Cooks Source infringement controversy
Encyclopedia
The Cooks Source copyright infringement controversy occurred in November 2010, when Cooks Source, a free, advertising-supported publication distributed in the New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 region of the United States of America, became the center of a copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

 dispute after the magazine reprinted an online article without permission of the author. The controversy was fueled by social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

 and crowdsourced
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....

 investigations finding additional alleged infringement and plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. The incident became an international topic of news and analysis, which expanded to become an internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...

. On the issue of copyright, the incident illustrates that "masses of Internet users are very good at finding examples of copyright infringement, which counterbalances how easy the Internet has made plagiarism in the first place." At the same time, the response by the Cooks Source editor "may well become a digital textbook example of how not to respond to grievances in the internet age." The incident was named journalistic Error of the Year for 2010 by Craig Silverman of website Regret the Error. The fallout from the controversy drove Cooks Source out of business within two weeks of it breaking in full.

Background

As reported by Dan Crowley of the local Daily Hampshire Gazette
Daily Hampshire Gazette
The Daily Hampshire Gazette is a six-day morning daily newspaper based in Northampton, Massachusetts, and covering all of Hampshire County and southern towns of Franklin County, Massachusetts...

, Cooks Source was founded in 1997 by Judith D. Griggs, a former town planner and conservation agent, who had art directed and edited several small magazines previously. The magazine stated its goal was "to help educate readers about sustainable sources of foods and products, farms, cooking, restaurants and businesses," and to provide a marketing tool for small businesses and farms which create and sell food for local businesses and consumers. At the time of the incident, Cooks Source was published by Cooks Source Publications in the second-floor office of a rented duplex in Sunderland, Massachusetts
Sunderland, Massachusetts
Sunderland is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, part of the Pioneer Valley. The population was 3,777 as of the 2000 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area....

, almost 40 miles (64.4 km) north of Springfield
Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...

. Griggs, who was 59 years old at the time of the incident, hand-delivered the monthly publication with her adult daughter along a 2,000-mile distribution route to locations in western New England, including Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

, and some of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

. The magazine's circulation varied, but it was under 10,000 a month.

Griggs rose to internet notoriety on November 4, 2010, after it became known that an article published on page 10 in the October 2010 Cooks Source issue infringed on the copyright of blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

ger Monica Gaudio, the piece's author. In 2005, Gaudio had published the copyrighted piece under the title "A Tale of Two Tarts" on a website devoted to medieval cookery.

Gaudio was credited in Cooks Source for the 1,300-word piece, which was retitled "As American As Apple Pie — Isn't!" and was revised from Gaudio's original in places. Griggs neither paid Gaudio nor notified her when the piece had run. Gaudio notified Griggs of the infringement and asked for an apology and a small donation to the Columbia School of Journalism. (Gaudio chose the Columbia School of Journalism so Cooks Source could easily comply with her request; she has stated that she is neither a journalist herself nor is she affiliated with that institution.) The ensuing response by Griggs "has become the stuff of internet legend," and said in part:

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!

Online response

Griggs' response, particularly her statement that all web content is considered public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

, was publicized by a number of online celebrities, including Nick Mamatas
Nick Mamatas
Nick Mamatas is an American horror, science fiction and fantasy author and editor for the Haikasoru line of translated Japanese science fiction novels for Viz Media...

, Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton
Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...

, John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II is an American author and online writer, and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog , at which he has written...

, Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...

, and Warren Ellis
Warren Ellis
Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...

. The tone of Griggs' response and her erroneous claims led to what Gaudio described as "nerd rage." The magazine's Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 page received a slew of mocking messages. In less than 24 hours, a list of the magazine's advertisers was generated and the advertisers contacted, with secondary campaigns begun to reward advertisers who had pulled their ads from the magazine. One blog campaigned for making "griggs" a verb meaning to take something without permission then demanding compensation from the victim. The hashtags #buthonestlymonica and #crookssource went viral
Viral phenomenon
Viral phenomena are objects or patterns able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them....

 on Twitter.

Cooks Sources web hosting company, Intuit, experienced an outage on November 4, prompting speculation that a denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...

 aimed at Cooks Source may have been the reason. Several parodic Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 accounts and a bogus Facebook page titled Cooks Source Mag were created on November 5, containing additional inflammatory statements purportedly by the magazine staff. It also inspired editorials by Robert X. Cringely
Robert X. Cringely
Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.- Biography :...

 and John Birmingham
John Birmingham
John Birmingham is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool, England and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970.-Early life and career:...

, Downfall parodies, a tribute song, and a satirical proposed apology composed entirely of unattributed famous quotations. Cringely later named it fourth among the Top 10 Dumbest Tech Moves of 2010.

Gaudio said she never intended the online response to go as far as it had, but she expected mainstream media coverage once Gaiman re-tweeted it. She said she knew one or more Cooks Source advertisers had been contacted, but she did not intend for any small businesses or people to be harmed or harassed. She said she found many of the Facebook comments amusing.

Response by Cooks Source

Gaudio did not receive a direct response from Griggs or Cooks Source Magazine in relation to the affair after Gaudio posted about their email communication.

On November 9, the Cooks Source website was updated with an unsigned statement indicating Cooks Source had complied with Gaudio's requests for redress and were changing their business practices. Gaudio was unable to confirm immediately if the requested donation had in fact been made. Linda Holmes, a writer at NPR, characterized the statement as "a very strange semi-apology," adding, "It actually sounds a lot like the e-mail Gaudio got in the first place: defiant, sure of its correctness, and, in the end, kind of baffling." New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

 declared the publication's apparent retention of Griggs "a victory for passive-aggressive e-mail writers everywhere." The Cooks Source statement was quickly parodied and mocked. John Scalzi graded the apology a D+, adding, "This is the apology of someone who is sorry she got caught, not the apology of someone who feels she has done wrong." Robert X. Cringely called the statement "one of the oddest things I've ever read."

In her first interview after the incident, Griggs said she had received hundreds of emails and disconnected her phone after getting over 100 calls. Though the November issue was scheduled for delivery, Griggs said, "I don't know if I'm going to continue Cooks Source. At this point, it's looking doubtful." The article elaborated that Cooks Source commonly received cookbooks and recipes from publishers and that its content was routinely duplicated from those sources, sometimes with express permission. Shortly after the interview's publication, Gaudio was able to confirm Griggs' donation, and therefore considered the matter "all resolved, at least to my satisfaction."

On November 17, 2010, the Cooks Source homepage was updated again, with a personal statement from Griggs which claimed Gaudio's email was "antagonistic and just plain rude", that Gaudio had neglected to post "nice" things Griggs had said in her email alongside the rude things, and that Griggs had offered to compensate Gaudio for the article, but that Gaudio "never gave [her] a chance" to address the issue. Griggs reiterated that she would likely close down Cooks Source due to the backlash. Gaudio responded by posting her side of her correspondence with Griggs; she explained that she was unable to post Griggs' portion of the email conversation due to Griggs holding copyright on her own words. The Cooks Source and Travel Source homepages were later taken offline completely, and Facebook deleted the related sites originally created by Griggs.

Analysis and additional infringement allegations

The incident prompted editorials from a range of journalists including Melissa Block
Melissa Block
Melissa Block is an American radio host. She is one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered news program.-Biography:Block was recording an interview in Chengdu, China when the area was struck by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Her coverage of the earthquake earned NPR a George Foster Peabody...

 of NPR's All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...

, Zachary Hunchar of Technorati
Technorati
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media...

, and CNN's Eatocracy. Journalist Ivor Tossell opined that this may be the first major Facebook-based internet vigilantism
Internet vigilantism
Internet vigilantism is the phenomenon of vigilantic acts taken through the Internet or carried out using applications that depend on the Internet...

 where many participants used their real names instead of remaining anonymous. He noted that Griggs resembled a cartoonish "pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

 villain", and her passive-aggressive attitude, and not the infringement itself, caused the response. TechRepublic
TechRepublic
TechRepublic is an online trade publication and social community for IT professionals, with advice on best practices and tools for the day-to-day needs of IT decision-makers....

 offered tips to avoid having one's online work used without credit,. One author compared the incident to the 2008 sourcing dispute that led to the demise of The Bulletin
The Bulletin (alternative weekly)
The Montgomery County Bulletin or simply The Bulletin is a now defunct free alternative weekly newspaper distributed in Montgomery County, Texas; a suburban county north of Houston. It claimed a circulation of 20,000 copies before being forced out of business in 2008 due to evidence of massive...

, a small Texas alternative weekly. Glenn Fleishman
Glenn Fleishman
Glenn Fleishman is an American freelance journalist who edits Wi-Fi Networking News, a widely cited early news blog that covers wireless data networking...

 wrote that "regardless of the provenance of the email, it was scary to watch the net awake as one." Another blogger likened the response to cyber bullying.

The NPR program On the Media
On the Media
On the Media is an hour-long weekly radio program, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, covering journalism, technology, and First Amendment issues. It is produced by WNYC in New York City...

 discussed the episode as an example of how quickly and severely anger can spread on the Internet, noting that the episode had made the phrase "but honestly, Monica" into an internet meme and had spawned the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

 "to Griggs," defined as "to use content on the Web without permission, then request payment from the original author for rewrites and editing." Paul Bradshaw
Paul Bradshaw (journalist)
Paul Bradshaw is an online journalist and blogger, a Reader in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University and a Visiting Professor at City University's School of Journalism in London. He manages his own blog, the Online Journalism Blog , and is the co-founder of Help Me Investigate, an...

 reviewed professional options for Griggs that might have mitigated the impact of the negative response. Joseph P. Kahn used the Cooks Source incident to illustrate how senders should have no expectation of privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

 once something is electronically transmitted to a recipient, especially if it is potentially controversial or embarrassing.

After Gaudio posted Griggs' email, online investigators created a Google Spreadsheet and compiled almost 170 instances where Cooks Source appeared to have lifted copyrighted material, including text and images, from other sources, "including NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

, Hallmark
Hallmark
A hallmark is an official mark or series of marks struck on items made of precious metals — platinum, gold, silver and in some nations, palladium...

 and the website of Food Network
Food Network
Food Network is a television specialty channel that airs both one-time and recurring programs about food and cooking. Scripps Networks Interactive owns 70 percent of the network, with Tribune Company controlling the remaining 30 percent....

 personality Paula Deen
Paula Deen
Paula Deen American cook, cooking show host, restaurateur, author, actress and Emmy Award-winning television personality.Deen resides in Savannah, Georgia, where she owns and operates...

." Blogger Edward Champion contacted the original authors or publishers of several pieces published in Cooks Source and confirmed that many of them had been used without permission. NPR sent the magazine a cease-and-desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....

 letter.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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