Keep Recipes Free
Meg is making the case against changing copyright laws to help chefs.
I don't even know where to begin. The idea that a change to copyright law would spur chefs to new levels of creativity seems spurious to me. The lack of money to be made from soup is not due to a dearth of soup innovations. It's due to the cut-throat margins of the restaurant business. Do we really need to get lawyers involved in what we eat? What restaurateur needs a line item for recipe licensing fees in his already tight budget?
The current copyright law is excessive and if anything, stifles, rather than promotes, innovation. (Current law grants copyright to an author for the term of her life plus seventy years. If I were to live to 100, what you're reading right now wouldn't enter the public domain until 2142!) You can look all around the creative world, from Disney to the recent troubles with the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, for examples of how copyright has been perverted from the original intent to offer a limited set of protections to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
So why would we want to bring that burden into the world of cuisine? Heck, the idea of copyrighting a recipe assumes one can actually create an original recipe! But aren't all recipes derivative works? How can I possibly come up with a unique cookie recipe that isn't based on more than a hundred years of cookie recipes using flour, eggs, a leavening agent, a fat, and a sweetener?
