Food industry giant tackles copyright violators
Betty Crocker, a subsidiary of General Mills, on Friday delivered subpoenas to two hundred sixty one people, accusing these people of massive copyright violation for sharing recipes with friends and family. If these claims prove true, each person will be liable for up to $150,000 per recipe illegally copied.
Sharon Bauer, 35, of Livingston, Indiana, had no idea that sharing these recipes would get her into any trouble. "I found the recipes on the BettyCrocker.com website," Sharon says. "If General Mills doesn't want people using their recipes, why would they make the recipes freely available on the Internet? And I always share all of my favorite recipes with my family, because I know that we all enjoy similar foods and love to cook.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, well known for advocating people's rights on the Internet, has weighed in on this issue, giving this statement to the press: "These lawsuits are completely frivolous and a waste of the courts' time. General Mills has not been harmed at all by this so called 'rampant recipe sharing.' Why would General Mills decide to sue its own consumers, who regularly purchase General Mills products at the supermarket to use in these very recipes? This strategy is sure to backfire on them."
Indeed, the media has grabbed ahold of this event, calling for Congress to convene and re-evaluate recent changes to copyright law, including provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) and the so called Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which further extended the period that works remain copyrighted before the enter the public domain.
General Mills' response to the media furor was presented at a press conference Monday: "General Mills, Inc. must pursue any copyright violations that infringe on our Intellectual Property rights. Without express written approval, it remains illegal for anyone to copy such content and distribute it. We are in fact only sending subpoenas to the people we have identified as the worst offenders, who have freely shared an unreasonably large number of our recipes with others, whether via email, fax, or hand-written recipe cards. We do plan on offering a Recipe Amnesty program, which "would require recipe sharers to admit in writing that they illegally traded recipes and vow in a legally binding, notarized document, never to do it again. These sharers would also be required to destroy any copies of recipes they already possess."
