![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cooks Source
Nov. 5th, 2010 07:02 amNever has this icon been more appropriate.
This is the best article on the Cooks Source copyright clusterfuck that I've seen so far. As titillating as it was to spend most of last night reading variations on "Oh, no, she DIDN'T," Edward Champion delivers a calm timeline of what happened and the laws broken and why this was an extraordinarily bad idea on behalf of the so-called editor.
For anyone whose flist/Facebook didn't explode, the basics go like this:
1) Blogger is told that 5-year-old copyrighted blog post was reprinted in local, advertising-paid cooking magazine without notification, much less compensation. Blogger requests apology and token payment to the Columbia School of Journalism.
2) Editor replies with an email that would keep a rhetoric and logical fallacy class busy for a week, insisting that she has decades of experience, that everything on the Internet is public domain, and - if this wasn't already enough - doubling down and saying that blogger really ought to pay editor for fixing up said article because it needed "a lot of work" (apparently in correcting medieval spelling) and now it was more suitable for blogger's portfolio.
3) Blogger hangs this email up on her LJ like a pinata, for everyone to take a whack.
4) Signal is boosted. And boosted, and boosted...
5) It goes completely viral when the Big Kids pick up on it and start throwing in their $.02, including Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, and Smart Editors, Trashy Books. (Yeah, I know I should be linking, but I'm about to be late for work. Besides, you won't have trouble finding the links because all the sordid details are available on Google -- and Google News, because the press is starting to sniff around).
6) The Internet being what it is, people start looking at the rest of that issue of Cooks Source and then other issues of Cooks Source... and start finding that articles and artwork haven't just been lifted from food bloggers, but also Food Network (Alton Brown & Paula Deen in particular), Martha Stewart, and... wait for it... a Disney-owned food blog.
Assuming that the editor with 30 years experience and no knowledge of copyright would survive Food Network and Martha Stewart - doubtful, as Paula Deen was siccing her lawyers onto the issue last night - the House of Mouse is certainly going to ram a few home truths regarding copyright and web content home... and they won't be asking for a token payment to a third party, either.
Mind you, the original blogger's starting to get a bit scared of her email these days too.
This is the best article on the Cooks Source copyright clusterfuck that I've seen so far. As titillating as it was to spend most of last night reading variations on "Oh, no, she DIDN'T," Edward Champion delivers a calm timeline of what happened and the laws broken and why this was an extraordinarily bad idea on behalf of the so-called editor.
For anyone whose flist/Facebook didn't explode, the basics go like this:
1) Blogger is told that 5-year-old copyrighted blog post was reprinted in local, advertising-paid cooking magazine without notification, much less compensation. Blogger requests apology and token payment to the Columbia School of Journalism.
2) Editor replies with an email that would keep a rhetoric and logical fallacy class busy for a week, insisting that she has decades of experience, that everything on the Internet is public domain, and - if this wasn't already enough - doubling down and saying that blogger really ought to pay editor for fixing up said article because it needed "a lot of work" (apparently in correcting medieval spelling) and now it was more suitable for blogger's portfolio.
3) Blogger hangs this email up on her LJ like a pinata, for everyone to take a whack.
4) Signal is boosted. And boosted, and boosted...
5) It goes completely viral when the Big Kids pick up on it and start throwing in their $.02, including Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, and Smart Editors, Trashy Books. (Yeah, I know I should be linking, but I'm about to be late for work. Besides, you won't have trouble finding the links because all the sordid details are available on Google -- and Google News, because the press is starting to sniff around).
6) The Internet being what it is, people start looking at the rest of that issue of Cooks Source and then other issues of Cooks Source... and start finding that articles and artwork haven't just been lifted from food bloggers, but also Food Network (Alton Brown & Paula Deen in particular), Martha Stewart, and... wait for it... a Disney-owned food blog.
Assuming that the editor with 30 years experience and no knowledge of copyright would survive Food Network and Martha Stewart - doubtful, as Paula Deen was siccing her lawyers onto the issue last night - the House of Mouse is certainly going to ram a few home truths regarding copyright and web content home... and they won't be asking for a token payment to a third party, either.
Mind you, the original blogger's starting to get a bit scared of her email these days too.
