Wednesday 15 February 2012

that's the way to do it

To anyone who persists with the claim that they "have" to post a recipe in order to talk about it, could I just recommend something I found just by accident today, that proves you wrong.

Have a look at http://noe847.blogspot.com/2009/01/adventures-in-yeast-2-dan-lepards.html

The blogger writes about the tradition of stollen making, and what it represents. She includes her own lovely photos, and talks about what experience she has in baking this type of thing. Then she links to a recipe without cutting & pasting it, before explaining how she adapted it to the ingredients she had to hand and how it went when she baked it. Please note, part of what makes this so good is that it didn't go exactly to plan, and the blogger talks about her personal baking experience: to me, this is worth more than any number of pointlessly cut & pasted recipes. She also talks about what her family liked and didn't like about it, and what she plans to do next time she bakes.

To me this is what it's about: writing about your own baking, and writing "around" a recipe; giving a link to where the author has chosen to publish it and respecting their work, instead of just doing a cut & paste job. End result ? a really interesting blog post, personal and illuminating and drawing me in to her experience. And you know something ? It got comments, and made me want to read more.

5 comments:

Jean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chow and chatter said...

Hi David hope my post about Dan's book was OK, so sorry you are having such a hard time checking blogs, doesn't seem fair at all. I didn't do anything wrong did I and is there anything I can do to help. I am a huge fan of Dan's have been tweeting with him for a while

Rebecca

rebeccasubbiah at yahoo dot com

David Whitehouse said...

Hi Rebecca,
I'd actually be happy to send a lot of food bloggers to look at your post, to see the right way to do it! In fact, that's a really good idea: hey folks, take a look at http://www.chowandchatter.com/2012/02/british-scones-from-short-and-sweet.html - it's a good one!

For the record, what Jean had posted above, before she chose to delete it, was:

"David, I am acutely embarrassed that you had to write and ask me to remove the details of a recipe from my blog. Also that I am guilty of many of the lines of thinking you mention in a previous post.
I actually had not thought about copyright and did think I was promoting book rather than stealing from the author.
I have removed the post along with all references to it and comments completely, just to be on the safe side. Also because I don't think the posts stand up so well just with the story and without the recipe.

I have read your previous posts on this matter and, with my face still red from embarrassment, I have removed all other posts from my blog where there might be a copyright issue.

One of the things you say is that it's ok to link to a source the author approves of. I found the recipe for spelt and ginger cookies quite quickly on the Bacheldre Mill website. Does this mean that if I had not written the recipe out but had linked to this the post would have been ok? I appreciate that simply linking to another blog that has hijacked the recipe does not count but this website looks "official". Presumably it would also be fine if I linked to one of the author's recipes as published in newspapers or magazines. I would be grateful for your advice on this."

I don't know why Jean has changed her mind on this, and I feel a little sad about it. For the record, it would have been fine to link to the Bacheldre Mill website for the recipe in question, Dan agreed to them using it to promote the sale of their spelt flour when they were a relatively new business, and Dan was happy to give them a little help. And linking to the newspaper or magazine where something was published is always a good idea, and certainly better than cutting & pasting. As I've written elsewhere, publishers usually monitor the number of page impressions each contributor gets, so if you send readers their way, they know someone is worth publishing. If you just republish the recipe, that doesn't happen and you may undermine a writer's standing with their publisher.

Jean said...

David, I changed my mind because, having then done a bit of research into copyright I no longer felt quite so embarrassed after all, just confused.

Your comment frightened me into thinking I might be in wholesale breach of copyright law, although that's not what you actually said. The websites I have read so far tell me this is not the case, although I can see why you issued a polite request.

And when we're talking of moral issues, if I have chosen to delete a comment because I no longer wish it to be public, is it fair of you to then republish it?

David Whitehouse said...

Jean, I felt that your comment here was part of the conversation and as it was part of this site, it should continue to be seen here.

I genuinely do have a sense of sadness that you've changed course and I wonder if you've been badly advised ? Copyright isn't really a complicated subject but there is so much bad advice out there, usually from people who are angry about not being able to do exactly as they please with someone else's work, or those who'd like to think that if they say it's not a problem, then it won't be.

I suspect that food blogging has come from nowhere so quickly that many professional food writers and publishers are yet to work out what their response should be, and the problem of copyright infringement simply didn't have its present scale 5 years ago, so wasn't addressed back then. But owning content (in this case, recipes) has no value unless you manage its distribution, and that is going to be a major issue over the next few years.

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