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."
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.
I'm close with you on this. I have believed for a while now that the American Dream is revenge. We love revenge as a society.
Maybe humans love revenge as a species. I don't know, I'm not travelled enough to really speak about other cultures.
But from winning the lotto and quitting your job with a big "fuck you guys" to postal workers going postal, to columbine, to "nuke the entire middle east" and how we treat criminals (we want punishment a lot more than we seem to want rehabilitation), we have a guttural response to everything. We have been hurt, and thus we will seek to hurt. Perhaps we aren't strong enough (money, influence, physical strength, etc) to take our revenge, but some day... some day we'll be the badass who will lay the smack-down.
I'm going to go back to lurking for another year or so now.
what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
I was referring to the non-legal definition of "public domain" which would be "place where the public can go."
Should have made that more clear. Apologies.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
Recipes cannot be copyrighted, they are only a list of facts. The instructions or anything creative attached to them could be.