[DMCA-Activists] German Chef Seeks Copyright for Recipes

[Seth Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [A2k] German star chef asks for copyright-like right on
recipes
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:59:01 퍝
From: "Georg C. F. Greve" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden

--
FYI.

Copyright spreading into the area


[
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/the_invention_of_cookyright
]

The invention of cookyright

   greve

   Monday 13 February 2006

German cook asking to introduce copyright-like right for recipes.

   Remember the parody about Cold Pizza Piracy? Here is another 
   one, only this time it is not a joke. Imagine yourself in the 
   year 2025, you open your virtual mail box and the certified 
   document printer spews out the following:

Dear consumer,

it has been brought to the attention of the Guild of Guide 
Michelin approved restaurants (GOGMA) that you have violated the 
cookyright of its star chefs, as defined under directive 
2008/29/EC.

Law-abiding visitors of your appartement informed us that you 
violated in particular the recipes "zucchini flower I+II" of chef 
Heinz Beck, whose family is thus deprived their sustenance by 
your piracy. You furthermore violated the moral rights of chef 
Heinz Beck by not using any cardamom, which is a small but 
important trace substance in these dishes.

As you know from the legal information provided to you when 
dining at our restaurants, which you signed together with your 
pre-dining bill, you are in particular NOT AUTHORISED to ANALYSE, 
IMITATE, COOK FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS, LEARN FROM or be INSPIRED 
BY recipes provided to you by THE RESTAURANT.

This act constitutes copyright infringement of the most serious 
kind. According to Directive 2001/29/EC of the European 
Parliament, GOGMA orders you to destroy your circumvention 
device, colloquially known as kitchen, and will further take 
legal action against those who supplied you with said 
circumvention device.

Violation of cookyright deprives thousands of restaurant owners 
of their living, and harms the food industry, one of the largest 
employers worldwide.

GOGMA therefore finds itself forced to set you a one week 
deadline to comply with this order, effective immediately.

S. Hark
GAGOGMA
(General Attorney of Guild of Guide Michelin approved 
restaurants)

   It may sound ridiculous, but only seems like the logical 
   consequence of what I read in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) 
   today:


   German star-cook Heinz Beck of the restaurant "La Pergola" in 
   Rome asks to introduce a copyright on cooking recipes. His 
   argument is based on cooking also being a creative form of 
   art. Naturally, no matter how stupid the idea, someone will 
   always go for it. In this case Giorgio Assuma, head of the 
   Italian Collecting Society (SIAE). FSFE already had the 
   displeasure of meeting this group in relation to Italian law 
   248/2000, which makes it quite hard to distribute any software 
   legally in Italy.

   Now Giorgio Assuma considers "culinaric art a serious issue" 
   and asks for a EU directive to introduce a kind of cookyright. 
   One can only marvel at the horrors of a European Cookyright 
   Directive.

   Chef Heinz Beck claims he only wants the credit and no money 
   from people who cook his dishes. But how much will the 
   creation of a cookyright administration cost, how effective 
   will it be at tracking authorship and forcing proper credits -
   - and who will pay all that?

   Furthermore: will other chefs see this the same way, what 
   opinion will the collecting societies for cookyrights have, 
   and how he himself will feel if his restaurant is one day not 
   doing as well anymore and someone else runs a successful 
   restaurant, cooking some of his creations.

   Maybe he'd be better off with publishing his creations early, 
   making sure the world knows what he has tried, and thus 
   obtaining his place in cooking history. Future generations 
   should in any case thank him for not pursuing the idea of 
   cookyright -- I hope.

   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
   ShareAlike 2.5 License.

--
Georg C. F. Greve                                
<address@hidden>
Free Software Foundation Europe                 
(http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!    
(http://www.fsfe.org)
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