Recipe for Disaster

“People who love to eat are always the best people.” -Julia Child By Gordon Hopkins I would like to take this opportunity to present yet another example of a minor scandal being made much bigger and exponentially more stupid by the internet.The internet is the biggest repository of information and human creativity that has ever existed. It is the answer to the unasked question, how man libraries can stand on the head of a pin?Unfortunately, one of the unintended side effects of the birth of the internet was that it brought plagiarism and copyright infringement to never before seen heights, mostly by making is just so damn easy. Another, arguably even more odious byproduct of the world wide superhighway is the social media influencer. Well, it seems that an Australian cooking influencer named Brooke Bellamy has been accused by other food writers of plagiarism.Here is just one of the many, many headlines on this matter that I've recently stumbled across: “Food Bloggers Accuse Food Influencer of Alleged Recipe Plagiarism.”My first job upon reading this was to try and figure out what the heck the difference is between a blogger and an influencer. Short answer: it doesn't matter.The point is, Bellamy published a best-selling cook book, “Bake With Brooki.” (FYI: “Brooki” is not a typo. I checked the book cover on Amazon and that is how it is spelled. No idea why.) Some other purveyors of recipes, like Sally McKenney of “Sally's Baking Addiction,” apparently read the book and said to themselves, “Hey, that looks familiar.” Another is Nagi Maehashi, who runs the “RecipeTin Eats” website.Bellamy has denied the allegations, as has her publisher.Well, those food writers took to the internet to air their grievances and they garnered so many clicks or views or however one measures importance online, that it caught the interest of news outlets like CNN and The Daily Mail and The Washington Post, I guess because this was a slow news week? I wouldn't have thought so. In an interview, McKenney said, “Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a best-selling cookbook.”Morally, this may be true, assuming Bellamy did, indeed, copy a recipe from someone else. Legally, however, is another question.Let me be up front about this. I am not a lawyer. Don't take anything I say as legal advise from an expert or even a well-informed laymen.Having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, to keep our own lawyer happy, you CANNOT copyright a recipe. At least, not here in the U.S., anyway. A recipe is ingredients and instructions. You cannot copyright the recipe for chocolate fudge cake any more than you can copyright how to make cement. Now, the words used, the descriptions, the writing of the creative process that may accompany recipes, what the Copyright Alliance calls, “substantial literary expression,” can be protected by copyright, but not the basics of a recipe. Of course, even if recipes could be copyrighted, I'm not sure how you would ever legally prove such a copyright violation in court. Not only am I not a lawyer, I am also not a cook. Nevertheless, it seems to me there are only so many combinations of foods that are edible, let alone taste good. That two different people came up with the same recipe independently seems not just possible to me but almost inevitable.Of course, the rules of internet court are very different from a court of law.What happened next was easily foreseeable and inevitable. In yet another example of an unwanted byproduct of the internet, one which now seem to be the dominant feature, Bellamy's social media accounts, aka her livelihood, were slammed by hostile internet trolls, forcing her to shut them down.Just as easily foreseeable and inevitable are the claims by Maehashi to be totally surprised by the hostile action taken by those trolls. Yesterday, Maehashi went on Instagram to beg those attacking Bellamy, “Please stop the trolling.” She claimed to have no idea her complaints would, in her words, “open the floodgates to haters.”“Floodgates to haters” aside, there may be another kind of fallout these angry these folks may not see coming. What are the odds none of the recipes published by these bloggers or influencers or whatever they call themselves bare no resemblance whatsoever to someone else's old family recipes? How soon till they find themselves victims of the same accusations? How soon till they hear, “Hey! That was my Gramma's secret recipe for biscuits and gravy. How dare you publish it without my permission? I'm calling my lawyer.”

Martha Drake

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