Slashdot Mirror
Cook's Magazine Claims Web Is Public Domain
Isarian writes with a story, as reported on Gawker and many other places, that "Cooks Source Magazine is being raked over the coals today as word spreads about its theft of a recipe from Monica Gaudio, a recipe author who discovered her recipe has been published without her knowledge. When confronting the publisher of the offending magazine, she was told, 'But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!' In addition to the story passing around online, Cooks Source Magazine's Facebook page is being overwhelmed with posts by users glad to explain copyright law to the wayward publisher."
What's this thing at the bottom of my page?
"All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc."
It's alright if the copyright infringement is committed by a media company?
Consequences will never be the same!
More from the copyright office:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
Do you have ESP?
Here we go, it's on the internet it's fair game.
LET THE FILE SHARING BEGIN!
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Where it will therefore become public domain!
Someone should have called these folks in to testify at the Jammie Thomas-Resset hearings yesterday!
Gonna be fun watching the /. crowd respond to this - the exact opposite scenario from the vast majority of /.'s news involving IP.
It looks like their site has stopped responding and offline. Making a dumb move and then a stupid comment can cause website outage.
We're not happy 'til you're not happy.
Everyone is just happy to rip everyone work. But if a media corp do that, boo-hoo.
Cry babies.
I have question. How is cry-babby formed?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not having read the article at all, I will weigh in anyway.
From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
"Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.
Only original works of authorship are protected by copyright. “Original” means that an author produced a work by his or her own intellectual effort instead of copying it from an existing work."
Thus, it is probably pretty difficult to wield copyright law (in the USA) to prevent someone from republishing your recipe. At the very least you will need to show it contains "substantial literary expression" and was developed without building on an existing work. Rules for games and instructions for processes are also not easily protected by copyright laws.
Please help by finding copies of their graphics, stylesheets etc. on the 'net and posting them on your own site. It *is* public domain, after all.
What will end up happening is everyone will make a huge deal out of this. The case will go before the supreme court or find it's way into congress and the Riaa/MPAA will use it to pass even harsher copyright law under the guise of protecting the 'little guy'. Then we are all more screwed than before.
They didn’t just steal the recipe. They stole the whole article and reprinted it without her permission (though they did at least attribute it to her).
In fact the recipes themselves didn’t belong to her – they were taken from old cookbooks. They would probably be considered public domain, I think.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Recipes can not be copyrighted.
if you put something on the net, you have given up control of it.
That is the practical situation right now, laws are just lagging (badly) behind.
...is getting hammered right now. Like, several comments a second. Fascinating to watch a meltdown in real time. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooks-Source-Magazine/196994196748
sue sue sue sue sue sue
brought to you by the captcha "sucking"
Copyright is stupid. The *only* justification for granting a data-creator control over every consumer of that data is: incentive to create.
That doesn't apply anymore. There are plenty of ways of monetizing free data products. They are in use today and succeeding. And some expensive things (like drug formulas or what-have-you) could just be taxpayer funded as a last resort (which probably won't be necessary anyway, since such things are managed under patent law already).
Copyright is an anachronism. In today's technological and sociological landscape, it is a very harmful non-sequitor. It should be abolished utterly.
Looking at whois, "cookssource.com" was registered six months ago.
Now a lot of people know who they are, so points for Slashdot giving them free advertising, as well as anybody else who clicked through to such an obvious "HEY LOOK AT ME EVERYBODY." Look for a statement of contrition and a re-launch with original content (which they probably already have on the backburner).
Suckers!
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
as how they responded. They were rude and insulting and she just asked for a donation to a local college. To respond in the way they did anyone would be upset and, out of principal, take legal action. They could have just said, sure we'll make the $130 donation and be happy, but they had to insult her instead. The magazine should donate 10 times the amount and fire the editor.
My string of letters that happened to form words which in turn formed sentences was 'stolen' from me! By stolen, I of course mean not actually taken from me! Here's another example of a worthless law where information is forced to be restricted due to worthless paper.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Food Network, WebMD, NPR, and a LOT more.. Visit Cook's Source Facebook page and you'll see a thread in the forums where they are picking apart just this month's issue, finding rampant plagiarism. Both Photos AND Articles have been found to be taken from several sources. And that's just THIS MONTH'S issue!
Recipes should be fuckin free you idiots. WTF is this slashdot.org am I at the right site?
I should slap you all with a copy of the cookie recipe distributed with gcc you posers.
The web might not be simply "public domain" but I thought that cooking recipes were *specifically* not copyrightable and that this had been ruled many years ago. So what is the big deal and how can the original author be complaining?
Well the lawyerly advice on here is not always the best, at least it would have been better than what the letter writer got. IANAL, but I am also not a moron and know that wasn't a smart response.
Spelling and grammar mistakes specifically left in to give the grammar and spelling nazis a meaning to their life.
The title of this submission should have read "Cooks Source". Cooks is a completely different magazine.
Actually, recipes are just instructions and are therefore not eligible for copyright in the United States. Though that doesn't make "the internet" public domain.
Various people have already identified material there from the Food Network, Martha Stewart Whole Living, NPR...
Someone should run Cook's Source through TurnItIn, which has a comprehensive plagiarism search.
They just got hit on by the Los Angeles Times and Publisher's Weekly. Advertisers are reported to have canceled. One article reads "How to Kill Your Magazine".
site slashdotted.
2. In the right situation, they make a huge stink, doing more damage to the criminal than the criminal did. I.E. Cook's Magainze's reputation may be totally destroyed by the moronic, illegal act of one editor, not the owner. The owner, who is probably a lot smarter than the editor will almost certainly end up paying the $130 donation, not to mention a lot more in legal fees and advertising/marketing to get their paper back.
3. Also note how the message gets lost with a whole bunch of people arguing about recipees being copyrightable. Irrelevant, more than a recipee was copied. Clearly the people that bring up the recipee issue are clue-less (probably did not read the article), and wasting even more effort with pointless, irrelevant foolishness
4. Another major issue is how someone got a job as an editor without knowing anything about how the business works? You pay people to write articles, you can't copy them. Thinking the internet is public domain is pretty bad - and not thinking "hey, why don't I just copy all my articles from this public domain internet" thing makes her really stupid.
5. But it also shows the general rudeness of editors. In general editors have set up a writing system that is incredibally rude to the writers. How would you feel if you were trying to sell a painting that you created and the guy said "I will only look at it if you agree not to show it to anyone else?" And then waited months to say "No Thank you." But somehow this is OK with the written word (mainly because so many people write - it is easier to try than most other art forms.) This editor clearly needs some humility, and writers in general need to get more respect.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The recipes are anyway from 14th and 16th century books. It is not about the recipes, but the article.
Who will be the first to download the entire cookssource.com website and post it on their own domain? It's allowed; it's all public domain.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
..."The Court of Public Opinion / Adjudication / Execution". Tear. That. Magazine (and it's website). Apart.
I mean, information wants to be free, and all?
How is copying another's writings (to which you have no claim) and making it publicly available any different than taking music or movies and making them available?
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Anybody who has used Stumble Upon (or similar) knows how much people swipe from other sites to put on their own to make money from adwords and the like. I even Stumble Upon'ed a picture I took of my own cat that somebody found from my personal site and put captions on and published. It was ranked #7 in the top 100 on the site which I found rather amusing.
But don't you nerds always tell us that information wants to be free? I'm not seeing the outrage here.
That phrase does not mean what you think it means.
Bow-ties are cool.
Keep an eye on this one. Should a judge give these guys a foolishly favorable judgement, this could invalidate every P2P lawsuit ever filed!
...so I don't know how it works. But I assume Cook's Source could just nuke their own page?
I hope someone is making copies.
and 'kookssource.com' are registered domain names and have parodies up?
3, 2, 1...
As for Disney extending copyright on Mickey Mouse, why shouldn't they be allowed to do that if they're still making money off of Mickey Mouse? I've never heard a convincing argument why Mickey Mouse should be taken away from them if he's still a viable property. The original copyright lengths were decided in an era before long-term mass media, and laws change to reflect changing circumstances.
And what's the convincing argument that copyright should be extended to a period long enough to protect Disney's assets? Why should they retain exclusive cultural domain over something Walt Disney created over 80 years ago? "Because they can make money from it" is not a sufficient reason in my opinion.
It seems to me that there has to be a reasonable limit. The protections of copyright exist to provide incentive to creators to make new work, to give them the protections they need to profit from it. But if an artwork rises in prominence to the point where it is well remembered a lifetime later - I think that's beyond what any single company should have the ability to control. That's a cultural institution.
Without some kind of hard limit, exclusivity extends perpetually, and culture itself becomes a thing subject to domination by those with the greatest back-catalog of assets. Any new work becomes subject to scrutiny: does this new song use any bits of melody that can be traced back to another artist's work? The barest traces of influence become grounds to demand tribute to the media god who, in times scarcely remembered, created something that happened to turn out to be a hit. There has to be a limit. And of course there is a limit, except for the fact that they keep changing it every time it threatens Disney's assets.
I don't want a system that so heavily favors established powers. New players should have the power to create without fear of being litigated out of existence because they were influenced by a piece of work that influenced a huge chunk of the world's population for generations.
Bow-ties are cool.
Well, it's the cry-bees visiting the cry-flowers. Or something like that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And if you are not an idiot you would have already hired competent legal counsel to advise you on matters of law.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Would you believe she is even now unrepentant?
She replied on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=103853763018020&id=196994196748
She believes her original mail was an apology and thinks this exposure may be good for her.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
So yes, there is copyright.
However, if you put content on the publicly accessible Worldwide Web, you have no valid
grounds to complain if someone creates a mashup comprised of links to your specific content
pages and images. Even if they surround those links (or frames/images) with ads.
They did not copy them. They referred to them, and there is
no such thing as a don't-refer right (to published material).
If you like, you can technically block access to the content based on the referrer attribute in the request,
but that's about it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
you do have legal grounds for action
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Well, first you have to get a baby. Then kick it up a notch. But to really do it right, you've got to put a bun in the oven at 98 degrees for about 9 months or so.
Wrote, posted, edited, cut/pasted/renamed, lied about is COPYRIGHTED!
Everybody, everywhere owes me millions!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
....of links that they've ripped off.
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=196994196748&topic=23238
Actually, many of the posted recipes on the profile have people replying with links to the original articles.
It looks like often times they are just swiping the entire article (not just the recipe) verbatim! Wow!
The Statute of Anne was passed in 1710, three hundred years ago, and formed the foundation of US copyright law, with some sections used verbatim. This Statute stipulated copyright terms of 14 years, renewable for a second 14 if the author was still alive. Within this broader context, it seems clear that the concept of a limited copyright term meant "limited" in terms of something within a human scale, and, importantly, bounded by the life of the original author. Instead, what we have now is a de facto unlimited copyright term, with copyrights held not by the original author, but rather by faceless and essentially immortal corporations.
Bringing up 5000 years as a "limited" copyright term, while pedantically correct, is completely irrelevant within this context of copyright on a human scale. And, within this context, Disney (among many others) has egregiously overstepped any morally or historically defensible bounds.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
(Apologies to Utah Phillips.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
ipso facto
Bye!
Recipes cannot be copyrighted, they are only a list of facts. The instructions or anything creative attached to them could be.
Under U.S. law a recipe is can only be protected by copyright if it contains significant literary or artistic expression. Even then, if it can be reduced to a list of ingredients and a list of simple steps, that list of ingredients and list of steps can be copied because they do not include the literary or artistic portions. For example, suppose you have a recipe for a Bourbon Manhattan...
1. Pour ingredients into cocktail shaker full of ice.
2. Cover and shake 5 times
3. Strain into martini glass.
There's nothing there to copyright. Anyone can take it and reproduce it. If I include several paragraphs of how to choose Bourbon, then it is subject to copyright. But that copyright covers the artistic content, not the ingredient list or steps to follow. The ingredient list and the steps are yours to take and to put into your own bartenders guide. All you need to do is strip out the copyrightable content and you're in the clear.
Of course in this case I don't see a link to the offending recipe, so there's no way for me to know whether it is subject to copyright or not.
Support SETI@home
wget -U Yoink -r -p http://www.cookssource.com/
First the argument was that the Internet would break down boundaries and make us all all-singing, all-dancing folk holding hands and getting along in general. Then Yahoo found out the hard way that national laws still apply to the Internet.
Then the argument was that the free sharing of files would obliterate the music and film industries. As we've seen, legislation and court decisions have shown that Big Media has big, sharp teeth. They can't cut off filesharing, but it's certainly impossible to build a Napster or Grokster style business around it. The Pirate Bay saga shows that you have to have massive tungsten-carbide balls to take on Big Media.
As others have noted, the mimeograph, the recordable cassette tape, the VCR, and other technologies have all at one time or another heralded the beginning of the end for copyright, yet it and the business conglomerates built atop it remain quite resilient.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The difference here is that the magazine is taking other peoples content, with no compensation, then SELLING advertising space. The magazine is turning a profit.
You've heard of The Pirate Bay, right? They are regularly applauded by Slashdot readers, and they built a business on selling ads next to the files they provide.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The anarchist in me says that recipe authors should allowed to submit their processes to the trademark office.
I may not care that its a copyright violation and do as i please, but i don't pretend its not, while attempting to justify it to the public.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Willful copyright infringement for commercial redistribution.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Only around 300 comments to this thread.
The Cooks Source Flamewar has many more.
Come on over and join the roast!
What she did was stupid and disgusting, but I bet a lot of the Facebook crowd who are lambasting her take a break to download music without paying for it... :)
Why isn't the Cooking Industry Association of America in on this??
The free software and culture movement wasted years coming up with ingenuous copyleft licenses like GNU, CreativeCommons, MIT, etc. and all along the web was public domain anyway? Well how about that?
non-obligatory cracked article here
I do not know if this was pointed out elsewhere -- I am certainly not going to read all the comments to find out -- but this post contains a rather large error in relation to copyright. The Slashdot post says:
However, the Gawker article says:
IANAL, but by my understanding of US copyright law according to statements of such people as Jessica Litman, recipes are not subject to copyright as they are merely a set of facts. Copyright does not cover facts. It covers creative works. Cooking may be an art, but the documentation of a set of procedures is not. So, if the "article" is merely a recipe, Cooks Source is completely correct about its own materials -- although they used entirely the wrong language to express this and made incorrect statements about the Net and copyright law.
I believe the Slashdot post should be amended to avoid this error as it confuses the entire issue. If, of course, there is some reason why the word "recipe" was used instead of "article", Slashdot should be the first to point out the errors in the other publications.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
There is actually precedent that has determined that recipes--at least, lists of ingredients and/or instructions for preparing them--are not copyrightable. Point of interest, but jokes are not copyrightable also. (Though a specific performance of those jokes can be.)
Reference
VERY interesting talk about making money in industries that are exempt from copyright, specifically the fashion industry.
The slashdot position is just an equal-but-opposite reaction.
If slashdot can't have it both ways (GPL enforced but proprietary copyright not enforced), then neither should "Some Company" have it both ways (GPL not enforced but proprietary copyright enforced).
My understanding is that the recipe itself, the list of ingredients, is not copyrightable. Some common sense from old ruling lacking in modern ones. BUT the text describing the method of combining those ingredients, the actual prose descriptions, not the facts involved, are copyrightable. And that wayward publisher should understand that everything they have every put on the web without attribution to the actual copyright owner is able to be in some limited ways a source of litigation against them.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
2.5 millennia at a minimum: http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/3/257.full?ijkey=rF2MI0t8NYrGuJJ&keytype=ref#p-103
I think they should do way instain copywrithe who steal their recipee.
This headline should really be fixed as it fails to differentiate between Cook's Illustrated and the offending Cook's source, the former is often simply called "Cook's" so a more specific headline (in my opinion) is in order.
Any and all content posted above may be ignored, considered irrelevant, or otherwise dismissed.
Actually, I know that it's not. All information, including this post, are automatically protected by copyright of some sort. But frankly, they probably shouldn't be. It's tantamount to copyrighting language, and stifles the free exchange of ideas. Then we have to go through weird "paraphrasing" hoops in order to retransmit a captivating idea. If we could, language would have been copyrighted too; and then no one would be able to learn anything from anyone else.
And btw, recipes are actually exempt from copyright rules.
--
$tar -xvf
They did not first invent the universe.
Fortunately some things are protected from copyright abuse like aspects of recipes and lists. The problem of the magazine was it apparently re-printed a whole article from another publication notwithstanding that just because it's in a public area(the web) doesnt mean it's in the public domain any more than an advertisement on the side of a city bus is in the public domain just because it's out in public.
The main problem is legalized copyright greed facilitated by corrupt congressmen over the past two centuries.
$130 bucks is a reasonable request but thousands for a file-shared crummy song(most of which are nothing but noise-pollution) is outright grand theft aided and abetted by laws that should never have been passed.
I think Disney does deserve the right to Mickey Mouse. Why?
Because Walt Disney (the man) invented Mickey. Disney (the man) wanted his invention to be owned by Disney (the business). That was his prerogative, as the inventor and thus the owner of Mickey. Now Disney (the business) owns Mickey. Simple as that.
Sure Disney is a big, successful business. Good for them. And if you want something like Mickey, then go and invent your own character.
Compare that to knowledge, and my tune changes. In my view, no one has the right to prevent other people from using knowledge.
Knowledge is typically gained from discovery. The very act of discovery implies that there is prior art. Some prior art is found freely occurring in nature (ex. useful organic compunds, processes) while other prior art (such as sorting algorithms) is worked out by clever people. Either way, gaining such knowledge does not happen by invention. It happens by some form of discovery.
Why am I against copyrighting or patenting knowledge? Because that makes natural things illegal, which of course ridicules the whole concept of legal ownership. (Arguably, that's the very reason we're having this discussion.)
Say I patent a human gene. What happens now (or in a hypothetical big brother future) to those who naturally have that gene?
Say I patent some aspect of physics. Does that mean that no-one alse is allowed to use that natural law without my permission?
It's patently ridiculuos (pun inteded). What's ridiculuos is not respected. That is why patent laws today are not respected (in various ways).
So, I am against patenting things like genes and naturally occurring medicines.
But I do accept copyrighting things like media and carefully designed medicines.
That said, the whole anti-piracy thing has gone too far. Respect goes both ways. If we consumers are expected to respect copyright holders, then copyright holders must respect consumers.
For example, DVD regions is a bloody pain. I can't legitimately buy a movie in one country and expect to be able to play it in another part of the world?!? Screw them!
Different example. How many times have we read how an artist politely asks (in a forum, say) his fans to respect his source of income, and consequently his income gets a massive boost?
Well, that's my opinion anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC-tVHLM99w