
Trap Street - netgusto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
======
ganonm
See also "Canary Traps"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap)

Apparently this is common practice in the movie industry - cast members are
given slightly different versions of the script so that any leaks can be
traced back to a unique individual.

~~~
tomcam
If you think that one through it seems like doing this for a movie would be a
logistical nightmare. Most actors are pretty good about learning their lines,
which means you’d couldn’t just put random changes in because otherwise their
time would be wasted. I’m guessing that it’s only used for pivotal plot
changes like the Roddenberry incident describe on Wikipedia. Seems like the
path used these days is extreme lawsuit threats built into their contract,
something you’ll see just about every Marvel star joke about during
interviews.

~~~
VonGallifrey
There is more in a script then just this actors lines. You could slightly
change Lines of other characters in the scenes or you could change the
descriptions of the scenes in slight ways. You would still give the correct
lines to each actor and make it obvious who shared their script.

~~~
tomcam
… Which I hope was trying, apparently without success, to get across. It just
seems like a ton of work and maintenance.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
I wonder if it is automated with a thesaurus or some NLP

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mmirate
Previously discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992748)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10418586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10418586).

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JshWright
See also "Paper Towns"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement)

~~~
a1369209993
I particularly like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York)
since it turned into a real town behind the authors' backs.

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tomcam
Back in the 90s one of these really screwed me up when I was trying to find my
way to a new and super out-of-the-way neighborhood using my trusty Thomas
Guide, which at the time was the gold standard for maps in Southern
California. I’d got lost and was scrutinizing the map street by street to find
my way again. The moment I realized I’d “passed” the trap street I went back
to make sure I didn’t get lost again. Did this three times before I decided it
was a bug on the map, not knowing about trap streets at the time. I still get
stressed thinking about that trip.

~~~
solarkraft
I was considering commenting about the possibility of this happening, but
thought maybe they'd just do it on streets nobody would want to go through.
Thanks for the story!

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cwmoore
I have noticed apparent typos on memorable page numbers in fiction and non-
fiction books (ie. 13, 69, 100, 123, 222, etc.) that must be intentionally
edited in for this purpose, but I have not kept a list.

I went looking online and apparently this is semi-notorious in reference
material (calling the trap a "mountweazle," [1], [2]) but (in a brief search
session) I could not find mentions for ordinary books.

Edit: This quickly led to another (limited) set of examples on Wikipedia [3]
and then on to the fiction of Jorge Borges [4] where I think I'll spend the
rest of my Sunday.

[1] [http://wmcz.com/legal-ideas/using-traps-to-snare-
copyright-i...](http://wmcz.com/legal-ideas/using-traps-to-snare-copyright-
infringement/)

[2] [http://www.youblawg.com/ip-technology/5-copyright-traps-
you-...](http://www.youblawg.com/ip-technology/5-copyright-traps-you-never-
knew-about)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry#In_fiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry#In_fiction)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertiu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius)

------
March_f6
This kind of thing goes back to '91 at least with Feist v. Rural when Feist
copied telephone entries from Rural's directory which included some fakes.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co).

~~~
tomcam
This turned out to be one of the more interesting IP decisions IMHO. The
Supremes decided that a list cannot be copyrighted if it’s organized in a
simple and obvious way, like a phone book.

Which means that if you went to a bunch of trouble to license a ton of local
phone directories, as you’d have to do back then, in order to create a
national listing, your achievement would be worth exactly nothing. While I’m
grateful to the Supremes for the decision as a dev, I can certainly empathize
with Rural (the losers) as a businessperson.

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crdoconnor
I'm pretty sure this little accident happened as a result of a trap street
near where I used to live:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
wiltshire-22158829](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-22158829)

The 'trap' was that on google maps it was made to look like a regular street
when it clearly wasn't.

~~~
another-cuppa
I've found many errors in Google maps over the years. I'm not convinced any of
them are traps, they are just the result of not actually surveying the areas
they claim to map.

~~~
dfox
Digital cartography is hard. Even without various intentional errors and
distortions (many maps contain intentional dimensional non-linearities for
"strategic reasons", ie. so that they cannot be directly used for directing
artilery fire) the input data is full of various unintentional noise and non-
sense because of the processes that were used in acquiring and digitizing that
data in the first place. Processes ranging from digitizing paper maps of
generally unknown accuracy with digitizer to just guessing positions of things
from sharpie marks on hand-drawn map created by who knows who in the field.
Trying to make some sense of such data was my first real IT job.

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lordnacho
Something similar: vendors of stock price data are said to add extra ticks in
order to catch people who are illegally reselling it.

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elixx
Meet me in the trap, it's goin' down.

