When contemplating a career path, our first goal is to figure out how we can create an opportunity where we can do what we love AND be able to survive financially – after all, haven’t we all heard the famous do what you love speech and even offered it up as sound advice to others ourselves?
Well, if you’re a poet, choreographer, artist, architect, baker, designer, knitter, photographer, musician or one of a myriad of other jobs that puts your product in the public eye, your work is at risk of being hijacked, or rather stolen by others who may or may not have malicious intent. Some people may not be informed on the proper etiquette of re-purposing printed material and others may simply not care.
In the USA, the copyright laws are pretty clear – if you publish copyrighted material, you can face fines of $75,000-$150,000 per egregious infringement, if found guilty. The guilty party may also have to pay the legal fees of all others involved in the suit, so this is no trivial matter.
If you’re the creator of any type of intellectual property that falls into the categories listed above, you may want to listen up…
The problem is big in the USA and even worse abroad, where infringement laws have no international reach. The responsibility of police-ing these threats falls back on the same individuals who put themselves out there each day by continuing to do what they love. They work hard to put forth quality information in each post, and they also have to be vigilant in tracking how these posts are shared.
The broad swipe of protection you receive under the US Digital Media Copyright Act (DMCA) combined with your privacy policy, only goes so far. If you are a blogger offering unique content in each post, copyrighting your work may be challenging to do and may also carry an added cost.
The blogging world has its own set of regulations, and all content is not created equal. What I mean by that is that content presented in a blog is not protected in the same way as content is protected in a magazine – even reprint permissions are handled differently. Blogs can be registered with the copyright office at any time and have all existing content protected for $35 – but if another post is written soon after, this new content will have to be re-registered and the fee must be paid again.
These stringent financial requirements make it difficult for most bloggers to adequately protect themselves, and in the end, many talented writers just give up out of frustration and only those with deeper pockets manage to survive.
Another issue is that intellectual property lawyers do not work for free, and most bloggers can’t afford to hire them in serious cases of blatant copyright infringement. Heck, most bloggers have a hard time paying even the nominal copyright fees. What happens most of the time is that bloggers are left to fend for themselves as best as they can within the confines of the law.
Some bloggers have told me of cases where they confronted individuals who unwittingly shared information without proper representation, and quickly had the information corrected along with a gracious apology. There are many other cases however, where individuals were far from gracious. The stories the average blogger could tell reveals not only brazen but vindictive characters who have gone as far as inciting the followers of their pages to harass and bully innocent bloggers who are simply trying to protect their work.
This is an unfortunate, dirty truth about the blogging world and one that is not often spoken about or even dealt with in an equitable manner. To confuse things even more, it doesn’t help that the copyright laws themselves are a little confusing in what is and isn’t protected, or rather copyright-able. Setting the record straight might help validate these ongoing concerns.
When it comes to recipes, the pictures provided in the recipe do fall under the copyright, however the list of ingredients do not. The process of how it is put together is also protected, however if one small change is made to the process, it can be considered a whole new recipe.
I would like to believe that most people understand that it takes a great deal of time, effort and resources to develop and create new and innovative dishes. Food bloggers write about the process because they love it and they work hard to develop their sites by adding interesting material and recipes to build traffic. If they are successful in developing a following, this traffic can create a source of income to cover blog expenses – and if they’re really lucky, perhaps even help support their families in this tough economy. Getting to this point takes a long time, so when you get there you need to do what you can to protect your hard work.
Bloggers who write about these many different areas and topics do all the leg work and provide so much free information…is it unreasonable for them to ask to be recognized for their own work? Much of this work is something that could potentially be enjoyed by many different generations for years to come.
So what is the correct way to support this type of public information?
Well, it depends on where you find it. If you come across some great information on social media networks like Facebook, simply hit your share button to display the post and the author on your page. This is especially important if you are the manager of a recipe site on networks like Facebook or Twitter that may have thousands of followers. I call this honorable sharing which continues to bring readers to the blogger’s site, and helps curb some of the costs involved in the upkeep. When you add up the time it takes to develop and write recipe, costs of ingredients, travel and other expenses to events, domain and hosting expenses, website maintenance, etc, etc., the costs can be staggering.
If you happen to write a blog post that references someone elses recipe, mention their blog and then link to the recipe that you are referencing. The author will receive a pingback noting the mention and the reference to their work. If you’re using someone’s recipe from a book, you can link to that cookbook on Amazon or the publisher’s site. When modifying a recipe with a few changes of your own, you often see it referenced with the caption ‘adapted from’,or in cases where you choose to add a few of your own ingredients, you see people using the words ‘inspired by’. If the recipe is very different from the original, and you have changed three or more ingredients, it may be safe to call it your own, but it’s always a good idea to mention the source of the inspiration. And if you are using their material for something more, make sure to notify them and get their permission.
Back in April 2013, I was notified by a few fellow food blogger that one of my recipes had appeared on a Facebook recipe page with over 20,000 followers. The manager of the site included the picture of the item and the entire recipe, word for word. There was no mention of where the recipe came from, and it was obvious that she tried to pass it off as her own. This woman was a serial offender and has done the same to many other well known bloggers in the food community. She has created many recipe group pages on social media networks like Facebook, where she has shared these pirated recipes and built a loyal following. Her followers loved the recipes so much that she decided to publish these recipes in books that she sells through these group pages. That’s pretty blatant and purposeful if you ask me…
The reality is that she is only one of many on Facebook who do the same thing. If you come across one of your recipes on such a site, don’t think for a minute that you will get any help from reps at Facebook. Their copyright policy has proven to be a waste of virtual space, and they have behaved like mere lambs on this issue, causing many victims to scratch their heads and wonder where the line is drawn between victim and perpetrator. Frankly, I am surprised that a class action lawsuit has not been filed against them for their lack of enforcement of their policy, and I just think that it’s a matter of time. Facebook will only go as far as removing the content, but these repeat offenders are allowed to keep their sites. They continue their offensive and vicious vitriol with many other unsuspecting bloggers who cross their path, so how do you protect yourself as a food blogger?
Well, there are a few things that you can do…
- First place a DCMA notice on your blog along with a privacy policy
- File a copyright for your blog, and also file regular quarterly or semiannual updates for all additional content if it remains visible on your site and is not archived.
- If your copyrighted content has been added to an unauthorized book, contact the publisher and provide them the necessary information on when the recipe appeared in the public domain
- Contact an intellectual property attorney for a consultation and offer a small retainer for incidents that may arise throughout the course of the year
- File a trademark for your blog as a business or a service, depending on what you provide
- Create a blogger network that polices existing social media networks. I participate in one and I am so impressed with how they all look out for each other. It was a few of these members who alerted me on the infringement of my work by a repeat offender, so stick together because this really works.
- Consider signing up for anti-piracy protection from companies like Digimarc Guardian (formerly Attributor), that will find and remove pirated content across the internet
- Don’t publish a full feed, this makes it extremely easy for others to re-publish your work. Publish a partial feed, with a see more or continue reading link in the feed itself
- Watermark your images if it does not take away from your work, by using free software or a photoshop generated watermark
- Set up a Google Alert with your blog name as the search term, so that you receive an email every time your blog is mentioned on the web, if you don’t accept pingbacks
- Join Technorati and claim your blog – and track which other blogs are linking to you
- Use Copyscape to see what pages are being copied elsewhere on the Net
- When you come across your content on another site, file a complaint with the hosting company of the website
- Know the difference between copyright law and creative commons licenses
- Be careful when approaching offenders to remove content. Have a very strong support team before you approach them. Some have had great luck in battling it out in their social media outlets, but it’s not something everyone should do.
Unfortunately, the moral of the story is that if you want to share your talent and do what you love, you must also do everything you can to protect yourself. Content theft is not only common but also costly and infuriating. They key to being successful in fighting back is to know your rights and to surround yourself with a supportive community. There are many ethical and honorable bloggers out there who have found themselves in the same position, and they understand what you are going through. Find yourself a group of like minded people and stick together. They may start out as strangers, but they will inevitably become friends and allies that you can trust and who will look out for you in the virtual world.
Image above shared from fellow blogger 1finecookie.com who has also experienced the ravages of copyright infringement, visit her page and read her great post.
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