FW: London Times Article

Maybe just because I was hired originally as a cartographer by
DMAAC/DMA/NIMA I think there are some fun implications for scenarios
involving 'intentional errors' on the player's and figures maps. 
Anybody
else seen some use for these in a scenario?

Gracias, Glenn/Triphibious (American Mongrel)
You don't have to be French to be a 'frog', or even human!
Nektons - Real Marines! (Die, Ralnai, Die!)
Starguard, Dirtside 2,	Ratner's Space Marines, Stellar Conflicts
and Uprisings, and Full Thrust/2nd.  Resistance is everything!
--------- Begin forwarded message ----------
From: "Wilson, Glenn M." <WilsonG@nima.mil>
<snip>
Subject: FW: London Times Article
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 12:02:25 -0500 
Message-ID: <8B9D41BEE275D3119E7E00805FBE64D3022ADB70@stlx4>

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94712,00.html

TUESDAY MARCH 06 2001
		       Twists in the plot cost AA map cheats
		       ?20m
		       BY JOANNA BALE
 WHEN Ptolemy put together his wonky map of the world
in AD 150, he was setting a cartographic trend which
persists to this day.

Only now, Ordnance Survey gets things wrong on purpose. 

This alarming fact emerged yesterday when the Automobile  Association
agreed to pay ?20 million in an out-of-court  settlement after it was
caught plagiarising Ordnance Survey maps. 

OS cartographers apparently put faults, such as tiny twists in rivers
and
exaggerated curves in roads, in dozens of their maps to trap  
plagiarists. These helped to prove that millions of published guides, 
which the AA claimed as its own work, were
straightforward  copies. 

Centrica, the gas company which owns the AA, paid up after  admitting
that it had used OS originals as source material to create its own maps.
In all, more than 500 publications were involved,  with more than 300
million individual copies printed.
The disclosures did not surprise the world of
cartography, where    plagiarism has been endemic through the ages. 

Ken Atherton, of the British Cartographic Society, said:    "Mapmakers
have been pinching each others' work for centuries.  Christopher Saxton
was one of the earliest British map-makers in  the late 1500s. His work
was pinched by John Speed in
the early  17th century who added bits then passed it all off as
his own." 

 The process of including subtle errors to catch out
the plagiarists   has been a natural progression and is thought to be
widely	 practised around the world, he added. 
 The dispute between the OS and the AA began in 1996
when OS   cartographers noticed close similarities between its
maps and the  AA's road atlases. With the OS anxious to protect its
?30 million  income from copyright royalties, battle commenced. 

Previously, the AA claimed that its own cartographers
produced   the travel guides for its customers. But unwittingly,
the AA had  copied a number of the "fingerprints" - deliberate
and secret   faults incorporated into OS maps to catch out
plagiarists. The   identifying marks include kinks in rivers, the
addition of minor  buildings or exaggerated curves in roads - any tiny
change which  does not drastically alter a map but is easily
identified by those   who have "planted" it. Sometimes, the mapmakers
deliberately   miss out apostrophes in place names or add a
non-existent	tributary to a river or an outbuilding to a farm.
Presented with the   evidence, the AA admitted copying plans of 64
British
towns and  cities - including its "home town" of Basingstoke -
and selling    the rights to other companies, including Marks &
Spencer, WH Smith, Halfords and Thomson Local Directories. 

Despite the spectacular row, the OS, the government
agency that   compiles and updates a collection of 230,000 maps of
Britain, and	the AA, Britain's biggest publisher of road atlases,
will continue to   print titles under their joint names. 

The OS declined to provide specific examples of its
secret system,	saying: "They are not errors or faults, but subtle
and secret ways  of detecting plagiarism, rather like watermarks.
Every map issuer  does something similar. We would have had to reveal
them in  court, so we are pleased an out-of-court settlement
was reached."

		       Tricks of the trade 

			An extra stream tributary 
			Imaginary farm buildings 
			Tiny kinks in rivers 
			Exaggerated curves in roads 
			Missing apostrophes

<snip>
> 
>	Web address: 
<http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94712,00.html>
> 

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