November 5, 2010

"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!"

Via Instapundit.

The stolen article begins with the line: "'As American as apple pie' isn’t." Ah, funny! Just yesterday, I was saying: "Americans say: as American as apple pie."

IN THE COMMENTS: Paddy O says:
The Cooks Source Facebook page is hilarious now.
Ha! Poetic justice.

13 comments:

Phil 314 said...

"Honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain,

ah yes, so true and as the magazine found out, it cuts both ways.

coketown said...

"'As American as apple pie' isn't" is a rather clumsy formulation of the old cliche. It works better with phrases like "A happy husband isn't." Monica should get hired on as a researcher because, as the editor pointed out, the original piece was atrocious.

Chip Ahoy said...

I saw this on Gizmodo yesterday, where they urge readers to play nice where it comes to copyrights. I followed the links with interest.

The original article is not atrocious, in my humble opinion. The editing done by Cooks Source (bastards all, and their own web site chupa la iguana grande) amounted to updating the period spellings of 16th century English.

Monica Gaudio begins "As American as apple pie" isn't. What we consider to be apple pie as been around in Europe since the Middle Ages.

The reader goes, "Isn't what? Oh. Isn't American. I get it. Hahaha, got me."

She compares two early recipes. It's a very interesting bit of scholarly research, to me anyway. Pears, figs, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves. Hey, I use those things in pie too. Saffron. Oops, I never thought of using that for apple pie. She notes that early pie crusts were referred to as "coffins." They were meant to contain fillings but not to be eaten. Saffron in both recipes, but in the second one migrating to the crust, indicating that in the second recipe the crust was meant to be eaten. So a generalized change had occurred over a period of 100 years.

This is important!

The author discusses the scarcity of sugar at the time. She includes a very lengthy bibliography, and that indicates to me that she did do her research. And then Cooks Source comes along and nicks it without attribution, recompense, and a very rude "blow us" besides.

rhhardin said...

It's the wrong argument.

The argument ought to be about doing away with copyright entirely, not enforcing it.

Theoretical work Michele Boldrin.

Copyright doesn't increase creativity. It just increases rent-seeking.

Paddy O said...

The Cooks Source Facebook page is hilarious now.

Roux said...

President Obama steals other peoples speeches all of the time and tells them the same thing.

john said...

Damn. For 2 hours I've been trying to make a Clinton joke from the heading.

John Burgess said...

Paddy O: High humor indeed! Perhaps the finest examples of Facebook snark. With a cherry on top.

MadisonMan said...

I like that people are digging through the Cooks Source recipes to see who else has had recipes lifted.

I note, for example, that Paula Dean was notified of a copied recipe and she thanked people for the alert and handed it off to her lawyers.

And I disagree with Coketown -- the original article was clumsy to read only because it included the middle age English in it.

JAL said...

I saw this earlier today and was wondering -- who IS this "editor" person.

What an ugly, ugly (and, I would think, not being a lawyer or anything -- legally wrong) reply Monica got.

Forget the recipe. The plagiarist/editor is really pretty snotty.

One thing is clear -- she is now finding out she really doesn't know as much about the "web" as she thought she did. ;-)))

John Burgess said...

What's more American than apple pie?

Law suit!

EnigmatiCore said...

"Cooks Source left the cake out in the rain" is classic.

EnigmatiCore said...

Copyright doesn't increase creativity. It just increases rent-seeking.

I am ok with that. If something has value, then the owner of the property rights to that thing should be able to charge rent.