[conspire] Recipes (are public domain)

[Rick Moen]

I'd long reasonably believed that recipes (for food) are per-se public
domain ab initio, not eligible for copyright.  Reason?  Because they are
not "literary works" within the meaning of that term in USA copyright
law (as does, for example, software), and because they don't fall into
any of the other copyright-eligible categories of original, creative
expressions fixed in a tangible medium.

But there was room to doubt that, and it's nice to be sure.  A while
back, I found a competent good-enough legal analysis on that question,
and the answer is "yes":
https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/intellectual-property/copyrighting-recipes.html

Thus, I have a modest and growing collection of... er... five recipes in
good ol' HTML5.  Added just today:  Chocolate Decadence.  (The 1980s
called and want their trendy dessert back).

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/

There's a sixth, Cod alla Livornese, that I have not yet HTMLised,
having very recently snagged it from the author's posting to Nextdoor.


As always with public domain works, the problem is the -other- stuff
you might want to include.  For the five HTMLised recipes, I've found
copylefted or similarly licensed photography of the same or a very
similar dish, usually from Wikimedia Project (umbrella for Wikipedia,
etc.).

As a collector of recipes off the Web, pictures are often An Annoying
Problem.  The recipe itself is absolutely legal to reproduce no matter
what bullshit copyright statement appears on the original page, and
there's a _vast_ number of fabulous recipes on the Web.  But ixnay on
the accompanying photo.  Borrowing that could get you on the wrong side
of a tort complaint.

There are probably many images whose creators would be glad to issue 
suitable licensing, but it doesn't occur to them, so photos with no
specific creator credit or that appear on a page with a copyright notice
without "open content" licensing are not safe to reuse.

Of course, one obvious fallback is:  Cook it, take a good photo, and
then use that with "open content" licensing.  I just don't necessarily 
feel like baking (say) Knekkebrød when I'm HTMLising a recipe for it.

And the other thing you would want to avoid including is other author
material surrounding the recipe, e.g., the great cookbook author Peg
Bracken's funny and breezy stories in her I Hate to Cook Book series.
Nope, don't.  That part is "literary work", thus copyright-covered.

Picture a WikiRecipes site, some day.  Including all of Peg
Bracken's recipes, all of Julia Child's, etc.  Totally lawful.
Just needs transcribing (or copypasta from e-books or anywhere else),
and HTMLising.  And photos.  And curation.