them at his leisure, when he gets to that point in building his development. And if he goes broke, or abandons the project, well, they’re still there until the city/county/whatever rescinds the authorization. (Authorizing a street [“Yeah, you can put in a street there”] is different from acceptance of a street (“On inspection, we find you did a good job building it, and we’ll be willing to take over maintenance”].) Maps of my hometown had the rather stupid coding of using dashed lines to represent both private streets, physically real streets where title and maintence lay to the abutting landowners, and paper streets not yet built. Ohio Street School, built when I was about 10 on an undeveloped tract along the north side of Ohio Street, had the interesting effect of wiping out several blocks of paper streets where three streets which physically ended at Ohio Street had legally extended north to dead ends, and a cross street that had never had physical existence all lost their legal existence as wel. Several miles north of this was a quite real road which I am still not sure if the naming was a copyright trap or a perpetuated mishearing, but several different maps depicted “Noseville Road”, a rather strange name. Many years later they all one by one corrected this to the more accurate Knowlesville Road. ---
**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:** [January 23, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/25 "2013-01-23T17:16:11Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I think this is right. The [court](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service) ruled that the purpose of copyright under the US Constitution was to promote science and art, not reward people who gather information. Being able to prove that someone copied your list of towns in Oklahoma or your list of names, birthplaces, and batting averages of all US professional baseball players in 1985 is irrelevant to a copyright claim because those kinds of lists are not protected by copyright law. Just to nitpick here, it’s not that it’s _irrelevant_ to a claim of infringement. It is definitely relevant. It’s just that it’s not the only element of an infringement claim. You also have to show that what was copied was actually protected by copyright law (and other things). ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/26 "2013-01-23T17:30:13Z")
Several years ago a friend named Pat took a motorcycle trip form Texas to Florida, and noticed that in Mississippi, not that far off his planned route, was a town named “Pat,” so he took a little detour to go there - probably to take a picture of himself at the city limits sign or something. But there was no town there at all. He figured he had stumbled onto a copyright trap. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/27 "2013-01-23T17:46:58Z")
> [@Mr\_Downtown](#): > > Laymen just have no idea how many judgment calls mapmakers must make. What name should be shown for a particular street? Does this road even have a name? Ditto. A bunch of years ago, I moved from one home to another in the same neighborhood. The new home was on a very small street, only one block long, and I was already quite familiar with it. When I got involved in all my Change-Of-Address paperwork, I went to the [USPS website](https://www.usps.com/) to find my new ZIP+4 code, and entered the address of the new place. It’s an interesting site – not only does it give you the ZIP+4 code, but it also standardizes the address per Post Office preferences. For example, it puts everything in upper-case and changes both “Road” and “Rd” to “RD”. In my case, though, it also changed the spelling of the name of the street. It was a very minor change, and would be pronounced the same either way, but still, I was intrigued: Have I been reading the street sign incorrectly all these years? As it turned out, the street sign at one end of the block was exactly as I remembered it, but the street sign at the other end used the Post Office spelling. In other words: If the city can’t even use the same spelling on the two street signs, how can we expect the mapmakers to know which is correct? ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/28 "2013-01-23T20:02:22Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > … It was a “Realtor’s Map” and perhaps this was a development that was once planned but never actually got built. Was it a plat book? These are what you find in the recorder’s office - it simply means that the owner has sub-divided the property into lots and laid out the routes of the streets - this is filed before (perhaps an eternity before) any development starts. (I once worked one summer with a tiny Civil Engineering company. One of the "engineers (he bought his way into the job - the owner needed money badly) had us draw up the plat book and actually survey and mark the lots - BEFORE soil testing. The water table was 2’ below surface. There is now an incredibly well design soy bean field in Bartholomew County, IN 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/29 "2013-01-24T00:49:22Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I’m not talking about the dictionary user committing a copyright violation by using a copyright trap word thinking it was a real word. I’m talking about them using the word, thinking it was real, and getting into an embarrassing situation with an editor, instructor, or something. E.g., “John, you lost points on your essay about General Rory B. Bellows over a vocabulary issue. You’re supposed to be more mature now that you’re in high school. In paragraph three you said, ‘Although his [esquivalience](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquivalience) was considered normal for the day, it allowed the POW’s to escape and for that he was court martialed. (Robinson 45)’ I looked at the source - it says, ‘Bellows neglected his duties and the POW’s escaped. A court martial ruled that while his level of neglect was typical of officers of his stature, it was nonetheless punishable.’. Your problem is that you got too smart for your own good and tried to substitute a fancy synonym, but this word doesn’t actually exist. C-.” I work in academia, and I would be pretty surprised if a professor (or TA) devoted that much time and attention to a minor mistake. A high school teacher would probably care even less. Something like “esquivalience” might merit a “?” in the margin, but not a 100+ word comment and a below average grade. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Mondegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/91b2a8/32.png) [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/30 "2013-01-24T01:11:58Z")
Many years ago (before anybody had a GPS in their car), the most popular brand of map books here labelled a building in an industrial suburb as a “Boomerang Factory.” At the time I happened to be working in the area and while having lunch at a sandwich shop, a couple of flustered tourists came in asking for directions because they couldn’t find the Boomerang Factory which was marked on their map. That would be because there never was one. I wonder how many tourists over the years wasted time looking in vain for the factory. There is nothing touristy nearby either, so it would be a genuinely wasted trip. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/31 "2013-01-24T02:21:38Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I work in academia, and I would be pretty surprised if a professor (or TA) devoted that much time and attention to a minor mistake. A high school teacher would probably care even less. Something like “esquivalience” might merit a “?” in the margin, but not a 100+ word comment and a below average grade. I’d just write back that esquivalience is a cromulent word. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/32 "2013-01-24T04:13:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I have a Rand McNally road atlas and I noticed there was a town marked on it that had a question mark next to its name. Why so mysterious? What town in what state? > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > My question is how GPS systems handle this. Could TomTom or AT&TMaps have me offroading to the theoretical 123 Partridge Lane? Usually not, at least for urban areas where one of the three mapping data companies (Nokia, TeleAtlas, or Google) have done fieldwork to verify which paper streets exist. However, I work in some small towns in New Mexico that those guys haven’t yet gotten to, where purely theoretical street grids appear in the TIGER data, so in that case your satnav might indeed tell you to turn right into a beanfield. Have a look at Springer, N.M., to see some examples of that (used to be much worse). Have a look at Carrizozo, N.M., to see the opposite issue. There’s a whole new fancy subdivision just east of town, but Google doesn’t yet know the names of any of the streets that have been there for at least three years now. In both cases, [Here.com](http://Here.com) is much better than Google—and the maps I do for the local phone book are better still. > [@njtt](#): > > There is something a little bit similar in the space between LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and the sea. Perhaps someone eventually realized this was a really stupid place to build residences, right under where all the aircraft are taking off. Exactly, though it was several decades after the houses were built. In the 1990s, I think, LAX bought and removed all the houses in the Vista del Mar subdivision. > [@Acsenray](#): > > That’s not my understanding of _Feist_ at all. Copyright traps are still potentially useful as a way to prove copying, which is a necessary element of a copyright infringement claim. But after _Feist,_ there’s no point to proving copying, because factual works—even false facts introduced to trap copiers—cannot be the subject of copyright in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/33 "2013-01-24T04:26:50Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > That is very weird. The few houses appear to be totally randomly placed along the dense maze of empty roads. > > There is something a little bit similar in [the space between LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and the sea](http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=LAX&hl=en&ll=33.9398,-118.426266&spn=0.028269,0.03592&sll=51.540628,0.735936&sspn=0.169545,0.287361&hq=LAX&t=h&z=15). Roads laid out, but nothing else built. (In this case you can only see it in Google satellite view, though, not map view.) Perhaps someone eventually realized this was a really stupid place to build residences, right under where all the aircraft are taking off. (At LAX flights normally come in, and take off, low over the sea, deliberately, for safety reasons.) > > The streets I was talking about near Pasadena, do not seem to exist at all, however, not even as empty streets without buildings. There used to be houses there, but as the airport got bigger and nosier, the airport bought up the houses and tore them down. ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/34 "2013-01-25T01:14:39Z")
Last year I completely redrew the street map for my hometown, because an updated version had not been published in several years. I’m a town employee with access to all kinds of official materials and to various public officials themselves. It was still a pain to get everything right and I’m not sure I did. First of all, in the 1990s some close-sounding street names in town were changed when 911 emergency calling was instituted. This was to avoid confusion to responders to emergencies. Now newer maps of town do not match older maps. Second, paper streets, some of which appear on Google Maps, do not actually exist IRL. Third, there are brand new, named accepted roads that had not yet appeared in print anywhere except on developers’ plans approved by the Planning Board. Fourth, there were earlier mapmakers mistakes. Fifth, there was changed shoreline due to erosion, old “islands” that are really rocks covered by water at high tide. Sixth, there were some places that had three or four nicknames–these were also little islands or shoreline necks–that I could never find an official name for. Keeping in mind that I’ve lived here all my life (almost 55 years) and had this much trouble with familiar territory, I’m not at all surprised people find oddities in maps assembled by outsiders with no local knowledge whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2014, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/35 "2014-03-30T23:44:11Z")
Here in Anderson, Indiana, a little over half a mile from my house, 3 different maps showed two streets that never existed. At the end of Redwood Lane, there’s a swampy woods where the maps said Hickory Drive and another one that escapes me now existed. My Garmin navigator showed them, though they aren’t on the update. I always figured some developer got city permits to build those streets, but ran out of money to get it done. It didn’t occur to me that they might be copyright traps. Maybe I’ll drop by the courthouse someday to get the real story. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/36 "2014-03-31T00:05:53Z")
We met the occasional driver, on dog walks, who wondered where Hickory Drive was. I can guess they were political party canvassers. No real harm was done to them, only confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/37 "2014-03-31T00:24:06Z")
NYTimes ran a [story](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/nyregion/in-search-of-agloe-ny-a-town-on-the-border-of-fiction-and-reality.html?_r=0) a few days ago on Agloe, NY, and got Google to remove it. (The town, not the story.) NB: Reporter had the good grace to cite SD. Thread [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17241392) in Cafe Society. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/38 "2014-03-31T00:38:42Z")
Sorry - didn’t notice the Q’s The street on Russian Hill was a 1 block dead end off a street which defines “Hill” as used in SF - it is nearly vertical. Nobody has build on it in 100 years, and nobody will. It was ID’d as a trap by the SF Chronicle (a thing called a “noospapr” or some such thing, you don’t know about them…). The town in PA is the dying town made famous in a shot of Three Mile Island nuclear plant when it went “oopps! our bad”. It is on the bank immediately adjacent to TMI. Population maybe 100 in the mid-80’s. Yocumtown is the name on my Rand McNally atlas of 1991 - I no longer have my original maps I collected over the years. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/39 "2014-03-31T01:01:58Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I’m not talking about the dictionary user committing a copyright violation by using a copyright trap word thinking it was a real word. I’m talking about them using the word, thinking it was real, and getting into an embarrassing situation with an editor, instructor, or something. When I was in journalism school, I got dinged for using a slang word. I protested that it was a perfectly fine word and the instructor said “Show me in the dictionary.” Of course, being slang, it hadn’t been included in a dictionary. However, had I been able to show the instructor an “official” source, i.e.,\* if it had been in the dictionary\*, I would’ve been in the clear. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071/40 "2014-03-31T02:40:22Z")
> [@VernWinterbottom](#): > > Fifth, there was changed shoreline due to erosion, old “islands” that are really rocks covered by water at high tide. > > Sixth, there were some places that had three or four nicknames–these were also little islands or shoreline necks–that I could never find an official name for. > > . Thats a good point. These patches of sediment in a river or estuary can be all sorts of confusing - you might be sure looking at an unnamed Island, so you go back to some old maps to find a name… looking at some hand drawn map, you see the rough shape of the river but its very different now… so there’s an Island , and there’s the name ! Now you are in print, Mr Long Life comes in and says “How can you make such a mistake, my father died on that Island (now a patch of rocks), and you’ve gone and given its name to some new upstart of an island half a mile away !”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-encountered-problems-when-the-accidentally-treated-a-copyright-trap-as-real/648071.md?page=3)