Blogger's Fury
Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 12:05PM For Valentine's Day I posted several chocolaty treats that I made for Nick and his work friends. I came across the chocolate covered cherries recipe from a fellow blogger and I gave her all the credit for her "creation." I put quotations around creation because the recipe is simple and can be found everywhere on the internet, believe me I looked [and found.] However, I thought I would give her credit because I know how exciting it is to cook food, blog about it and have some recognition. Well, she did not approve that I "used her" recipe without permission. I kindly told her that in most instances where an original work is used simply citing the author/work is enough and I do not think I need to ask her permission to use recipes. I mean, we have all gone to college, most of us have Master's Degrees or Law Degrees, what do you think? Imagine what our researching life would be like if we had to ask permission to use work that existed in the world? In some instances permission could never be granted because the author is deceased - imagine all the imperative documents/research that could be lost if we could not merely cite other research without permission? I cited her and gave her credit like the ethical person I am. Since then I have rescinded the citation and have cited another website with the same exact "original" recipe she claims to have worked so hard on.
I was put off by her pretentiousness to say the least - come on, she was upset about the chocolate covered cherries recipe? Who could not figure that out on their own - buy cherries, dip in chocolate, it's REALLY that simple. What do you guys think, was I wrong to give her ALL of the credit [without permission] for her self proclaimed "hard" work or should I have asked her permission??
Reader Comments (5)
since plagiarism is taking someone elses ideas and trying to pass them off as your own as well as using someone elses production without giving them the credit by that definition you have done no wrong. As you have said: you gave her credit and you did not say you created it then she is up in arms about absolutely nothing it seems. Who knows why she or anyone else gets mad at something at any given time. Sometimes people are rational in their anger and sometimes,of course, highly irrational. I try to believe that if someone is getting irrationally angry at me, that they are leaving some other poor schmuck alone and that is a good thing, however temporary. If I am at fault in something - fine, i will try to change it or make amends for it- if I am not at fault then I cannot worry about it and go on. We have all enjoyed your posts about your cooking and urge you to continue, as long as you enjoy it, and don't let someone elses anger affect you negatively!!! which, by the way, brings up another point--- YOU COOKED IT OR PREPARED IT not her and that is all you said you did. enjoy yourself and we will too
By LAW you must cite the author and when I looked at your recipe I didn't see you cite her so I think you should cite her or apologize. People don't get angry for no reason!
While I appreciate you are probably defending your friend/family member, I DID cite her. If you are looking at the recipe for the first time you will no longer see my citation for her blog because she took issue with it. As a result, I decided to cite ANOTHER website with the same recipe. If you take a look at my chocolate covered cherries recipe you will notice the link in the first paragraph [where I first mentioned and linked to Joy's blog]. I apologize you are looking at my website for the first time and missed the opportunity to see me mention your friend and redirect all of my traffic to her blog, but that is your loss. I appreciate your comment, but please know that I know what I am both legally and morally obligated to do as far as research citation and did just that. I will not apologize because I did nothing wrong when I DID cite Joy. Please get the facts straight before you address a situation the next time. Finally, I am not angry. hahaha
I think you did the right thing. You did cite her blog and tell the whole world you used her recipe [as generic as it is]. Don't let these people get you down.
Here is my take...It's chocolate covered fruit... this is not a novel idea... Its like Dave's recipe for toast... here is an idea mix some flour butter sugar together and then put chocolate chips in it... wow it's a chocolate chip cookie.
Now it was some new technique for chocolate that you stole... or a secret recipe for KFC or Coke or a special technique... then you would have a problem. The Neely's (Neely's BBQ) put there recipes for there bbq sauce, hot sauce, and blend of spices on line... they do that SO YOU WILL USE IT.
Maybe she should cite where she got her freaking recipes... because its not a new idea and I doubt that she came up with it on her own.