Friday 10 February 2012

why oh why oh why oh why ?

You know, I don't want to spend my time writing to food bloggers, asking them to take copyright material off their blogs. I work long enough hours, and I've got better things to do. But lately, I've had to spend more time doing just that, and in some cases, the blogger in question wants to turn it into a debate with their circle that I may or may not be allowed to be part of.

A case in point is http://kitchen-maid.blogspot.com/2012/02/feeling-small-in-print.html. Yes, I asked this person to take copyright material off their blog, and when they didn't respond quickly, I pointed out that their own blog says "I'd love you to share my recipes and photos, but please don't reproduce them in any form without asking first".

So please go and read their blog post, where I left the following comment, from the point of view of an editor.  I hope it explains a little about why the matter of copyright is important to food writers, and why cutting & pasting someone else's work is a bad thing.

"As Dan Lepard's editor, could I comment here ? On copyright, there is no copyright in a list on its own, whether it's a list of ingredients or a list of personal names. But when an author or food writer adds their own instructions, interpretation or method, it becomes copyright. However, if all you do is take an existing work and paraphrase it, while the original can be clearly identified, all you have is a "derivative work" which is not copyright and nor does it get you round the infringement of the copyright on the original work.

But quite apart from the legal issues, there's a moral question here. Doesn't a food writer have the right to decide where their work is published, and how they protect their livelihood ? If a recipe is written or licenced for publication in a newspaper, that paper is probably paying the writer for their work. It doesn't give you licence to take it for nothing, and the paper probably monitors page impressions. So if you reprint the recipe, the paper's page impressions fall, and the writer may not get more work. If all you give is a link, then people have to go to the authorised site to read the recipe, the paper gets more page impressions, and feels the writer has attracted readers. So when you cut & paste, you may damage someone's employment. That's not moral.

Another claim is that cutting & pasting "helps" book sales. If bloggers would agree to stick to a set of say 5 or 6 recipes from a book, that might be true (and please note, print magazines do this). But bloggers don't, they cherrypick, without permission, and a whole book ends up online and out of the author's control. Two further observations arise from that: if cutting & pasting helped book sales, the mushrooming in food blogs over recent years would by definition have meant an explosion in sales of cookbooks. That has not happened. If anything, sales across the sector are substantially down. And secondly, having looked at thousands of blog pages over the years, very few comments which follow a cut & pasted recipe say "I must go and buy that book". They are vastly outnumbered by posts which either say "thank you for the recipe" (you, not the food writer, please note) or those that just say something on the lines of "looks yummy". But hardly ever "I'm now going to buy the book". So the damage outweighs any benefit.

I would also note that it's a bit galling to find a recipe pasted onto a site where the blogger either finished each page with "© [blogger's name]" or "© [name of the blog]", please think about the totality of your actions there.

What we are encouraging all food bloggers to do is be a bit more original, to rely on your own lovely photos and what you write about your life, to say what you liked about a recipe (or hated!), how you may have adapted it to the ingredients, tools or equipment you had to hand, and what it was useful for. With a link to where the author has chosen to put the recipe, which might be on their own website, in a newspaper, or not online at all - just in a book. But not to publish a whole recipe. Sharing your own stuff is good, deciding you'll hand out someone else's stuff to anyone who Googles and finds your page, isn't really acceptable. One of the above contributors notes that since she's had to be original instead of just cutting & pasting, she's blogged less. But that's the blogger's issue, if you love doing it, do it well and be original, don't just take someone else's content to make your blog look full."

12 comments:

Grazing Kate said...

As a food blogger I found your comments really helpful. Thank you for writing this really interesting post. I don't fall outside of your guidelines - I generally write about food I have eaten in cafes in my local area. There have been times that I have described a cake or recipe I have made and my experience of it. I believe I have attributed in the correct manner but have always wondered in the back of my mind whether the publishers / author / chef would approve. As a rule of thumb I tend to Google the recipe and if it's on the original website, I post a link to that.

I have taken photos of the front cover of the book when I have been reviewing it, and I think that's acceptable too.

Food bloggers are also suffering a form of 'theft'. I have found some of my food blog photos being used elsewhere on the web without my permission. Generally I have a pretty laissez-faire attitude about this, but I realise I am coming at this from a hobbyist's point of view.

I agree with your comments and I hope that you don't tar all food bloggers with the same brush. There are plenty of us passionate foodies who don't wish to step on anyone's toes, and who are certainly not being immoral.

Jean | Delightful Repast said...

David, well said! Nearly all of my blog posts are recipes I've developed myself. The only time I post a recipe from a cookbook is when I do a cookbook review. And I always get permission from the author/publisher about which recipes I might choose from. Here is an example of a review where the publisher sent me the recipe with proper attribution in place and I simply cut and pasted it into my blog post. http://delightfulrepast.blogspot.com/2010/05/book-review-edible-celebration-of-local.html It is even in a different font from my post. I think bloggers who are not professional writers (paid writers!) don't understand the need for limiting how many recipes out of a publication are "out there." Your post has given a very good explanation, and I trust it will have a good effect.

Anonymous said...

"in some cases, the blogger in question wants to turn it into a debate with their circle that I may or may not be allowed to be part of." Isn't that just what you're doing by putting this on your blog and Dan tweeting it to all of his followers? A tad hypocritical.

I'm a big fan of Dan's cooking and have bought all of his books; the Guardian brought him to my attention first (including the recipe you have taken umbrage with the blogger publishing). However two of Dan's books I discovered purely by blog: Exceptional Cakes and Exceptional Bread. Being able to try a recipe first, or see someone else attempting it and finding it achievable, with good results, encouraged me to buy the book-I'm fed up of buying books only to realise they look nice but the recipes are fiddly or never quite work out. Blogs inspire me to go out and buy the book-I love cookery books and digital will never replace it, but gives me a chance to select which book I actually want to buy. I think you'd be surprised how many of us do this; some blogs boost sales as there are books I wouldn't take a chance on without them, as they give me the chance to see how the recipes work out for "normal" people rather than Dan, the food editor or food stylist. Here's another example of a comment saying someone will go out and buy the book thanks to a blog: http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com/2011/06/krantz-yeast-cake-with-peanut-praline.html

The example you have given above has taken down her recipe link, so it feels unnecessary to go to these lengths of linking to her site-it just made me feel sorry for her, and that you were being unjust, because as I've said, it's sites like hers that help me discover your authors, their books and most importantly, go out and spend my hard earned cash on them.

Michelle, Leics.

David Whitehouse said...

Hi Michelle, I don't think "hypocritical" is an appropriate word to describe my actions, I really have no desire to make the blogger I referred to feel uncomfortable but she did write "I'd love to know what you think" and then my comment wasn't allowed to appear. I had hoped to be part of the debate on her site, where the discussion was, but I posted here in case that wasn't permitted. It wasn't, so I don't quite get why you call me hypocritical. Without a link to her site, so that people can see the discussion, my post here would simply be a disconnected blog post.

I think you need to consider a point I've made before, which is that many food bloggers write excellent stuff week in and week out, without giving away someone else's recipe. It's actually more original and more creative to write "around" a recipe, rather than giving the recipe away: about your own life, about adapting something to the tools and ingredients you had to hand, or about how the thing you baked was good or bad and how you found it useful. And there's still the problem that bloggers may individually only give one recipe from a book, but that collectively, they give the whole book away.

I have to say, I followed the link you gave and far from anyone saying they'd go and buy the book, just one person said they'd "have to check out this book too". In fact, across the blog, four of Dan's recipes are given away without permission, and that's the total return: one person will "check it out". No-one else even hints at buying the book. And that's the problem: four recipes given away, without the blogger thinking to ask first if it was ok to do so, and nobody actually buying the book. And you know something ? The blogger wrote really well about their experience of baking and how they tackled the recipes, and took some great photos: throwing the recipes in there really added nothing at all to the mix.

Unknown said...

Hi David, the very last thing I want is for this to turn into a war of words. The comment you write above was never posted to my site - I don't delete comments unless they are spam.
When I discovered your comment on my blog, asking to remove the recipe, I did so immediately (though there was a time lag between you posting the comment and me reading it - my non-blogging life has been turned upside down recently and I am not online often). I wrote to you via this site, apologising and praising the book - and note this comment seems to have been deleted.
Anyway, I wrote about the experience on my blog because I thought it was something all food bloggers should think about and I was interested in what other people thought. That, to me, is what blogging is about - sharing, discussion and learning. It was through blogs that I learned about Short and Sweet and still think it is a fantastic book. I don't want this misunderstanding to alter that.
Kindest regards
Lucy Corry

Unknown said...

Further to that, I have just checked the Spam folder and - although you are unlikely to believe me - your comment was in it (along with a dozen requests to support a child in Haiti).
I have published it. I hope you will do me the courtesy of publishing mine.
Kind regards
Lucy Corry

David Whitehouse said...

Hi Lucy,
I don't want this to become unpleasant either, and I do of course and without reservation accept that my comment on your blog somehow ended up in your Spam folder. You may recall that the comment you left on this site was posted under one of my recipes, which I put into "retirement" when I decided to use this blog to talk about copyright instead, and that's why it wasn't visible: the post had gone. What I've done therefore is edit out my recipe and retitle the post in question, and it is now visible below, just called "comment". I hope that's ok with you. I'll edit the post above these comments but I hope that people will accept that I do so to describe the situation more fairly, rather than to rewrite history!

Eatsruns said...

In the past couple of years, every time I have bought a new cookbook or put one on my Amazon wishlist, it has been because I read about it on a blog. This includes two of Dan's books. I probably haven't commented on any of the blogs saying "I am going to go out and buy the book now!" I've just bought it.

David Whitehouse said...

Hi Sarah,
Thanks for your comment. I think it's really good that food blogs sometimes inspire you to buy books. But what I would point out to you is that, firstly, there's a lot of brilliant blogging that doesn't give away the recipes at all, but simply talks "around" the recipe, passes on the blogger's enthusiasm, and through that and the blogger's own photos, creates a new and original story. And if you read my posts, you'll see that where using recipes is concerned, what I'm asking bloggers to do is to limit themsleves to an agreed shortlist of recipes from any publication, rather than expect to be free to take everything and anything they fancy. I don't think that's an unreasonable position.

And I have to say that, just as you might buy a book without posting the fact, so people will take and use a cut & pasted recipe without saying so. You're all in the "unmeasurables" box. But what I'll say again is that if it was true that cutting & pasting helped book sales, the explosion in the number of food blogs would have been followed quickly by a boom in the sale of cookbooks. That has not happened, so the only piece of evidence the cutters & pasters might rely on is missing.

Anonymous said...

Hi David,

firstly, the name - Ohgoshandbother -brilliant!

I think you make some excellent points and I have revised how I write my own blog in light of them. I think the ethical argument is the strongest. I would also say that I have read some bloggers who have accused you of bullying them - but whenever I have read your comments they have always been in the politest terms.

I am part of the Mellow Bakers challenge which is baking its way through "The handmade loaf" - 2 recipes in and it is a great deal of fun. We have agreed not to post recipes and I hope our little contribution will promote an excellent book.

The one thing I take issue with you is the following observation which I have seen you make on a number of occasions -

"if cutting & pasting helped book sales, the mushrooming in food blogs over recent years would by definition have meant an explosion in sales of cookbooks. That has not happened. If anything, sales across the sector are substantially down."

I'm not sure that a causal link can be made between the reduction in cookbook sales and the explosion in food blogs. If, overnight, all bloggers were to comply with your reasonable request not to publish copyright recipes there would not likely be a significant bump in sales. The reasons for reduced cookbook sales are more complex than that, but I would argue the the development of huge internet recipe databases that are easily searchable have had a far greater impact on book sales. The Guardian, Channel 4 Food, BBC food to name but three. One buys the first bunch of asparagus of the season and then search these sites (legally) for inspiration. Me, I prefer to search through half a dozen cookbooks and then finally find the recipe I was after one week later!

Cut and pasting blogging is unethical, full stop. But even my own blog which has a tiny readership, led to the sale of three copies of Emmanuel Hadjandreou's "How to bake bread" because I enthused about it so much and took photos of my own experience of baking with it. And as you say, I didn't need to cut and paste his recipes to do so.

All the best.

David Whitehouse said...

Hi Ray, thanks for your comment and kind words - and can I encourage people to visit your blog at garlic buddha

I absolutely agree with you that there's more than one reason for the fall in non-fiction book sales (which is where cook books are classified). The availability of so much "legit" online content is clearly a factor. But what I hope I was challenging was the claim I've seen made that "posting recipes on blogs helps to sell books". I don't think there's much evidence for that, and certainly, if it was true, I'd have expected the boom in blogs to have had at least a surge in book sales following on behind it, and I haven't seen that happen. But I didn't intend to fix responsibility for falling book sales solely on cutting & pasting - and my apologies if that's how it read - but I don't think that the uncontrolled re-publication of recipes is helpful to a professional food writer.

Beyond that, there's probably going to be conjecture on both sides. I'm sure that books are sold by people seeing them talked about on blogs. But your own experience seems to be that this can be without complete recipes being posted, and I would suggest that for the likely book buyer, a blog post which talked "around" a recipe - about the blogger's own life, baking experiences and photos - would be enough to clinch a sale. I would also take the view that we can't be in the business of allowing all our content to be made available online by other people - which to me is no business model at all - and where Dan has recipes published online under exclusive agreements with certain companies, we need to see traffic going there, if people want the (actually very extensive) content we've been able to make available free of charge via the internet.

I am greatly enouraged by collaborative events like the Mellow Bakers and Short & Tweet (both of which are baking their way through some of Dan Lepard's work), and we have in the past had bake-off challenges in our own forum. It's a great way to bring people together and share an enthusiasm - so many internet forums that I've used over the years, across a range of interests, have closed or are closing, and we need to find new ways to help and encourage each other.

Anonymous said...

I am in agreement with you. Glad to hear that you view ventures like mellow bakers and short & tweet positively. Hope you get to blog your own recipes somewhere too!

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