A simple tale here of how someone can say one thing to you in an email and then turn through 180 degrees - and maybe this gives you a quick peek at my day...
A food blogger - I won't for the moment name her, but I can - put the Dan Lepard recipe for Sticky lemon and poppy seed cake on her blog. The recipe is in Short & Sweet, and for those who don't want to buy the book but would like to see the recipe, we make it available on The Guardian's website, under Dan's name. So, as in many other cases, we ask people not to paste the whole recipe on their blog without permission (it's copyright, and we have publishing agreements covering it both in print and online), but instead, simply to give a link to where the recipe can be found. We don't insist you buy the book, we just ask that readers are directed to where the recipe has, by our choice, been made available.
My request that she should remove the recipe was phrased in polite and reasonable terms, and I made it clear that the rest of her post was fine, we just asked for the recipe details to be replaced by a link to The Guardian's website. Her initial objection to what I asked was based on the fact that she'd bought a copy of the book, and she seemed to think that as a result, she was entitled to post its contents online. Of course, this isn't the case, and as is typical with books, the flyleaf says " Text and photographs © (Copyright) ... All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission".
The blogger also started attacking me on Facebook, and also complained that when I posted my request, I hadn't given her my email address (not that hers was on the page she'd posted on!), so I wrote to her, as follows (this is it, apart from her name, word for word:
"Dear XXXXXX,
You said on your blog that I hadn't provided an email address through which you could contact me. Well, here it is. I don't generally include my email address in blog posts or comments, because there are too many "bots" harvesting email addresses (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address_harvesting for more details).
Our practice when a book is published is to make a short-list of recipes available for print media and online reviewers to choose from, if they want to write a feature or blogpost about the book, but in return, we ask them not to post other recipes from the book unless we've been able to agree to that first, and in any case, online sources apart from The Guardian are usually asked only to carry the recipe for a limited period. Dan's recipe for Sticky lemon and poppy seed cake has never been approved for publication online except by The Guardian and so we can't agree to your posting it.
The problem is that there are so many food bloggers that with one recipe here, and another there, an entire book can end up online, which really isn't helpful, and The Guardian obviously wants to see a certain amount of traffic (showing that Dan's recipes generate readers) if they are to continue to carry his work. So again, bloggers posting recipes undermines that relationship, and would eventually be very damaging. But we don't feel that it's unreasonable to ask bloggers to provide a link to where a recipe can be found, or for readers to make one mouse click to get there.
So we ask bloggers either to simply say which book a recipe is from, or to give a link to where it can be found "officially" online. This means that we are able to provide a great many recipes free of charge to internet users, but it needs to be on "approved" sites, and I have to say that most bloggers have no problems with that request. I would also encourage you to read about The Bloggers Voluntary Code of Fair Practice at http://writingacookerybook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/bloggers-voluntary-code-of-fair.html, which again makes the point that "before reproducing any work, or photograph or recipe... you have permission from the publisher/author".
Regards"
And at first, all appeared to be fine. She replaced the recipe details on her blog with a link to The Guardian, and later that day, sent me an email which read as follows (again, word for word):
"Hi David,
thanks for your email, I appreciate you taking the time to write to me. Unfortunately I checked it after replying on FB...
Anyway, I have put the link onto the blog now and hope the matter is therefore resolved.
As I said from the very beginning, I had no idea the recipe had been published online and I mentioned Dan's name to ensure that people knew it's not my own recipe.
I guess I felt that I was being attacked and that you were implying I had been stealing somebody else's work. I'm proud to always use my own photos and if I do take pictures in somebody's shop, at an exhibition or of somebody's work I always put a link up, so in this case it was an honest mistake. I very often promote other's work and didn't think it was anything else here either...
I hope this clears everything up now
Have a good evening,
kind regards"
Let me say at once that I'd never suggested or implied that she was stealing anything, I had simply asked that a copyright recipe that she'd posted should be removed from her blog. When, on Facebook, she'd asked me what would have happened if someone passed the recipe off as her own, without even saying it was by Dan, I had replied that it would potentially open the blogger up to more serious action. But this was in response to a direct - and hypothetical - question she'd asked me, and at no time did I accuse her of dishonesty.
And after reading her email, I felt that the matter was closed, and that everyone was ok with things, only to find a day later that without contacting me further, she'd gone back to her blog and was again accusing me of implying that she was stealing - and of course, she'd deleted both her comments and my replies on Facebook, and my comments on her blog - which she'd also rewritten. In other words, she was editing the past, and the exchange of comments, to suit her case. Her email to me hadn't asked me for any further response, and I felt that her words - "I hope this clears everything up now" - closed the matter. But the next day, she's also claiming that I "would NOT reply to a friendly email I [that's her of course, not me] sent him". She also goes on to claim three times that she was giving us "free advertising".
Well, I'm sorry, but this is what gives some food bloggers a bad name. Doctoring the past by removing comments and rewriting a blog, and hiding exchanges on Facebook. And most of all, if I have to say it again, taking a copyright recipe and posting it on your blog isn't about giving the author free advertising. It's about taking what isn't yours, that you don't have permission to print, and using it to fill your blog. Good bloggers don't need to do things like that, and indeed, thay don't do things like that. Someone once complained that I shouldn't "name and shame" (I'm not sure why, the few bloggers who behave in this way have no reservations about naming and insulting me, and I don't see anyone telling them they shouldn't make it personal), so for the moment, I won't say who it is. But in the hope that she reads this, I will say that in my opinion, what she's done is underhand and perhaps even hypocritical, after our exchange of emails, and that it doesn't help her reputation. And most surprising of all, the pages of her own blog say, about her words and images, "Please do not copy them without asking first". A shame she doesn't extend that courtesy to the work of others.
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