Slashdot Mirror
Cooks Source Magazine Apologizes — Sort Of
taco8982 writes "Cooks Source has published a statement in response to the uproar over claiming the web is public domain a couple of weeks ago. While it does contain an apology, I'll leave it to individual readers to determine how apologetic it actually is." It also seems that the publisher has decided to cease publication entirely.
Its sad really. The problem is that I have been so overworked and stretched that when this woman -- Monica -- contacted me, I was on deadline and traveling at the rate of 200 mile a day for that week (over 900 in total for that week), which I actually told her, along with a few other "nice" things, which she hasnt written about.
We're all busy, man. I slept four hours last night after spending dinner out at a birthday party and coming home to try to write 2,000 words for NaNoWriMo. If I now build a spider that scrapes all of cookssource.com and I offer it up in a torrent, are you going to excuse me because I was too busy at the time to realize that I was infringing on your work? Do you think that Monica f rollicks through the flowers all day long?
She doesn't say that she was rude, she doesn't say that I agreed (and did) to pay her.
Isn't that weird how people get rude when they unexpectedly find their work being used to sell magazines? And then when you say that you'll negotiate a price later you think they'd just clam up and be happy they even got something! Well, that's how your excerpt sounded, anyway. Look she quoted you as saying:
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!
Yes after that statement, it's clear you totally meant to pay her. So if she's quoting you out of context, why didn't you include excerpts from her initial contact to show how rude or out of line she was?
leaving several people, including a chef who had relocated to this area from Florida -- out of work
I am just sobbing with sympathy right now. Please, please take all my money and give it to this poor man who apparently made an imprudent relocation. Listen, my father has to go on unemployment from time to time ... so can I go around using New York Times articles to sell my magazine?
... when she wanted money for Columbia University, it seemed ironic because there were all these people in this small town going into the holidays with no jobs, and no, well, nothing.
I don't care if she wanted the money for heroin! It's her work and you used it without her permission. You're exhibiting the attitude that cooks should not be reimbursed for their recipes! Then because she's using this money for college you hope to garner more sympathy because you live in a small town with high unemployment?! So by that logic, I guess Nigerian 419 scammers are saints?
The bad news is that this is probably the final straw for Cooks Source. We have never been a great money-maker even with all the good we do for businesses.
Look, you just outlined how poorly your operation is being ran and used that as an excuse to use other people's work without permission. Maybe it is time for you to move on to something else. It's nice that you are guilt tripping everyone into thinking that they were 'the final straw' to kill you.
If you want to be in publishing, you should study copyright law. If you think copyright law should be different in regards to recipes and -- seemingly -- the internet, then you should become a lawyer and work to change that. You might want to take some business courses too if you think small magazines deserve to survive in this environment, maybe apply at Columbia University? br>
Your proposition that "every time someone has a bad day, it's okay for them to use anyone's material online" is laughable and would result in pure chaos. Enjoy your own self-created chaos. You did it. You. Take some responsibility and stop whining with long drawn out excuses and guilt trips.
My work here is dung.
I just read the letter, and he sounds more like he's trying to blame someone else. Anyone else get the feeling?
Smoking cures cancer. Smoking also cures stupidity. check darwinawards . com for some stupid stuff
*through history but you're right. In early Christianity the Bible was written only in Latin, and translating it was forbidden. Some guy (i forget his name, sorry) translated it into German and English (not sure about the English) and spread it around He was pretty much ostracized for doing this. After he died, they dug up his body, nailed it to a cross, and set it on fire.
Smoking cures cancer. Smoking also cures stupidity. check darwinawards . com for some stupid stuff
He's lucky she bothered to actually notify him...I don't bother talking to people anymore, it's straight to the DMCA take downs and damages claims, idiots like this have made the 'civilized' approach ineffective.
Well, at least she was nice enough to close the TCP Connection at the end of her statement with a FIN. So to her I say "FIN ACK"
That "some guy" wouldn't happen to be Martin Luther, "founder" of the Protestant section of Christianity, would it?
That's as original as Cooks Source, too. FIN
Now there's an excuse: "I went on the WWW, completely ignored the fact that everything is copyrighted as soon as it is written, whether it says '@ copyright 20XX [insert person]' or not, and just copied and altered it anyway"
Oh god, I do hope you're joking.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's sad when steals something that doesn't belong to them.
Sadder still when they whine about being too busy to take a phone call or reply to email in a timely way when the owner tried to contact you. This is the 21st Century, on the internet; we don't wait two or three days for people to get back to us.
And the saddest thing of all is an editor who can't spell "it's" correctly in the very first sentence of their lame explanation for having stolen something.
That "some guy" wouldn't happen to be Martin Luther, "founder" of the Protestant section of Christianity, would it?
Hmmm, that name seems to ring a bell. No matter, his 'lifetime +70 years' copyright on it has got to be expired by now, right?
She's a snake, and I'm glad her magazine folded. She seems full more of excuses than remorse. She regrets getting caught, and having it publicized, not that she took an article without permission.
What is this? 1990?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You're a publisher. You are in business. You publish a magazine. Thus you have a legal responsibility to understand copyright. You still don't get that taking something EVEN WITH THE AUTHOR'S NAME INTACT is copyright infringement, and that just because it doesn't say "DON'T STEAL ME OR I SUE YOU" it doesn't mean it's okay to pinch someone else work. You didn't ask, so you don't get. It doesn't really matter about offering compensation after the event because, by your own public admission, you did something that you shouldn't have. That author has the legal right to block your publication and do all sorts of nasties to you because of that. A lot of copyright cases end up with a financial settlement but that's not *required* or even *satisfactory* to resolution of a problem unless the injured party agrees to that.
"I copied your article from the Times into my book word-for-word, but didn't bother to ask - sorry about that, here's some cash!" - it doesn't work like that, and if you'd asked, the author most likely would have been more than happy to let you have it (your name in a published book = wow) but equally they may be under some contractual restrictions regarding what they can do with that text, they may have licensed it from someone else. But you don't know because you didn't ask.
Then you go and make an essentially naive and unresearched opinion that shows you've never understood copyright law (it doesn't need an attribution or even a copyright symbol to be subject to copyright). You don't immediately retract or explain. Admittedly then you are harassed unnecessarily because of a stupid quote that you stupidly said, but the core of the problem is that you're a publisher that infringed copyrighted content (as far as the world knows, because you've just admitted that). *That's* why advertisers won't want to deal with you, because you could be out of business tomorrow if it turns out that you've been doing it for years because you do not understand copyright law and finally it's caught up with you. It's not a big deal - even the big papers do it - there have been a couple of "whoops, we used your photo without asking" cases in the national press in the UK lately and it's ended up in court or in large settlements.
The problem was not understanding the law surrounding the business you were in. The rest of the "admission" is just emotional padding to try to instil guilt. A lot of people are out of work at the moment, but nowhere near the most in history (and considering the population is ever-growing, that means this *isn't* the worst it's ever been by a long shot), and trying to push that angle is just crass. And we're not talking about someone who wants to bankrupt you, we're talking about someone asking for fair recompense for an infringing act that you just admitted you did.
Nobody cares about the damn recipe, you just made a fool of yourself by not understanding copyright (and in your business, that's like a taxi driver not knowing what a brake is), and then propagated that by making hugely incorrect public statements and trying to paint people as bad.
If you've gone out of business because of your own misunderstanding of a well-known law within your professional field, that's really your fault and no-one else's (and I fail to believe that this one incident is enough to stop the business unless it's through your own unwillingness to actually continue - you were already far, far, overworked but couldn't afford to hire help - sounds exactly like a business on the edge to me, and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back). In future, consult lawyers, don't make public statements, and learn how to do your own job - not painting everyone else as the enemy might help as well, also having a bit more of a steel jaw when it comes to random people on Facebook etc. commenting on you.
I don't really care about copyright and have had websites that I've written stolen and copied byte-for-byte onto confusingly similar domains. I threatened too, and got them removed
She wasn't sorry at all, but was happy that it gave her tons of new "friends" and views.
She just didn't understand that she was stealing someone else's labor.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I didn't pay any attention at all to this when the initial article went by, don't even remember it.
I'm really confused by the Slashdot ethics sometimes.
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
But it's not, it's stuff off web sites, and we identify with producing that, so we think the infringing party is the evil doer.
This is (was) a two-person organization putting out a tiny little magazine that was given out for free at the grocery store, so far as I can tell. Imagine your mom and her next-door neighbor putting out a magazine, assuming your mom barely knows anything about copyright.
This lady assumed that if it's free to get it's free to use and free to redistribute. For people who aren't hip-deep in the thing, the Internet can definitely give that impression.
Who makes up something as goofy as "the Internet is in the public domain" if they don't think it's true?
Based on the statement/apology her little magazine was teetering on the brink already, and now it's toppled over it. It's more an amusement than anything to most of us - I mean, I find it interesting, but I don't think it's exactly a tragedy.
I've had small businesses fail. It's like a death in the family. It's awful.
For her, it's a tragedy.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
The whole reason we have copyright is because information wants to be free. If you could put your information out in the world and not have people want to take it away and do their own thing, you wouldn't need copyright. There's no conflict for someone to acknowledge information wants to be free AND that we need copyright (AND that current copyright is too far-reaching). Maybe in your mind everyone on the planet hold an extremely polarised opinion on every topic, but most people are realists and live with compromises (not to mention /. is a wealth of differing opinion, just because a bunch of people think there should be no copyright at all, doesn't mean you won't find plenty of people who think a reasonable period of copyright with fair use is bad).
She really seemed to not have a clue about copyright law, and continues to be oblivious. She started off assuming the web was public domain. Now she seems to be assuming that's unless there's a copyright notice attached. I don't believe her when she claims to have failed to check. Otherwise she would have been a little more apologetic.
Actually I think we might have forgiven her for this if she didn't then add rudeness. If she'd have said "I'm sorry, and while I'd love to give money to the universtiy we're a tiny business barely scraping by. Is there anything else we could do?" she might, just, have been forgiven. she didn't take this route. Probably because at the time she genuinely believed she hadn't done anything wrong.
For those who forgot the story: "... I observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. ----- "Mr. Starks of Helios, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom.... I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows." continued: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html
Later when Karen received a lot of internet attention, she tried to blame others. She should have been blaming herself (stole students' property, threatened a lawsuit against Helios), but instead filed a defamation suit against Helios.
Same applies to this woman behind Cooks. She has no one to blame but herself.
She says the author of the stolen recipe was wrong, but it was "Miss Cooks" who was wrong,
because of her poor attitude. She's like a thief caught at 7/11 - blaming everyone else except herself.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If the quality of the "writing" now on http://www.cookssource.com/ is anything to go by I doubt anyone's going to miss the magazine.
Zwingli in Switzerland started the protestant moevement of Christianity, Martin Luther was a Johnny come lately.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Its interesting to see all these comments in this article saying things like "Maybe she will learn to respect copyright and the labor put into copyrighted works next time" and so on because if this was an article about expanding DRM, the comments would be more along the lines of "Dirty bastards, I should have the right to listen to music and watch movies freely."
I realize that its not necessarily the same commentators, but still. How does that saying go, you can't have your cake and eat it too?
And the saddest thing of all is an editor who can't spell "it's" correctly in the very first sentence of their lame explanation for having stolen something.
Why do you think she wasn't writing her own material in the first place?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
In one of the blogs that sprang up over this magazine, people pointed out other articles and passages she had cribbed -- from the NYT to Wikipedia. The guiding principles of the magazine appears to have been "Fly under the radar; cater to people who are not web-literate."
A wise poster once said, "Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. Information doesn't want shit." Information inherently doesn't want anything. But yeah, some people just naturally want to share some shit, and naturally horde some other shit. It has more to do with general human nature than anything else.
The internet detectives went back through previous issues and found that almost every article ever published in this mag was lifted from somewhere else. They never had an ounce of original content. All they did was take other's work and try to profit off it. Eventually they got caught. How anyone can feel sorry for them is mind boggling.
... is the end of the page, where two large graphics cover the last part of the text, and beneath that is a link to something about Intuit web site building software.
But when was the Bible not translated? Ulfilas translated it to Gothic in the 4th century, and there are English and French translations from later in the middle ages. A quick wiki search shows up that the ban on translation was made by Pope Gregory IX in the 13th century, and it doesn't seem to have stopped much.
Maybe "translating" really means "owning" and people didn't own it because it was prohibitively expensive until the printing press. If you can't afford a book, what does it matter what language it's in?
Also, what does this have to do with TFA? I'll be quiet now.
Even better: Did she not argue that her magazine's rewrite actually made the article, you know, better and more professional?
If THAT is what this woman calls quality text...
Isnt copyright supposed to promote creativity and new stuff?
One more company shut because of copyright...
Whats published in the internet has become public domain! Get over it! Find other ways to gain money! Suing everyone will take us nowhere!
It's more than stupidity. If the snippy note had begun with the phrase "My understanding is that [content on the web is public domain unless accompanied by a copyright notice]" her appalling ignorance would have earned her a brisk education from the aggrieved party, and then she could have shot herself in the foot on the next exchange.
Robin Hood had the brains to hide in the forest while practising his unique brand of beneficence. Google had bags of coin to weather postbellum negotiation. Plainview had H.W. What was her plan?
Also, I don't get the whole "late at night, very tired" emergency fill thing. What's topical or time sensitive about the history of apple pie? Was it a theme issue on apple pie? An organized editor would have rescued something passable (and equally generic) from the emergency spike.
"In early Christianity the Bible was written only in Latin"
That would be the New Testament, the Old Testament was Hebrew, IIRC.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Wait, people make the "wait, people do something I don't" joke? What is this? 1991?
No actually it wouldn't
I believe the poster is referring to William Tyndale
Information doesn't want to be free.
People want other people's information to be free.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The New Testament was written in Greek. Fairly amateur translations into Latin came a couple of hundred years later, and then eventually St. Jerome made the standard Latin translation called the Vulgate.
Erm...actually, the New Testament was written in Greek...then translated to Latin.
Everything on the Internet _should_ be considered to be in the public domain. Copyright is stupid and the whole concept of "intellectual property" is stupid as well. Owning ideas means keeping mankind back.
We can't fight the music mafia and demand true freedom of information and then condemn someone who claims the same freedom of information for his/her business.
Be true to your principles, free information everywhere and for everyone!
He's conflating the two. Luther was buried and not later exhumed (the ruling powers in the area stayed Lutheran).
Right - by the time the prohibition came, it was an attempt to maintain control of the political arm of a body that its members increasingly felt should be focused on the religious side... supporting the secular political authority (be it independently or through direct interaction--this last reflecting the early Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican positions, the former looking towards more modern expressions).
One could add the Georgian and Armenian translations, the Aramaic translation called the Pesshita, the translation of Ss. Cyril and Methodius and their successors into Slavonic, the translation into Komi by St Stephan of Perm, etc. etc. That the urban myth of "No Christians could ever read the Bible in their native languages, because the big bad Church would kill you" persists is sad.
The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Latin came later (along with various other translations--Syriac, Coptic, etc.). If you look here, about an 8th of the way down, there is a heading "What is the NET Bible?" that looks at where the original texts came from (I figured an actual Bible translation's site might be better than wikipedia in this case).
Admittedly, some cooking magazines (Food & Wine) are more about things besides the cooking, but the recipes in it are quite fantastic if you are selective enough.
Boy, I get really tired of 'information wants to be free'. It's as poorly worded as 'global warming'. The truth of the matter is that information can't be owned. One can have rights to information, but if it ain't tangible, it's imaginary.
Not quite. Copyright was originally to protect authors from publishers, and publishers who'd made deals with authors from other publishers. Note the US Constitution says "authors and inventors" can have a limited time monopoly, not publlishers. Nobody dreamed that some day everyone would be a publisher.
But I agree -- we need copyright, but the terms are WAY too long and fair use should be protected. However, I personally don't believe that bits in a computer should be considered "tangible form", as there's nothing permanent like there is with books, LPs, CDs, DVDs, film, printed photos, etc. I don't think MP3s should be considered tangible, and you should be able to freely share your digital media. Authors can make money on real books, musicians can make money from CDs.
Free Martian Whores!
justice is served (take off glasses) yeaaaaah!
No - maybe "quater-assed" at best...
Apologies usually don't start with a 4 paragraph rant on rude the person you're apologizing to was...
Hmmm, that name seems to ring a bell. >
That would be Quasimodo, no?
Lucky thing his name was Luther. He fit right in.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Taking other people's content and making money out of it without asking permission of the owner, or giving them recompense, is exactly what the owners of YouTube have created a fortune out of doing. I wonder how many of those prepared to condemn this woman are quite happy watching videos of their favourite band on the aforementioned site.
The New Testament was primarily written in Greek. The Old Testament was primarily written in Hebrew. Latin and anything later was a translation.
So, you are saying that a musician can make money by selling ONE CD? Since your argument is that MP3s should be OK to share we only need one person to buy the CD. Same thing with the books - if one person buys it and converts it (whether by scanning, typing, whatever) to digital format then nobody else needs to buy it. I'll give you the fact that some small number of people will still want a physical item - there are some folks like that here on slashdot. But, in general the statements you have made above say that you want stuff for free but the creators can sell ONE (or a hundred or a thousand) of each - but then the rest are free. I guess you can have your cake and eat it too.
This woman actually wrote: '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!'
That is not a slip of the keyboard or a typo or a mistake brought on by fatigue or overwork. That is a basic mindset. There is no argument or essay long enough that could make it otherwise.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The author's thoughts on the "apology" are here.
She basically had the same reaction we all did: What a load of crap.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Nope really a pissed off German monk went against GOD and translated the bible so that all the unwashed masses could read it.
IT was not floated down to earth by an angel and handed to John smith's indian ancestors who then floated across to europe as some of you nutty whackjob christians believe.
...copy written...
Wow. This Judith Griggs (who edits Cooks Source magazine) is REALLY in the wrong business. The word is copyright, Judith. As in the author has the right to determine who may copy their work. Not copywrite.
Judith Griggs is not qualified to edit her own letters, let alone a magazine.
Proverbs 21:19
Are you really sure that Recipes cannot be copyrighted? Do we need a way to ultra-public-domain stuff?
Check this out! Kurt Godel to the rescue!
http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/chef.html
http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/chef_fib.html
Can't be any more bloated than MS's code. : )
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"I'm sorry...
that I got caught."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Information doesn't "want" anything. Information doesn't have needs, goals, purposes or desires. People do. Using the expression "information wants to be free" merely clouds a complicated issue by loading one side of the argument with emotive, unarguable assertions. Who could possibly be against freedom? End slavery! Emancipate information! It's empty rhetoric of the worst kind. If you mean something substantive about the nature of information, please state it in terms that are actually amenable to rational debate.
The books of the bible were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). By the second century BC, all of the Old Testament had already translated into Greek. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, the bible was translated into Latin. In the early 1500s Martin Luther translated the bible from Greek (not Latin) into German. William Tyndale also starts a translation from Greek to English at about the same time. (Note: Neither translates from the Latin version.)
Luther was not merely ostracized, he was excommunicated. However, they did not dig up his body and burn it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Was her mistake in stealing someone else's work, or in forgetting to wrap herself in some self-righteous "information wants to be free" codswallop?
Judith Grigg's "apology" is in serious need of editing. I wonder how much she'd pay Monica to edit and publish it without permission.
Taking other people's content and making money out of it without asking permission of the owner, or giving them recompense, is exactly what the owners of YouTube have created a fortune out of doing. I wonder how many of those prepared to condemn this woman are quite happy watching videos of their favourite band on the aforementioned site.
You're blaming the newsstand for the infringing content in the magazine.
YouTube doesn't go out and grab copyrighted material and they do try to curb it when they are alerted.
You're conflating Martin Luther (German) with William Tyndale (English), and I think you got a little bit of John Wycliffe mixed in there for good measure xD.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Information is definitely not imaginary. People walk around synthesizing extremely complex molecules based on an information storage and expression system (DNA, translation, & etc...). Logic gates have measurable states, computer storage media have observable information, and Schrodinger's bloody cat dies (or not) when you look at it you insensitive gorgon! Heck, even imaginary numbers aren't imaginary - they can have some extremely profound effects in the physical world (blow up anything recently with an un-dampened oscillation from a controller's set point).
Information can even be owned (I can write something down right now on using my pen on my paper and I own it; completely). The catch is that information can not be shared between humans without copying. The fidelity of that copy depends on the sharing mechanism and efficiency of the recording medium. If one hears a song on the radio it's stored in the mind, most will have an average recall but a musical expert or savant may be able to sit down at an instrument and give a very accurate rendition after a single listen. Every observation of information propagates a copy of that information with the observer. Information, as a real, physical, and non-imaginary construct, is also subject to the second law and thus tends to undergo decay. All of the above still goes for computer media - generally with much higher fidelity copying, to utilize information it must be shared (copied) between long term storage, caches, transmission, processors, displays, and to the user.
Thank you so much for introducing some actual verifiable facts into an otherwise entirely speculative argument.
Sometimes I think Slashdot should rename itself to "I think, maybe. But I'm definitely adamant about it."
I think the point is that in the Internet Age information is not something that can be sold, period. Services and physical media can be provided for a fee, but information itself is no longer--and maybe never was--a product to be bought or sold. People who want to contribute to support an artist will do so however they can, but they will be discouraged if the only avenue is through an extortionist publisher. People who don't want to contribute will obtain the information however they want, and no business model will change that. The two activities can no longer be exclusively linked.
My gold standard at this point is, for all its woes, National Public Radio. Their sole purpose is to create content to be distributed freely. They are funded directly by the subset of their audience willing and able to contribute, but bear no grudge to those unwilling or unable, and simply work within the budget society is willing to provide. They take in revenue from selling physical media, yes, but uncompensated donations make up a much larger chunk. The audience is the employer whom they must please, not the product whom they must sell to advertisers. In my mind, this is what content producers should be.
Burying a one paragraph mea culpa in the middle of a rambling, whiny, self-serving "I'm taking my ball and going home" rant doesn't count as an apology in my book. Nor do I buy the story that she was just having a bad day when she touched off the original shit-storm, as the same arrogant attitude is still there. "I think I did a nice job for you"? I couldn't believe it when I read that; apparently she still thinks the original author should be grateful that her work was plagarized? W...T...F?!??
One of my own Web pages is about the community in which I live. I originally put a copyright notice on the page in 1999. When I update the page, I make sure the current year is added to the copyright notice.
Real estate agents in the area have repeatedly plagiarized my page. Actually, they hired Web developers to create pages for their business; and the Web developers are the real plagiarizers. Thus, someone made real money from my effort. In the meantime, I got paid nothing. THIS IS WRONG!!
In the past, I would send a strongly worded "cease and desist" notice to the real estate agent to have my material removed from the agent's Web site. While this works, I think I will follow the example of Monica Gaudio and make a public complaint against the agent and the brokerage firm where he or she works.
The second law of thermodynamics disagrees with you.
Yes, yes, yes. Copyrighted material should be respected. Yada Yada Yada. It's all a very sad (and somewhat humorous) story.
I can't help but wonder how many of you ripping the woman from Cooks Source (as wrong as she was) have songs you did not purchase on your iPods, copied and submitted without proper citation someone else's text in your research papers, etc.
Bunch of hypocrites. Really.
This is in no way an apology, it's a plea for sympathy for consequences suffered at the hands of an unreasonable party...at least that's how she sees herself.
This is childish beyond belief. She responded to Monica's email with condescending sarcasm, and an attitude of "what are you gonna do about it". Then after she found out there WAS something to be done about it, she set about trying to spin everything as "I was GOING to be penitent, she just didn't give me a chance".
Doesn't this sound a bit like every shoplifter who ever got caught..."I was going to pay for it, you just didn't give me a chance?"
Petr Chelický had Zwingli beat by decades. Of course, Wycliffe got there a century earlier than Petr.
And various other small-p protestant movements go back almost as far as the Catholic Church--Valentinus, Basilides, and others were writing schismatic texts in the 2nd century AD--Valentinus being not just theologically different, but also reformationist in the sense of being opposed to institutional corruption in the Church (e.g. nepotism in the appointment of bishops). A massive schism resulted between the Catholic Church and the early protestant Gnostics. Many reforms in the Church, numerous theological responses*, and even ecumenical councils were responses to early reformers.
Heck, even the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds used by modern Protestant (and Catholic) churches are themselves repudiations of earlier protestant sects--the whole "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten..." creed was an attempt to stamp out early Christian sects with different theological interpretations than those endorsed by Rome.
*e.g. Irenaeus' "Against Heresy" c. 180 AD and "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus (trad. Origen)
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Information "wants to be free" like water "wants" to be free; water seeks a lower level. Drape a wet rag over a kitchen sink dangling in the water, and it will travel up and drip off the other side. This is what's meant by "information wants to be free". It's the same thing as "if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone."
When information isn't free, neither are you. Note that you can't copyright information, you can only copyright your own explanation of the information. It's perfectly legal to take an AP article, reword it, and post it in your own words.
Free Martian Whores!
Schrodinger's bloody cat dies (or not) when you look at it
It always dies when hawking looks at it! No uncertainty principle for him!
Information can even be owned (I can write something down right now on using my pen on my paper and I own it; completely).
Only until someone else sees it. You own the paper, but not the information on it. Copyright does not confer ownership, it gives a "limited time" monopoly on your expression of the information.
Free Martian Whores!
It's the right metaphor, and properly understood is true.
If you go all literal minded, then it should only seem silly, not meaningful. I'm not really sure where people get the idea that it describes the world behaving the way they want to. Magic, probably. Or fairy tales.
When you think of the computer, or fire, as your servant, then you are using the same though pattern as those you take an intentional stance towards information. But the statement as a metaphor, without an understood intentional stance, is a true statement. (OTOH, people seem quite attached to the intentional stance, so I suppose that it's a metaphor that endangers proper understanding.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Cory Doctorow has proven you wrong by putting ALL of his books online, for free, at craphound.com. He credits his status as a New York Times best seller to this. Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved (or gone into another line of work) from obscurity.
If your logic were right, nobody could ever sell books to anybody but the library, since anybody can go to the library and read all the books they want for free, in the comfort of their own home. You can also get CDs and DVDs there as well.
Had it not been for the free library, I would not have bought that shelf full of Asimov.
One publisher who thought book piracy was costing him money commissioned a study to find out how much money it was costing him. Books usually take a few weeks to hit the internet, and when the study came back he was surprised and amazed that rather than a drop in sales, when the book hit the internet there was a sales spike. In short, piracy INCREASES sales.
Free Martian Whores!
After reading that lame excuse for an apology, I'm thinking she should have just went on the web and copied one.
Many people want their own information to be free. Ever heard of a blog? Ever heard of self-publishing a book? Ever heard of Linux, for crying out loud? Lots and lots of people are enthusiastic about and made happy by sharing what they know. Often a person just wants acknowledgement for the presentation of the information.
Some people do make their living by producing information in such a way that induces other people to trade money or valuables for access to it, but that is by no means the norm, the natural state of things, or historically, the main way that information is distributed.
I can't help but laugh.
She whines about closing the business, but *damn* is her writing bad.
Learn to write.
Learn basic copyright info.
Try again.
Then don't tell anyone about this information you want to own.
Am I the only one who thinks the editor fits the profile of a sociopath? Refuses to take responsibility for her actions, continually blames the victim, thinks she herself is the real victim, etc.
There is never anything wrong with wanting recognition for work done. It is your right, and you should demand it. Never should anyone ever stand for someone else getting credit for their hard work. That said, I can be completely honest when I say that I am afraid of the future. I am afraid of the future that holds a regard to copyright and fair use as it does in this situation. Was all of this really necessary? Was standing on a soap box and enlisting the army of the internet to troll this poor individual to oblivion, simply because you didn't get credit for your recipe? At which point does the matter go beyond being the right thing to do, to becoming pretentious or downright anal?
In grade school, I wrote a paper on a famous person. I couldn't quite come up with enough fluff to meet the overall requirements set forth by the teacher, so I lifted a paragraph from one of he sources, reworded it and turned it in without the citations. Ultimately, I ended up still getting knocked a few points for plagiarism. I complained, as any rebellious lazy teenager would have for getting points knocked off for what felt like impeccable work on my part to conceal the evidence. The point of the exercise went way over my head, as ultimately it meant nothing to me; I did not identify with the matter, and therefore it lacked any importance to me. As I've grown older though, I've come to understand what my English teachers were attempting to ultimately educate us on.
Many years on, reflecting on those lessons when reading this article, I feel as though perhaps they are teaching the wrong concept in school - or, maybe my understanding of the entire point of these protections is, for the post part, wrong. Today, it seems that a concept that has been around for 300 some odd years now, has within the last 10 years found itself skyrocketed into the poster child of public trolling existing today.
While it has been pointed out that the Cooks Source magazine has copied from many sources, I have to question the ultimate result of this overall situation. The magazine provided some pretty obvious services, none of which appeared in the least to be monetary for the proprietor. In raising the villagers, pitchforks in hands, the delivery of recipes and generally educational concepts to the probably desperately small group of frequent readers has now ceased. Granted, there is no shortage of recipe collections, however, it is reasonable to assume that there were at least a few individuals who enjoyed the material presented to them in Cooks Source.
This precedent scares the hell out of me. With the internet as its engine, bloggers as the fuel, and an impatient spark to top it all off, we now see the full power of copyright at hand. Copyright has now trolled an entire magazine out of business. This situation holds no difference to the situations that the RIAA and MPAA have placed upon the web in the form of patronizing and mass-suing for infringement of the same rights that the original author complained for.
The interesting thing of it all, is that we dwellers of the internet have our methods of trolling, be it 4chan or mass-traffic events caused through the slashdot effect, we have an innate ability to source the crowd as a whole and, whether it drives our opinion(s) forward or not, drive incredible amounts of traffic towards it to grant a distinct sense of popularity and substantiation to them.
On the other hand, groups like the RIAA, MPAA, and even the individuals like the original author here, have and utilize the exact same tools, although they have one additional tool that we do not. These doctrines like Copyright and Fair Use, all exist as physical manifestations in our real world. They are real - far more real than any conceivable publicity stunt we could perform through a DDoS or well written article.
As incidents like this occur, what stops someone from claiming fair use and copyright infringement on more important works? What happens when suddenly an object you use every day becomes an illegal work, beca
Their site now just redirects to Intuit.
UPS Sucks
/. -> NOISE... therefore I filter and derive part of a curve that represents /. reality. It is not real reality. It is just a point on that curve. Often it is an outlier.
This is still nothing but a bunch of smoke. Recipes are not copyrightable! Never have been.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html