Sunday, May 15, 2005
At a crossroads...
So I checked out a few other cooking blogs and most post recipes and such. That would probably be more interesting than reading about my trials and tribulations in the kitchen. How can you really know if something is good if you can't try it yourself. In the general sense, I like the idea but there are two problems as I see it. First, it would be a pain in the ass to type out all of the recipes we use and I barely have time to put in the brief notes that I've been doing. Second, a vast majority of the recipes we use come from cookbooks and I don't know if posting those recipes would be some sort of copyright infringement. Seeing as how my two readers have just finished law school, I thought I pose the problem. What do you think?
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5 comments:
I know nothing about copyright. 1. As long as you're reviewing a recipe, I think "fair use" applies. 2. Even if it ain't fair use, what is the worst-case scenario of what'll happen -- you'll get a cease and desist letter from one of your two readers? Doubtful.
My take: Don't worry about it. Post away. There's no such thing as bad press if you do get "noticed."
The time issue is tougher. Blogs are fun, but I only post really 'cause I keep a personal journal. The entries that are fit for public consumption get copied/pasted/tweaked and posted w/out a lot of add'l effort on my part.
Hmm. Are recipes even copyrightable to begin with? Processes are patentable, but patent protection has so many hurdles that I think a lot of recipes wouldn't make it. Somebody patented the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a few years back, just to show that the patent office wasn't paying attention to the obviousness or novelty requirements, but if they tried to enforce it I can't imagine it would stand up in court. There's a reason the recipe for Coca-Cola is protected by trade secrecy and not patent.
Copyright protects expression, not facts, so it might not be protectable any more than the phone directory is. In any case you'd only be reprinting one recipe, not the whole book, so I think Dan is probably right. It's probably fair use in the same way that using a quote in a book review would be. But then I'm not a lawyer yet.
One way around the time issue is to get a scanner with text recognition, then cut and paste, or write macros for common measurements and keep a list of shortcut keys.
I couldn't live without my OCR scanner anymore.
I'm trying to go "paperless" at home.
I know nothing about copyright law, but something totally random occurred to me while I was avoiding work in the library, reading people's blogs, and so forth. Since you're so into food and cooking now, you two must watch more food movies. Tell me you've seen Tampopo?! See that and then we can talk about Big Night, or The Scent of Green Papaya...
Sound the death knell, write a dirge, Carlyn's blog is dead. Long live Carlyn's blog.
C: Just givin' you shit 'cause I know that you're crazybusy now.
Still, I enjoyed reading about food that I couldn't possibly even try to cook.
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