Kitchen Report

Moderator
Barnaby Dorfman, Foodista.com, CEO

Panel
Robin Goldstein, IP attorney, food blogger
Robert Schroeder, FTC
Barnaby Dorfman

Robin Goldstein, blogger, IP attorney

Copyrights

• You do not need to register with the Copyright office to get protection.
• You do need to publish to gain protection (available to the public)
• The work must be original.
• You cannot copyright facts.
• You can copyright a unique collection of facts, e.g., a cookbook.
• For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years.
• Public domain = nobody owns it.

Recipe Copyright Protections are limited. Official language here.

Fair Use official language here.

• Consider purpose of work, type of work, portion of work used, distribution, your profit.
• Could be fair use if it is noncommercial, educational, scholarly, facts, public information, small passage, small audience.
• Get permission: commercial, creative work, whole section, large audience.

Give credit, when in doubt, get permission.

Licenses you give on the Web: You still own your copyright, but you also give away a full set of rights.

Creative Commons, Copyleft, Open Source:

• creativecommons.org
• flickr.com/creativecommons/
• Attribution: you let others copy, distribute, and perform your copyrighted work, but only if they give you credit.
• Noncommercial: You let others distribute, display, and perform your work, but for noncommercial purposes only.
• No Derivative Works: You let only your verbatim copy be distributed, displayed, etc.
• Share Alike: Allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Bob Schroeder, Federal Trade Commission, director NW office

FTC prohibits “unfair or  deceptive acts or practices in commerce.” The guides aren’t law, and there are no fines.

Endorsement: An advertising message that consumers perceive to represent the personal views of a speaker other than sponsoring the product.

• requiring disclosure when advertiser has paid for a study touted in ad
• delection of “results not typical”
• addition of examples of disclosing material connections in social media marketing

Material connections between advertisers and endorsers:

• when an advertiser and an endorser have a relationship that the audience wouldn’t reasonably expect.
• examples: seller is compensating endorser, endorser is employee.
• celebrity endorsers, not necessary to disclose relationship
• disclosure is in plain language: A supplier gave me this product and I liked it.
• advertising should be identifiable as advertising

Robin Goldstein, IP attorney, blogger

“Recent advances in bullshit prevention”

• FTC rules play a key role in protecting consumers from bullshit.
• Bloggers have to play by the rules, but “traditional media” doesn’t. Why not? When it is someone’s job/livelihood to write about food the FTC holds that reporters are expected to review fairly and objectively. Blogging is newer and understood less well.
• What are the main differences between bloggers and print journalists? Hard to determine.
• Voluntary disclosure is the best approach, bloggerdisclosure.org

Note: The FTC has never sued a food blogger. They mostly go after video game reviewers.

This post was blogged live from the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle.