INFO 202 Fall 08 Blog

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/bread

On the topic of authorship, royalties and intellectual property, I found an article discussing the predicament a baker or cook faces when their recipes are reproduced, unacknowledged (or sort of acknowledged), proliferated and popularized.  Regardless of whether the creation (eg. The grilled pizza) becomes accredited to a certain person or not, they certainly do not obtain commission or royalties when the item is placed on the menus of various dining establishments or on websites. 

In the instance of baking, when a quarter teaspoon measurement of a single ingredient can mean the difference between a perfectly brown crust and a dull yellow doughy hue, the baker who perfected the recipe may feel entitled to ownership rights.  I guess what I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around is the notion that a pasta recipe with a twist can have the same weight of copyrights as for example a novel or a textbook.  It’s hard for me to place recipes and the next new technological innovation within the same intellectual property realm.  In addition, the nature of artisanal craftsmanship, under which I think baking and olive oil making etc. falls, seems to value the hand-me-down, generation-after-generation-of-toiling-to-perfect-the-craft element that seems to make it impossible to pinpoint ownership.  

Shrug, who knows…