Musical Monday - Baby Got Back by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

There is a lot happening today. It is Martin Luther King Day. This is also the day that Obama has been inaugurated as President of the United States for the second time. But I'm going to talk about something that is truly important to the geek community: This week, the producers of the television show Glee released the cast recording of the Sir Mix-a-Lot song Baby Got Back, and the minute it hit the internet, it was obvious to anyone who had heard Jon Coulton perform that they had imitated his rendition of the song. The video here shows Coulton performing the song with his musical buddies Paul & Storm in 2007. For comparison, here is the virtually identical Glee version. They even retained the lyric changes that Coulton made in his rendition, including his reference to "Johnny C". If you want to hop on over to give the producers of Glee a thumbs down on the video, I won't mind.

One might ask why this is a big deal, after all, the original song belongs to Sir Mix-a-Lot, and not to Coulton, and presumably the producers of Glee asked for Sir Mix-a-Lot's permission to use the tune on their show. But they used Coulton's version of the song - his musical arrangement, and his altered lyrics. And under U.S. copyright law, that gives Coulton certain rights in his work. Coulton's rendition of Baby Got Back is a derivative work, defined in 17 U.S.C § 101 as:

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.

As one can see from the definition, as a musical arrangement, Coulton's work is clearly a derivative work, and thus protected by copyright law, and Coulton should be entitled to seek compensation for the use of his work from the producers of Glee. One caveat is that I believe that Coulton has released most of his work under a Creative Commons license. If he has, then the producers of Glee could possibly use his work, but depending upon the form of license he used, they would at the very least have to attribute the work to him, and may possibly be barred from using his work for commercial purposes. However, they clearly did not attribute the arrangement to Coulton (and as of the time of this writing, still have not done so), and are using the work for commercial purposes, which probably puts them outside the ambit of any license Coulton may have used.

And the thing that is almost amazing about this situation is just how petty the benefits the Glee producers stand to gain by means of their perfidy. It is likely, had they contacted Coulton and asked to use the arrangement, he would have asked for credit and at most a relatively nominal fee. The only thing they gained by deciding to screw Coulton instead is planting the false notion in some people's heads that the Glee producers came up with it themselves. And unintentionally, they gained a moderately large internet shitstorm when their dishonesty came to light. And this isn't the first time the producers of Glee have lifted an artist's work without attribution. They also used Greg Laswell's rendition of Girls Just Want to Have Fun without giving him credit. I'll say this bluntly: The producers of Glee have no artistic talent, and no artistic integrity. And they are kind of stupid to boot, because they thought they could get away with this kind of thievery in a world in which the internet exists.

Previous Musical Monday: In the City by the Eagles

Subsequent Musical Monday: Halo by Broken Record Films

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Biased Opinion - A Defense of (and Farewell to) Confidentiality

As most everyone knows, WikiLeaks has caused quite a stir among U.S. government officials recently by releasing (among other things) something on the order of a quarter million secret diplomatic cables (supposedly leaked by Pfc Bradley Manning) revealing all kinds of information from the mundane to the embarrassing to the potentially damning. This has caused many people, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to react angrily, and some Republican members of Congress to call for WikiLeaks head Julian Assange to be arrested as a spy and executed.

Of course, the internet has reacted to these overreactions with indignation, often coupled with an assertion that eliminating government secrecy is a glorious end, and many going to far as to say that eliminating confidentiality in general is a truly noble goal. Leaving aside the fact that this leak is likely to have the opposite effect - I predict that governments will make obtaining data much more difficult by restricting access to a more limited group of people, compartmentalizing data collection and storage reducing the ability of different government agencies to work together, and much of diplomatic communication will be conducted in code akin to that used by organized crime to prevent wiretapping police investigators from figuring out what they are talking about - the loss of confidentiality is something that I believe we will ultimately lament.

As a lawyer, I deal in confidentiality on a professional basis. Most people are aware of the existence of attorney-client privilege from watching courtroom dramas or reading detective novels. Basically it functions like this: if I have a client and they tell me something, except under very limited circumstances, I cannot disclose that information to anyone else unless my client gives me permission to do so. The complete set of rules governing attorney-client privilege is more extensive than that, but that is the core of it. The reason this privilege exists is to encourage clients to be completely honest with their attorney so they can be provided the best and most accurate advice possible. While this system results in secrets that remain locked away that in a perfect world would be revealed, on the balance, we have determined that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Similarly, a patient's communication with his doctor is also protected, and for much the same reason. And for many of the diplomatic cables at issue, a very similar argument could be made. If confidentiality is the rule, when diplomats in foreign country send information back to their government, they can do so confident that they can be candid in their assessments without negative repercussions. In this way, the decision makers within the government have accurate information upon which to base their decisions.

Whether this sort of hidden candor is believed to be a societal good is, of course, up to the beholder. Assange clearly believes that it is not, and this sort of candor should be exposed to the public as a whole and this will make governments more responsive to their citizens. But that seems rather like saying that a married couple attempting to reconcile after a separation would be better served if all of their neighbors could sit in on their sessions with a marriage counselor. Confidentiality is oftentimes a good thing, allowing people to feel comfortable enough to share information that otherwise they would simply keep to themselves. In many cases, it doesn't merely lubricate the wheels of discussion, it makes them turn. In a world in which the possibility of a WikiLeaks type disclosure lurks everywhere, it is quite likely that communication could simply wither and die.

But I doubt governments will change in the way Assange and his proponents think they will change. They will opt for more security and more confidentiality, not less. The real net result will be that diplomats in foreign countries will probably be less willing to put their true thoughts on paper and send them back to their home capitol, but will instead hedge their meaning, couch their assessments in euphemisms and otherwise make their writing more opaque. And once the data reaches the home office, it won't be shared with other agencies in the government, because compartmentalizing data will serve to limit the potential damage if there is a leak. Which, for the United States, would put us into a position where (for example) the Department of State, CIA, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security aren't sharing data - a situation that would be similar to that intelligence experts suggested contributed to the intelligence failure that allowed the 9/11 conspiracy to succeed. It is hard to see how a less candid flow of information into separate zones of jealously guarded data will constitute an "improvement". And this doesn't even begin to catalogue the likely responses governments will have that will make them more secretive, more suspicious, and less integrated. Instead of a more transparent government, we will probably get governments that guard their data and police the internet as zealously as China does.

But all of this is not the real point. The real point is that exposing the internal workings of government like this is only the tip of the iceberg. The real point is that this exposure of confidential data is unlikely to stop with Department of Defense communiques and Department of State cables. Before too long, someone is going to leak all of the medical records held by your hospital. Or every one's driving records, including their addresses. Or all of the transcripts and student files from the archives of the college you graduated from. In short, before too long, the flood of confidential information being set free will include your data, my data, and everyone else's data. The real loser here isn't going to be governments, who have the resources and the manpower available to alter their management of information in such a way that, while not optimal for accomplishing their objective, would be more secure. The real loser is the private citizen, who simply will not have the wherewithal to prevent their private data from becoming generally available to anyone who bothers to go out and look for it. WikiLeaks does not herald a change in the transparency of government. WikiLeaks heralds the end of personal confidentiality.

When I was in law school, one of my professors used the "front page of the Washington Post" example. This example goes like this: if you are engaged in activity in your professional capacity and you would be embarrassed to have an article explaining what you did printed on the front page of the Washington Post, don't do it". This is a fairly simplistic thought exercise, and was intended to provide young law students with an easy to follow rule of thumb to follow when they were unsure as to what the right course of action would be when they were confronted with an ethical decision once they ventured out into the legal profession. But very shortly, not only will there be the possibility that everything you do or have done might be posted on the internet equivalent of the front page of the Washington Post for all to see, it will be a virtual certainty that it will be, if it hasn't happened already. I think we are going to look back and miss the days when we had at least a pretense of confidentiality and privacy. But I don't think there is any realistic possibility of preventing them from slipping away at this point.

So, I'll just say to all of you who are exulting in the free flow of Department of State data that WikiLeaks has created, I hope you still feel the same way when it is your data that is dropped into the fast moving river of information. Because before you know it, it probably will be.

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Biased Opinion - Dairy Goat Journal Does the Right Thing

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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Biased Opinions - Real Trials Sometimes Result in Acquittals

I have to admit, this scares me quite a bit. Not the fact that Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted of almost all of the counts against him. That doesn't bother me, even though it seems to me that he is probably a pretty nasty person. No, what bothers me is that the fact that he was acquitted is seen as a "failure" of the civilian court system, and a justification for overturning the Constitutional protections intended to prevent the government from running amok. What is even more disturbing is the idea expressed in the article that if Ghailani had been acquitted on all counts, the government would have simply taken him into military custody. In other words, even if the trial had found Ghailani not guilty, he would not have been a free man.

There's a term that is used for proceedings in which a conviction is intended to be preordained. They are called "show trials", and the United States spent most of the twentieth century criticizing totalitarian regimes for engaging in them. Even now, the United States protests when Chinese and Iranian dissidents are tried and convicted in these sorts of sham trials. And with good reason. A show trial subverts the entire concept of justice.

"One of 285 counts is not exactly a track record for a prosecution team to be proud of," said Kirk Lippold, former commander of the U.S.S. Cole, which was attacked by al-Qaeda in 2000. "I think the administration is now in a position where they have to get serious about using military commissions. This case sends a clear and unmistakable signal about using civilian courts: It didn't work."

"I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan's federal civilian court," said Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. "This tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama administration's decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts."

With due respect to Messers. Lippold and King, this sort of sentiment is dead wrong. The system worked perfectly. It just didn't give the result that these two gentlemen wanted. But an uncertain outcome is the nature of a trial. If the system is rigged so that only "acceptable" outcomes result from the process, then the system can't really be considered fair. In short, if you are deciding the verdict first, and having the trial afterwards, you are simply doing it wrong. The problem isn't that they are expressing shock and dismay over the fact that Ghailani was acquitted, but that they are expressing the opinion that an acquittal should not have been a possible outcome of the trial and the system should be changed so that it is rigged in to ensure conviction.

One might argue that holding and convicting dangerous men like Ghailani (and Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, and other Guantanamo detainees) is too important and we have to make sure that the process results in verdicts against them. But that's an argument that could be applied to any person accused of committing a crime. Holding and convicting accused serial killers is important. Should we discard Constitutional protections when prosecuting them? How about people just accused of murder? Or those who have been accused of rape? Or those who have been accused of manslaughter? And so on down the line. Once you start down this road, there will always be another crime that is just slightly less serious that isn't covered by the "enhanced" procedure designed to ensure convictions. Eventually we could very well end up applying these standards to people accused of drunk driving and other petty offenses. Either we apply the protections of the Constitution to those accused of crimes, or we may start ourselves down a fairly dark path and wind up with a criminal justice system that would make Than Shwe proud.

One might complain that Ghailani and his ilk would happily overthrow the very institutions that protect them, and that if the roles were reversed they would not bother with the niceties of trials before dispatching those they consider to be their enemies. And these contentions are completely correct. And they are also entirely irrelevant. Ghailani, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, Osama bin Ladin, and all of the other jihadists are barbarians. We are not. At least not yet. We should be a nation that upholds the rule of law, and provides justice rather than revenge via our court system. The fact that we are fighting a barbaric enemy that does not share our values should not be seen as a justification for discarding our values. If we lose this conflict it will not be on the battlefield. While al-Quaeda and their sympathizers can cause chaos and random destruction, they cannot match the Western world militarily. This is a time when we should hold fast to our values, because this is a war of ideology, and quite frankly, our ideology is better. But it is only better if we actually show that we believe in it and are willing to live by its principles. And one of those core principles is "those accused of crimes are entitled to fair trials with appropriate protections against arbitrary action by the government".

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Biased Opinion - The United States Is Not Built on a Religious Foundation

There is a strain of thought floating about that the United States was founded upon a bedrock of religious principles (almost always asserted to be Christian principles) and that the Framers of the Constitution never meant for religion to be excluded from government. It is a proposition that is attractive to a lot of religious people. The primary problem with this strain of thought is that it is almost entirely unsupportable.

The argument rests on a foundation built from some fairly slender threads, and requires something of a misreading of these threads to work at all. The fundamental problem religious advocates have to overcome is that the U.S. Constitution, the foundational document of the country, doesn't mention "God", "Jesus", or a "Creator". The document only mentions "Lord" once in the date at the end of the document, phrasing the date as the "Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven", which is clearly not an invocation of religion but rather a commonly understood way to express a date. (There are a lot of things that are not in the U.S. Constitution that people claim are there).

The document only mentions religion twice - and both references are negative. First, Article VI, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any religious test for holding office. Second, the First Amendment contains the famous Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses that states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Clearly there isn't much direct support in the U.S. Constitution, so the advocates who claim that the U.S. was founded on religious principles have to turn to some pretty vapor thin claims.

The basic argument usually runs something like this: the Declaration of Independence says "[w]e hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.", and later makes an appeal to the "Supreme Judge" and seeks the "blessings of divine Providence". This, plus the assertion that the framers were deeply religious men is used as the basis for the claim that the United States is, in fact, built on a religious foundation. Sometimes you also see a claim that the preamble of the U.S. Constitution implements these ideas by stating that it is intended to (among other things) "secure the Blessing of Liberty", with the claim that the "blessings" must obviously be blessings from God. This argument is ill-conceived and not very convincing.

 The initial flaw in this argument is that the Declaration of Independence, as brilliant a work of rhetoric as it is, is not any part of the law. It is, at best, an aspirational document. Nothing in the Declaration has any legal weight behind it. Citing it in a legal proceeding would likely get you laughed at. Secondly, the statements concerning unalienable rights have to be read in the context of the philosophical thinking of the time. Compare, for example, the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" line penned by Thomas Jefferson with the similar statement written by Jefferson's intellectual ally George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights:

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

Both of these very similar statements justifying the reason for government are built upon arguments made by John Locke in his Two Treatises of Government, an expression of the philosophical thinking described as "natural law". In fact, both Mason and Jefferson's lines are rough paraphrases of a statement made by John Locke in his "A Letter Concerning Toleration" written in 1689 in which he states "[c]ivil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things . . ." Locke built his theory upon natural law, asserting "[t]he state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it", and further adopting the stance that the law of nature is reason.

Although natural law has been adopted by some religious traditions, asserting that as God is the fountainhead of nature, all natural law is derived from God, in its raw form natural law does not rely upon a divine being as its source. Instead, natural law is supposed to be derived purely from human reason, and in most formulations, rejects an external divine source out of hand. The line grasped at by those asserting a religious foundation for the United States is in actuality an assertion of the supremacy of human reason over revealed wisdom. Locke's political theory was founded on the idea of the social contract. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature was built upon reason and tolerance. When left to their natural state, Locke believed that all people were equal and independent, and had a natural right to defend their “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions", clearly the antecedent to the phrases used by Mason and Jefferson. Locke assumed that the sole right to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with help from government in a state of society. Note that this theory is devoid of reference to God or religion, but relies entirely upon human reason as a basis for government.

Further, imagining that Jefferson would make an appeal to divine authority as the source of human rights stretches credulity. Jefferson was openly hostile towards organized religion, and though he didn't come out directly and say it, Jefferson seems to have harbored some atheistic leanings. Just a small selection of Jefferson's quotes reveals his thoughts:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: And such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

"As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart."

These quotes should lay to rest any assertion that Jefferson had any kind of God bearing any resemblance to the God touted by most "America is a Christian nation" advocates in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. I don't see how anyone could look at Jefferson's collected writings and think, even for a moment, that he would look favorably upon the efforts of people like Pat Robertson in their attempts to mix religion into government. Jefferson also wrote a revised version of the Bible in which he removed all miraculous and mystical elements that has come to be called The Jefferson Bible. And, of course, there is the famous letter Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in which Jefferson declares that the Constitution erects a wall to separate church and state:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

It is kind of humorous to see Jefferson's text in the Declaration of Independence cited by "Christian nation" advocated in favor of their idea that the United States is a Christian nation, but then see those same people usually turn around and decry the opinions Jefferson expressed in the Danbury letter and other writings. But I suppose that when you are rewriting history, coherence sometimes has to be cast overboard to make one's case.

Of course, Jefferson was only the primary author of the Declaration, the document was passed by the entire Continental Congress, so one could try to argue that many other legislators present were, in fact, voting in favor of a document that implemented a religious form of government. But the evidence for this is fairly thin. Most of the legislators that we know a substantial amount about were deists at most, and almost all were enamoured of the Enlightenment era theories of natural law that downplayed or outright rejected the active role that any divine being had in engendering natural law. The U.S. government, far from being built on a religious foundation, is clearly a vast experiment in bringing Locke's theories concerning government to fruition. Plus, as noted before, the Declaration isn't law, and is not the foundational document of our government. The U.S. Constitution is both.

As most people vaguely remember from high school history class, the Constitution wasn't the first governing document of the United States either. Eleven years separate the signing of the Declaration of Independence from the drafting and signing of the U.S. Constitution. During much of those intervening years, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation. Interestingly, the Articles include a fairly direct statement concerning God near the end of the document:

"And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union."

So it is pretty clear that the legislators of the time knew how to make a direct reference to God in a governing document. But when the delegates convened for the Constitutional Convention that resulted in the current U.S. Constitution, they didn't see fit to include any similar statement in their new document despite having clear guidelines as to how this would be done. God is, in fact, notably absent form the document unless one inserts God as the originator of the "blessings of Liberty" in the preamble, and as we have seen already, this is an assertion that runs counter to the Lockean leanings of the founders. This absence of God in the Constitution wasn't an oversight, but clearly a deliberate omission. Highlighting this, consider that the delegates had the question of God put in front of them pretty early on in the process when Benjamin Franklin (one of only six people to be present for the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution¹) proposed that the delegates open the Convention with a prayer suggesting that "henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business." The delegates not only did not adopt this proposal, they declined to even bring it to a vote, immediately adjourned for the day, and the subject was never raised again. One can only reasonably conclude after this incident that the absence of God from the text of the Constitution was not an oversight, but a purposeful omission.

And soon after the Constitution was implemented, the government made a strong statement that it was not founded as a Christian nation. The occasion was a peace and trade agreement between the United States and Muslim leaders in North Africa. The negotiations were conducted during the presidency of George Washington, and the final document, known as the Treaty of Tripoli, was approved by the Senate and signed by John Adams, the second president. This treaty clearly states that the ". . . Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . . ." In short, we have two of the founding fathers making a pretty strong statement that there is no religious foundation underpinning the structure of the Federal government. It seems fairly clear that recent attempts to suggest otherwise are simply wrong.

¹ The six men were: Robert Morris, Ben Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, George Read, and Roger Sherman.

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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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