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."
More from the copyright office:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
Do you have ESP?
We live in a society with two sets of rules. They basically boil down to this: if a big guy does it to a little guy, it's okay. If a little guy does it to a big guy, the little guy is gonna get stomped. That is the real American Dream: to become an Important Person, so you can play by the more advantageous set of rules and tell the little people what to do.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The outrage is because the rules aren't being applied equitably (which is NOT the same as equally). It is unacceptable to allow a publisher to steal material from another but have that same publisher sue others for doing likewise. Freedom has to be a two-way street.
(For those wondering about the difference between equal and equitable, the quotation people usually refer to regarding one law for the rich and another for the poor continues "neither are permitted to steal bread or sleep under bridges". Technically, that is equal. But since the rich do not need to do either, it is not equitable.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Their Facebook page is still up though. And people are using it to collate other stolen articles. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=196994196748&topic=23238 Also, someone found a Paula Deen recipe that was stolen, and notified Paula - who has contacted her legal department.
...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
Well, if you had read the article or followed the links, you'd see that the article in question isn't just a recipe. It's a researched article about the history of apple pie, including two medieval recipes, with commentary and a bibliography. No question that it's more than a list of ingredients with instructions.
Yeah. Some people have claimed that Slashdot's response is being hypocritical, however, the key differences are:
MPAA/RIAA sues individual who downloads a song for personal use for $insane_amount per track/video. Person in question did not engage in any commercial activity related to the downloaded item.
Some magazine steals a woman's article (not just the recipe, but the whole article word for word) and commences to use it as part of a commercial product (their magazine). Original author requests a $130 donation to a college and is denied.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The title of this submission should have read "Cooks Source". Cooks is a completely different magazine.
Right, but the country started out with the express intention of NOT having two sets of rules. So I feel it is important to point out that we have failed in that respect, so that we may attempt to correct our failure and hold everyone accountable in the same way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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."
Patent and copyright law need not be the "only things". They're only a means. There are other ways.
Those laws for the little people have been turned against us. They should go. In fact, 1 century ago big entertainment fought against copyright. They wanted to be able to use songs without paying for them. When they figured out they could instead own the songs, leveraging their advantages to obtain them for next to nothing, they changed their (ahem) tune.
Rather frequently, criminals gain control of a victim's weapon, using it against the owner. That's what patent and copyright feels like today. But because it's our knife, somehow we can't bear to part with it. We get ourselves robbed and stabbed, over and over, with our own weapons. Then the survivors among us watch helplessly while the mobsters use the take to put on a magnificent show of being successful citizens, wearing the best suits our money can buy, and hiring the best lawyers to get them out of trouble.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"