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Illegal or Not? Copyrights, Internets and recipes. Oh my!

 
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DrBiggles



Joined: 12 May 2005
Posts: 356
Location: Richmond, CA

PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:06 pm    Post subject: Illegal or Not? Copyrights, Internets and recipes. Oh my! Reply with quote

Depending on who you are and what you're up to, you may or may not have thought much about posting a recipe from someone's cookbook on a forum or website. If you have, then you've surely read through and possibly participated in an online discussion about what exactly can and can't be copyright protected. Such as ingredients versus directions and methods, which can only be subject to copyright if they are "substantial literary expression."

I ran across this today and thought it interesting to find someone who'd recently come email to email with a publisher who asked to remove her much changed recipe.

http://aloshaskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/07/illegal-or-not.html

Biggles
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Dilbert



Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 1304
Location: central PA

PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 12:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

certainly changes my opinion about America's Test Kitchen & associated products. bleech!
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Auspicious



Joined: 29 Dec 2005
Posts: 66
Location: on the boat, Annapolis, MD

PostPosted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 7:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I followed the links and got increasingly dumbfounded. I'm afraid ATK has lost my business. I may continue to read CI in the library, but I'm likely to send e-mail to advertisers explaining my discontent with ATK policies whenever I'm having a bad day. <grin>

EDIT:

I just watched most of an episode of ATK on television. Not good. Too bad. At least I'm not missing anything.
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GaryProtein



Joined: 26 Oct 2005
Posts: 535

PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That is absolutely ridiculous. If a recipe is "modified" it isn't the same recipe. The modification could be better, it could be worse. Furthermore, who is to say that someone who published a recipe didn't get it from a friend of a friend of my grandmother who published it in a community cookbook 75 years ago that has no remaining copies in the library?

Another scenario: The caveman invented the recipe for Chateaubriand. It started out "kill animal and eat" which then became "kill animal, cook and eat" which then became "kill animal sprinkle with pepper, cook and eat", then, later, "add wine and spices to sauce, cook and eat."

With all due respect to the posters of recipes here: it is doubtful there is anything totally new under the sun. All recipes have been done before somewhere by someone with modifications done by others to make the recipe a little spicier, sweeter, saltier, simpler, more complex, rarer or more well done.

If it isn't the exact same recipe, it isn't the same recipe.
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SirShazar



Joined: 30 Jul 2007
Posts: 89

PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just look at their website. Non-members can't read recipes or articles without paying for the subscription. They give you the recipes on the show, but they won't let get a hardcopy of them on the internet, how convenient is that.
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Dilbert



Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 1304
Location: central PA

PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

here's an interesting link to a court decision.

http://floridalawfirm.com/meredith.html

the court reaffirms a list of stuff cannot be copyrighted and
the court was not all that impressed with the "originality" etc of the descriptive part of the claimed rights.
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IndyRob



Joined: 17 Dec 2006
Posts: 77

PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As someone who sells his wares online, I have some sympathy for both camps. On the one hand, one simply can not post Tom Clancy's latest novel with 'some major modifications' and expect to be protected. On the other hand, this appears that it might be a case where a clerk level person charged with searching for infractions got a bit too involved - and where someone was too eager to submit to a request to take the content down.

If the initial request was met by an attorney's response, then I doubt we'd be reading about this. That response would've been kicked upstairs real quick. Instead, the content was taken down almost immediately, thus eliminating the need for any further substantive discussions.

I don't mean to seem to be supporting the involvement of attorneys at every level, but I think that in this case, if there's a perceived right (through Fair Use, or whatever), you have to assert that right - at least at some point before capitulating.
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