Recently one of the blogs I follow had to change the way she was posting her content due to yet another incident of "scraper sites" stealing her posts verbatim. While I got really annoyed on her behalf - she works hard at creating a beautiful site with lots of great content - it got me to thinking about how little protection there really is in the world of digital content. (The fact that I work in an industry rife with copyright issues probably has something to do with it.) While I'm not a lawyer and the little bit of copyright law I know comes from my graduate classes almost twenty years ago, I do know that U. S. Copyright Law states that:
"Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds, or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, when a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection." To see this on their website please go here.
Therefore, in an effort to play nicely in this playground called the internet, we are going to change the way we showcase recipes.
- IF a recipe is not easily available due to the fact that is comes from an out of print title, we will still include it in our postings and tell you where we found it.
- IF a recipe has been modified to such a degree that we no longer feel the source best represents the way we cook and eat it, we will cite our source and include our version of the recipe in our posting.
- IF we just want to rave about a fantastic recipe we make that is available, we will link to the source from which it was found (and hope they don't remove that content as has happened to me in the past).
- IF a recipe truly is one that we have created, that will be very obvious as we'll be quite proud of our work.
We hope these practices will work out for the best. Thanks for enjoying the adventures of Two Happy Bellies!
PS - Happy third anniversary to the blog.