I’ve been following the Cooks Source debacle with great interest. In brief:
- Blogger posts article about history of apple pie to site about medieval cooking.
- Blogger is informed by a friend that article has appeared in Cooks Source magazine (web site since taken down: http://www.cookssource.com/), under her name. This is first the blogger has heard of Cooks Source.
- Blogger contacts Cooks Source, is willing to let the matter go for an apology and a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism.
- Editor of Cooks Source replies, saying, among other things, “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! … We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!”
- Blogger blogs.
- Story is picked up by friend, then by John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, BoingBoing, Reddit &c. &c. &c.
- Internet pores through Cooks Source Facebook page (Facebook page has been closed), including photos of past issues, discovers articles taken from Food Network, Martha Stewart, MyRecipes, &c. &c. &c.
- Two Minutes’ Hate.
Cooks Source has not responded since the firestorm began, although the fake Twitter accounts have been fairly amusing.
When I first saw the story, I agreed with Lisa Gold: open-and-shut copyright infringement but not, regrettably, an infringement likely to be worth pursuing at law. Because the original article was not registered with the Copyright Office before Cooks Source republished it without permission, the really powerful remedies—statutory damages and attorneys’ fees—are unavailable, making a lawsuit unlikely to pay for itself. The revelation of the widespread infringement, however, changes matters rather substantially—I would guess that at least one of the major media corporations whose articles were also copied would have registered some of them. For them, going after Cooks Source (assuming there is anything left of the magazine other than a scorched hole in the ground after the weekend) would be like swatting a fly.
This isn’t just about law, though. The article as published in Cooks Source was credited, so this isn’t about plagiarism, or about stepping on one’s moral rights to attribution or authorial integrity. I don’t even think it’s just a matter of not asking first (although that is certainly part of it). Instead, it’s the palpable condescension in the editor’s email—YOU should be thanking US—that touches a raw nerve. That’s where the anger comes from; the editor’s ignorance of copyright law just provides the outlet for expressing it.
I see the story as confirmation of my basic claim in The Ethical Visions of Copyright Law: people want and expect a basic attitude of respectful reciprocity between authors and audiences. What is at stake is not just the author’s ability to make a living or her right to control her work, but the respect owed her as a creatively engaged human being. Copying in a spirit of appreciation is one thing; copying in a spirit of condescension is quite another.
The preceding is re-published on TAP with permission by its author, Professor James Grimmelmann. Cooks Source's Source was originally published 11/5/10. The Laboratorium publishes under the Creative Commons License.
