User:Asianflavoure/sandbox

Terminology

The neologism Mountweazel was coined by The New Yorker based on a fictitious biographical entry in the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia.^[2]

The term nihilartikel, combining the Latin nihil ("nothing") and German Artikel ("article"), is sometimes used.^[1]

Copyright traps

By including a trivial piece of false information in a larger work, it is easier to demonstrate subsequent plagiarism if the fictitious entry is copied along with other material. An admission of this motive appears in the preface to Chambers's 1964 mathematical tables: "those [errors] that are known to exist form an uncomfortable trap for any would-be plagiarist".^[3] Similarly, trap streets may be included in a map, or invented phone numbers in a telephone directory.

Fictitious entries may be used to demonstrate copying, but to prove legal infringement, the material must also be shown to be eligible for copyright (see Feist v. Rural, Fred Worth lawsuit or Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992.)^[4]

Official sources

Most listings of the members of the German parliament feature the fictitious politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid, allegedly a member of the parliament since 1979. Among other activities he is reported to have contributed to a major symposium on the equally fictitious stone louse in Frankfurt.

Reference works

Fictitious entries in reference works often occur in attempt to catch plagiarism of their work, such as:

• In August 2005, The New Oxford American Dictionary gained media coverage^[2] when it was leaked that the second edition contained at least one fictional entry. This later was determined to be the word esquivalience, defined as "the wilful avoidance of one's official responsibilities," which had been added to the edition published in 2001. It was intended as a copyright trap, as the text of the book was distributed electronically and thus very easy to copy.
• Joel Whitburn's pop chart research books say that Ralph Marterie's version of "The Song of Love" peaked at No. 84 for the week ending December 26, 1955. However, Billboard did not put out an issue that week, and Marterie never recorded this song. It is believed to be a copyright trap, however there has been no substantial evidence that proves this to be correct. A similar situation occurs in his compilation of Billboard's rock charts, where Whitburn includes the fictitious song "Drag You Down" by the equally non-existent group "The Cysterz".

Maps

Fictitious entries on maps may be called phantom settlements, trap streets,^[5] paper towns, cartographer's follies, or other names. They are intended to help unmask copyright infringements; if caught, copyright violators would not be able to explain the entry's presence on their maps.^{[citation needed]}

• In 1978, the fictional Ohio towns of Beatosu and Goblu were inserted into that year's official state of Michigan map as nods to the University of Michigan and its traditional rival, The Ohio State University.^[6]
• The fictional town of Agloe, New York, was invented by map makers, but eventually became identified as a real place by its county administration because a building, the Agloe General Store, was erected at its fictional location. The "town" is featured in the novel Paper Towns by John Green and its film adaptation.
• Mount Richard, a fictitious peak on the continental divide in the United States, appeared on county maps in the early 1970s. It was believed to be the work of a draftsman, Richard Ciacci. The fiction was undiscovered for two years.^[6]
• In the United Kingdom in 2001, the Ordnance Survey (OS) obtained a £20m out-of-court settlement from Automobile Association (the AA) after content from OS maps was reproduced on AA maps.^[7] The Ordnance Survey denied that it included "deliberate mistakes" in its maps as copyright traps, claiming the "fingerprints" which identified a copy were stylistic features such as the width of roads.^[8]
• The fictitious English town of Argleton was investigated by Steve Punt in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Punt P.I. The programme concluded that the town's entry may well have originated as a copyright trap.^[9]

Trivia books, etc.

• The Trivia Encyclopedia placed deliberately false information about the first name of TV detective Columbo for copy-trap purposes and then sued Trivial Pursuit (which based some of their questions and answers on the work), without success.

Other Copyright Infringement

• In the summer of 2008, the state-owned Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute (Slovak: Slovenský hydrometeorologický ústav, short: SHMÚ) became suspicious that a competing commercial service, the website meteo.sk, was stealing their data. On August 7, 2008, SHMÚ deliberately altered the temperature for Chopok from 9.5 °C to 1 °C. In a short time, the temperature of 1 °C appeared for Chopok at meteo.sk as well.
• The ANP in the Netherlands once deliberately included a false story about a fire in their radio newscast to see if Radio Veronica takes its news from the ANP. Several hours later, Radio Veronica also aired the story.
• Google, alleging its search results for a misspelling of tarsorrhaphy started appearing in Bing results partway through the summer of 2010, created fabricated search results where a hundred query terms like "hiybbprqag", "delhipublicschool40 chdjob" and "juegosdeben1ogrande" each returned a link to a single unrelated webpage. Nine of the hundred fraudulent results planted by Google were later observed as the first result for the bogus term on Bing.

Humorous Hoaxes

"Bicholim conflict" was a fictitious entry on Wikipedia that lasted from 2007 until 2012.

Practical Jokes

Fictitious entries occasionally feature in other publications as a prank, or practical joke, in attempt to be humorous, such as:

• Rhinogradentia are a fictitious mammalian order, extensively documented in a series of articles and books by the equally fictitious German naturalist Harald Stümpke. Allegedly, both the animals and the scientist were the creations of Gerolf Steiner, a zoology professor at the University of Heidelberg.
• Taro Tsujimoto is a fictional character often included in Buffalo Sabres reference works. Tsujimoto, an alleged Japanese forward, was the creation of Sabres general manager George "Punch" Imlach designed to fool the National Hockey League during the 1974 NHL Amateur Draft; Imlach drafted Tsujimoto and only months later—well after the pick was made official—admitted that the league had been fooled by the fictitious player.
• Franz Bibfeldt is a fictitious theologian created by Robert Howard Clausen for a footnote in a student paper. Bibfeldt was later popularized by Clausen's classmate Martin Marty as an ongoing in-joke among theologians, including a book and a parody lecture series at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
• At least two sports teams at Georgia Tech have long included George P. Burdell, a fictitious student originally created as a practical joke by a Tech student in 1927, in their lists of lettermen in team media guides:
  • Football: Lists Burdell as a letterman in the 1928, 1929, and 1930 seasons.
  • Men's basketball: Lists Burdell as a letterman in the 1955–56, 1956–57, and 1957–58 seasons.

• The book The Golden Turkey Awards describes many bizarre and obscure films. The authors of the work state that one film described by the book is a complete hoax, and they challenge readers to spot the made-up film; the imaginary film was Dog of Norway, which supposedly starred "Muki the Wonder Dog", named after the authors' own dog.

Puzzles/Games

Many publications have included false items and then challenged readers to identify it, including:

• Australian palaeontologist Tim Flannery's book Astonishing Animals includes one imaginary animal and leaves it up to the reader to distinguish which one it is.
• The product catalog for Swedish consumer electronics and hobby articles retailer Teknikmagasinet contains a fictitious product. Finding that product is a contest, Blufftävlingen, in which the best suggestion for another fictitious product from someone who spotted the product gets included in the next issue.
• Muse, a US magazine for children 10–14, regularly includes a two-page spread containing science and technology news. One of the news stories is false and readers are encouraged to guess which one.
• Games (a magazine devoted to games and puzzles) used to include a fake advertisement in each issue as one of the magazine's regular games.

Fiction on Fictitious Entries

Fictitious entries are sometimes plot points in fiction, including:

• A Fred Saberhagen science fiction short story, "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron", in which an encyclopedia article for a star system was a fictitious entry included in the encyclopedia to detect plagiarism, which caused a Berserker ship to end up in an empty star system where it ran out of fuel and ceased to be a threat to humanity.
• Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" tells of an encyclopedia entry on what turns out to be the imaginary country of Uqbar. This leads the narrator to the equally fantastic region of Tlön, the setting for much of the country's literature.
• The fictitious entry Agloe, New York, is a key plot point in John Green's 2008 novel Paper Towns and its film adaptation. Paper Towns also references the fictitious entry "Lillian Mountweazel" in the name of the Spiegelman family's dog, Myrna Mountweazel.
• In the Doctor Who episode "Face the Raven", a hidden community lives in a London alley. Clara Oswald helps the Doctor start the search for that community by searching for any trap streets within the London city limits.