In an earlier post here I wrote about Suzanne McMinn and how Dairy Goat Journal misappropriated her photo of a trio of goats and then tried to dodge her questions when she tried to get compensation. Well, I'm a little late updating the developments here, but it appears that Dairy Goat Journal has made things right and is compensating Mrs. McMinn. Mrs. McMinn attributes the swift response she got to the power of the internet, and I'd like to think I helped just a little bit, and so did everyone who took the time to contact Dairy Goat Journal and let them know that using material without compensating the copyright holder is unacceptable.
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Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Biased Opinion - Was Dairy Goat Journal Simply Not Paying Attention this Week?
After the huge blowup over Cooks Source lifting Monica Gaudino's article without permission that seems to have essentially ended that magazine as a functioning entity one would think that other publishers would have taken note and realized that taking copyrighted material without getting the copyright holder's consent is illegal, unethical, and could very likely get the internet angry enough to overwhelm your website and destroy your business. Apparently, this message didn't get through to some people, because Dairy Goat Journal has been caught red-handed by Suzanne McMinn in the act of misappropriating one of her photos for their magazine.
I'm not going to go over copyright law again, since I did it in the original Cooks Source post, and anyone who wants to can just go read it there. The only difference between Mrs. Gaudino's story and Mrs. McMinn's is that one concerns printed text and the other concerns a photograph. Copyright law doesn't make a distinction between the two, however, so Mrs. McMinn is entitled to the same protections and has access to the same remedies as Mrs. Gaudino. Thus far, Dairy Goat Journal has also avoided making the outrageously stupid claims that Judith Griggs made concerning the nature of copyright law and the internet, but they have come close to matching Cooks Source for rudeness when caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Dairy Goat Journal also didn't even bother to give Mrs. McMinn credit when they reprinted her work. One also has to wonder if, like Cooks Source, the Dairy Goat Journal has made a practice of lifting material without permission and without attribution. I am cynical enough about human nature that I consider it likely that they have.
Mrs. McMinn says she will sue Dairy Goat Journal if necessary. I hope she doesn't have to and that the magazine will do the right thing, admit their error and compensate her fairly (including additional compensation to make up for their misdeeds), but if they don't, I really do hope that she sues them into oblivion. Publishers need to get the message: you can't take people's copyrighted work without their permission. One would hope that this message would get through without having to make an example of a couple by destroying them via massive statutory damage judgments, but I am not optimistic on that front.
In the interim, I encourage anyone who has the inclination to send an e-mail to the editors of Dairy Goat Journal giving them a piece of your mind on this topic. Their e-mail address (from their website) is [removed, because they later apologized and compensated Ms. McMinn]. Maybe if they get a couple thousand angry e-mails they will figure out that what they have done is wrong and won't be tolerated.
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I'm not going to go over copyright law again, since I did it in the original Cooks Source post, and anyone who wants to can just go read it there. The only difference between Mrs. Gaudino's story and Mrs. McMinn's is that one concerns printed text and the other concerns a photograph. Copyright law doesn't make a distinction between the two, however, so Mrs. McMinn is entitled to the same protections and has access to the same remedies as Mrs. Gaudino. Thus far, Dairy Goat Journal has also avoided making the outrageously stupid claims that Judith Griggs made concerning the nature of copyright law and the internet, but they have come close to matching Cooks Source for rudeness when caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Dairy Goat Journal also didn't even bother to give Mrs. McMinn credit when they reprinted her work. One also has to wonder if, like Cooks Source, the Dairy Goat Journal has made a practice of lifting material without permission and without attribution. I am cynical enough about human nature that I consider it likely that they have.
Mrs. McMinn says she will sue Dairy Goat Journal if necessary. I hope she doesn't have to and that the magazine will do the right thing, admit their error and compensate her fairly (including additional compensation to make up for their misdeeds), but if they don't, I really do hope that she sues them into oblivion. Publishers need to get the message: you can't take people's copyrighted work without their permission. One would hope that this message would get through without having to make an example of a couple by destroying them via massive statutory damage judgments, but I am not optimistic on that front.
In the interim, I encourage anyone who has the inclination to send an e-mail to the editors of Dairy Goat Journal giving them a piece of your mind on this topic. Their e-mail address (from their website) is [removed, because they later apologized and compensated Ms. McMinn]. Maybe if they get a couple thousand angry e-mails they will figure out that what they have done is wrong and won't be tolerated.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Biased Opinion - Cooks Source Just Doesn't Get It
I have written previously about how Judith Griggs and Cooks Source misappropriated Monica Gaudio's article about apple pies and then Mrs. Griggs responded to Mrs. Gaudio's justified complaints by misstating copyright law, making an apologetic for plagiarism, and an obnoxious claim that she had "improved" the article with her unasked for editing and deserved compensation for that. Well, as one might expect, the internet dropped on top of Cooks Source and Judith Griggs, quickly overwhelming their Facebook page, inundating their advertisers with requests that they withdraw their support for Cooks Source, and uncovering multiple, repeated cases of Cooks Source lifting articles from numerous other sources and republishing them without the copyright holders' consent. Through all this, Cooks Source maintained a stony silence.
Well, today they finally issues what they probably think is an apology. (Note: Cooks Source has taken down their original apology and replaced it with an even sleazier "woe-is-me and blame the victim" post. A blog post by Lisa Gold that preserves some of the original apology text can be found here, and a humorous "corrected" version of the original apology that preserves all the original text in a roundabout way can be found here). I would call it a "non-apology apology". As with everything else that Cooks Source has done in this fiasco, they have shown yet again that they just don't get it. First off, the "apology" starts with four whiny paragraphs about how persecuted Cooks Source has been. That's right, the first thing they do in their "apology" to Mrs. Gaudino is talk about themselves and their trials and tribulations for four long paragraphs, including an appeal for people to "Report Abuse" to Facebook for people who have contacted Cooks Source's former advertisers. I'm not sure how they think that the "Report Abuse" link works on Facebook, but I'm pretty sure that they don't understand it. of course, this is the same crew that asserted that people who were posting negative comments on Cooks Source's Facebook profile were "hackers", so they clearly don't have a clue about much of anything.
After talking about themselves for a couple hundred words, Cooks Source moves on to "apologize" to Mrs. Gaudino, claiming that taking her article without her permission was an "oversight" resulting from overworked staff. Of course, the fact that they have been shown to be serial copyright violators makes that claim ring pretty hollow. Then, they try to cover up the fact that they were caught red-handed stealing Mrs. Gaudino's property by saying, "Monica was given a clear credit for using her article within the publication, and has been paid in the way that she has requested to be paid." This is like a thief offering to pay for stealing something only after he has been caught. Further, Cooks Source only paid up after attempting to stiff arm Mrs. Gaudino by asserting they were allowed to misappropriate her work. When a bank robber offers to give the money he stole back after he's been arrested, he doesn't get any praise, and neither should Cooks Source.
Cooks Source then announces that it is going to change its practices and actually follow copyright law by only publishing work that the original author has given them the right to publish. Then they try to weasel out of even that level of commitment by saying that they have a small staff and cannot check on every article and do the minimum amount of legwork checking to see if they actually have the right to publish something that every professional in the publishing industry accepts as the standard. They close with a mealy mouthed paragraph of whining about how this has damaged their business and a self-serving moan about how this has harmed their readers, all without admitting that the reason that their business has been damaged and their readers supposedly harmed were Cooks Source's own unethical and illegal practices. Their whining on this score is a little like a man convicted of murdering his own mother and father complaining that the judge is heartless for sentencing an orphan to prison.
Cooks Source finally closes by telling everyone to leave Monica Gaudino alone, although there has been no report that I have seen of anyone bothering her. They say she "did what she felt was the right thing", which is a long way from what she actually did - she did what actually was the right thing, and was far more tolerant of Cooks Source's illegal, unethical, and obnoxious behavior than they had any right to expect.
The end result here is that Cooks Source clearly still doesn't understand that what they did was not only wrong, but that it wasn't even a borderline case. They misappropriated property belonging to someone else, and when they came asking for a very modest amount as compensation for their misdeeds, they rebuffed her rudely. And then when this became public and they suffered in the shitstorm they had created for themselves, they had (and still have) the temerity to try to claim that they are the martyred victim. Through all of this Mrs. Gaudino has remained classy, for which I commend her. Cooks Source, on the other hand, has demonstrated that not only are they a sleazy and clueless organization, that they truly deserve the moniker "Crooks Source" that has been stapled to their foreheads.
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Well, today they finally issues what they probably think is an apology. (Note: Cooks Source has taken down their original apology and replaced it with an even sleazier "woe-is-me and blame the victim" post. A blog post by Lisa Gold that preserves some of the original apology text can be found here, and a humorous "corrected" version of the original apology that preserves all the original text in a roundabout way can be found here). I would call it a "non-apology apology". As with everything else that Cooks Source has done in this fiasco, they have shown yet again that they just don't get it. First off, the "apology" starts with four whiny paragraphs about how persecuted Cooks Source has been. That's right, the first thing they do in their "apology" to Mrs. Gaudino is talk about themselves and their trials and tribulations for four long paragraphs, including an appeal for people to "Report Abuse" to Facebook for people who have contacted Cooks Source's former advertisers. I'm not sure how they think that the "Report Abuse" link works on Facebook, but I'm pretty sure that they don't understand it. of course, this is the same crew that asserted that people who were posting negative comments on Cooks Source's Facebook profile were "hackers", so they clearly don't have a clue about much of anything.
After talking about themselves for a couple hundred words, Cooks Source moves on to "apologize" to Mrs. Gaudino, claiming that taking her article without her permission was an "oversight" resulting from overworked staff. Of course, the fact that they have been shown to be serial copyright violators makes that claim ring pretty hollow. Then, they try to cover up the fact that they were caught red-handed stealing Mrs. Gaudino's property by saying, "Monica was given a clear credit for using her article within the publication, and has been paid in the way that she has requested to be paid." This is like a thief offering to pay for stealing something only after he has been caught. Further, Cooks Source only paid up after attempting to stiff arm Mrs. Gaudino by asserting they were allowed to misappropriate her work. When a bank robber offers to give the money he stole back after he's been arrested, he doesn't get any praise, and neither should Cooks Source.
Cooks Source then announces that it is going to change its practices and actually follow copyright law by only publishing work that the original author has given them the right to publish. Then they try to weasel out of even that level of commitment by saying that they have a small staff and cannot check on every article and do the minimum amount of legwork checking to see if they actually have the right to publish something that every professional in the publishing industry accepts as the standard. They close with a mealy mouthed paragraph of whining about how this has damaged their business and a self-serving moan about how this has harmed their readers, all without admitting that the reason that their business has been damaged and their readers supposedly harmed were Cooks Source's own unethical and illegal practices. Their whining on this score is a little like a man convicted of murdering his own mother and father complaining that the judge is heartless for sentencing an orphan to prison.
Cooks Source finally closes by telling everyone to leave Monica Gaudino alone, although there has been no report that I have seen of anyone bothering her. They say she "did what she felt was the right thing", which is a long way from what she actually did - she did what actually was the right thing, and was far more tolerant of Cooks Source's illegal, unethical, and obnoxious behavior than they had any right to expect.
The end result here is that Cooks Source clearly still doesn't understand that what they did was not only wrong, but that it wasn't even a borderline case. They misappropriated property belonging to someone else, and when they came asking for a very modest amount as compensation for their misdeeds, they rebuffed her rudely. And then when this became public and they suffered in the shitstorm they had created for themselves, they had (and still have) the temerity to try to claim that they are the martyred victim. Through all of this Mrs. Gaudino has remained classy, for which I commend her. Cooks Source, on the other hand, has demonstrated that not only are they a sleazy and clueless organization, that they truly deserve the moniker "Crooks Source" that has been stapled to their foreheads.
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Thursday, November 4, 2010
Biased Opinion - Cooks Source, Judith Griggs, and Copyright
Well, another case of copyright ignorance has become the talk of the Internet. Apparently, a writer named Monica Gaudio wrote an interesting article about some early apple pie recipes titled A Tale of Two Tarts and posted it on the website Gode Cookery. Later, without asking, and without compensating her, the magazine Cooks Source decided to put her article in their publication. When Mrs. Gaudo contacted them and asked for an apology and some minor compensation, the magazine's managing editor responded with one of the most ignorant and obnoxious responses possible.
"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! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me . . . ALWAYS for free!"
Managing editor Judith Griggs manages to misstate copyright law, serves up an attempted apologetic for plagiarism, misunderstands the very nature of the article she stole by saying it needed editing, and has the gall to ask for Ms. Gaudo to pay for the fact that her article was misappropriated. Given this level of ignorant stupidity, Judith Griggs is a woman who has no business working as an editor, or in any other profession in which she isn't carefully supervised. After attempting to take the nice route, I seriously hope Mrs. Gaudo sues Cooks Source for statutory copyright damages and winds up in front of a judge that awards enough damages to put them out of business.
For anyone who does not know, material that is posted to the internet is not public domain. (Actually the term "public domain" drives one of my copyright lawyer friends up the wall. As she points out, "public domain" is not a term that appears in the copyright lexicon. There are works subject to copyright protection, and there are works that are not.) You do not actually have to post a copyright notice for copyright protection to attach to your work, although if you do, at least under U.S. law, you gain some additional legal protections, like the right to sue for statutory damages if your work is infringed. Copyright applies to works of authorship, which includes pictures, sculpture, writing, dance choreography, music, movies, plays, and pretty much every other expression of the artistic mind. Copyright protection attaches to an artistic work of authorship as soon as it is "fixed in a perceivable form". What does "fixed in a perceivable form" mean? Well, it means that the work has been put into a form that others can observe - by being, among other things, painted, written, printed, stored in computer memory, or yes, put onto the internet. This means that Griggs is, quite simply, dead wrong about copyright as it relates to the internet. Publishing something on the internet makes it immediately subject to copyright protection, whether the author puts a notice to that effect or not. In fact, posting something on the internet is often the "fixing in a perceivable form" that makes the contents of the post subject to copyright protection.
(For the record, all of the writing that appears in this blog is copyrighted to me. Any elements that are not copyrighted to me are used for criticism or commentary pursuant to the provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 107).
And it appears that Cooks Source is a serial offender when it comes to misappropriating the work of other people. They appear to have stolen articles from NPR, Food Network, Martha Stewart, and WebMD among others. And someone has conveniently compiled an ongoing list of articles stolen by Cooks Source. The people at Cooks Source seem to have no shame, no ethics, and no conscience. Here's to hoping that they close their thieving doors soon, and everyone associated with this crooked magazine finds themselves unemployed and unemployable.
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"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! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me . . . ALWAYS for free!"
Managing editor Judith Griggs manages to misstate copyright law, serves up an attempted apologetic for plagiarism, misunderstands the very nature of the article she stole by saying it needed editing, and has the gall to ask for Ms. Gaudo to pay for the fact that her article was misappropriated. Given this level of ignorant stupidity, Judith Griggs is a woman who has no business working as an editor, or in any other profession in which she isn't carefully supervised. After attempting to take the nice route, I seriously hope Mrs. Gaudo sues Cooks Source for statutory copyright damages and winds up in front of a judge that awards enough damages to put them out of business.
For anyone who does not know, material that is posted to the internet is not public domain. (Actually the term "public domain" drives one of my copyright lawyer friends up the wall. As she points out, "public domain" is not a term that appears in the copyright lexicon. There are works subject to copyright protection, and there are works that are not.) You do not actually have to post a copyright notice for copyright protection to attach to your work, although if you do, at least under U.S. law, you gain some additional legal protections, like the right to sue for statutory damages if your work is infringed. Copyright applies to works of authorship, which includes pictures, sculpture, writing, dance choreography, music, movies, plays, and pretty much every other expression of the artistic mind. Copyright protection attaches to an artistic work of authorship as soon as it is "fixed in a perceivable form". What does "fixed in a perceivable form" mean? Well, it means that the work has been put into a form that others can observe - by being, among other things, painted, written, printed, stored in computer memory, or yes, put onto the internet. This means that Griggs is, quite simply, dead wrong about copyright as it relates to the internet. Publishing something on the internet makes it immediately subject to copyright protection, whether the author puts a notice to that effect or not. In fact, posting something on the internet is often the "fixing in a perceivable form" that makes the contents of the post subject to copyright protection.
(For the record, all of the writing that appears in this blog is copyrighted to me. Any elements that are not copyrighted to me are used for criticism or commentary pursuant to the provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 107).
And it appears that Cooks Source is a serial offender when it comes to misappropriating the work of other people. They appear to have stolen articles from NPR, Food Network, Martha Stewart, and WebMD among others. And someone has conveniently compiled an ongoing list of articles stolen by Cooks Source. The people at Cooks Source seem to have no shame, no ethics, and no conscience. Here's to hoping that they close their thieving doors soon, and everyone associated with this crooked magazine finds themselves unemployed and unemployable.
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