YouTube Plagiarism, Is It Ethical?

[GlorifiedRice]

Hi Folks,

 

I dont wish to embarrass the person who Im discussing (so I wont*) but every time I see her videos on my sidebar on YouTube

I am very irked that she continues to get paid by YouTube ads, yet plagiarizes all her content from magazines, books and other peoples

websites. She will say things such as, "the recipe called for such and such" or "I saw this recipe" .

I find this abhorrent. I used to have a website (non food) that was popular** and it was all original content and I never got paid, so Im angry when I see others STEALING and getting paid. If you just wanna make recipes and post videos fine. but stealing is wrong.

So turn off the monetization aspect.

 

What are your thoughts on this subject?

 

* Unless you wanna guess, lol

**It was popular enough that I think I went a little kookoo, keeping up with it. Im glad its gone now,

Edited January 31, 2017 by Smithy
Corrected title spelling (log)

[gfweb]

Interwebs are full of stolen stuff. Like everything on Buzzfeed.

[Martin Fisher]

What exactly did she steal?

And are you sure her videos are monetized? Not all are.

[cdh]

I don't think performing a written recipe in front of a camera is plagiarism at all...

[liuzhou]

2 hours ago, GlorifiedRice said:

She will say things such as, "the recipe called for such and such" or "I saw this recipe"

 

That pretty much shoots your own argument in the foot.

She is acknowledging that the recipe is not hers. Therefore it isn't plagiarism. It would only be plagiarism if she pretended that the recipe was her original creation.

 

Quote

Plagiarism: ... the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.

OED

 

[chromedome]

Almost every recipe on every food blog says it is "adapted from" or "inspired by" a recipe from a book or another blogger. Most of those that don't, should. It's how the principle of fair use works out with recipes: As long as you re-cast the instructional portion into your own words, it's not considered plagiarism. 

[GlorifiedRice]

She never creates original content.

She puts herself out there as a creator of desserts etc. Shes definitely monetized and accepts endorsements.

If you are getting paid, it should be YOUR work. Its not her work.

 

Look, Ive written 2 books. If I found out someone was stealing my words and using them for profit, Id be very pissed off. It took me over a decade to write the books. My Mother is a prize winning cook, Ive seen her creating recipes over and over in the kitchen growing up, tinkering for days to get a recipe just right before submission. So that is how I see this...

It is theft of other peoples work.

 

[jvalentino]

I'm curious curious why you don't want to name them-the videos are public right? So the video is the creation, not the recipe and she is giving attribution. That sounds ok to me or are they copying videos?

[Tri2Cook]

18 hours ago, GlorifiedRice said:

I used to have a website (non food) that was popular** and it was all original content and I never got paid

 

That's just the way it goes sometimes. Being better than someone else at something doesn't guarantee you'll be more successful with it than they will. I don't really see a problem with what this other person is doing based on what you've said here but even if there is some reason for moral outrage, the moral high ground and what's legal are quite often two different things. If this other person is staying within the boundaries of what's legal to make money with the content being used and you feel it's still wrong, it's the laws governing this area that you should have issue with, not the person taking advantage of opportunity. I mean, if there was something in the law that allowed us to rob a bank under certain conditions, we'd all know it was still technically stealing to rob that bank but I bet a lot of banks would be getting robbed anyway. I can't promise I wouldn't be looking to buy a burglar's mask myself.

[Anna N]

Plagiarism cannot be ethical so your question should be:

 

Is what this person is doing plagiarism or not?  And if it's not plagiarism is it in some way unethical? 

[GlorifiedRice]

I dont think naming names would be good as it could bring a silly flame war here, which isnt what eG is all about.

 

However,  I did like her when I first started watching her channel, but as soon as I figured out what was going on, I was instantly turned off. It just feels wrong.

 

Look at the passion Vivian Howard put into her book....OMG that things huge! What if someone took her book and copied it and made money off of it. What if someone opened up another restaurant and served all Vivians food?

What if your Grandma spent all week perfecting a recipe for some contest, won the prize and someone else copied that same recipe and sent it in to another contest and won. Its just wrong.

[Anna N]

12 minutes ago, GlorifiedRice said:

I dont think naming names would be good as it could bring a silly flame war here, which isnt what eG is all about.

 

However,  I did like her when I first started watching her channel, but as soon as I figured out what was going on, I was instantly turned off. It just feels wrong.

 

Look at the passion Vivian Howard put into her book....OMG that things huge! What if someone took her book and copied it and made money off of it. What if someone opened up another restaurant and served all Vivians food?

What if your Grandma spent all week perfecting a recipe for some contest, won the prize and someone else copied that same recipe and sent it in to another contest and won. Its just wrong.

I am not sure how anyone here or anywhere else can possibly offer any sort of opinion without knowing what or who we are talking about.  I am not even curious but if you wish to keep this person's identity hidden then all that can be argued is the hypothetical.

[cakewalk]

There seems to be a lot of different stuff going on here. Does she make no mention at all about whose recipe she is using? That is very bad. I don't know about its legal status, but it is very bad for more reasons than the obvious one about giving credit where it is due.

 

The internet in general, and, (IMO) You Tube in particular, are phenomenal sources of information. The blogs and videos that I learn the most from are the ones that give credit to their sources. It's done not only to give credit where it's due, but because it furthers the viewers' learning capabilities. That recipe you're making is from Alice Medrich? Gee, I never heard of Alice Medrich, I want to find out more about her. And so on. The individual recipes are not really the thing. The brilliance here is people's willingness to share the scope of their knowledge. Obviously not everyone does that. But I think if someone is just looking for a recipe, I'm not sure it will matter very much if that person knows who created the recipe. But if someone is looking to learn more, they will get tired on their own of the lack of full information, and will seek it elsewhere. 

 

I'm not sure if this really answers the issue you're raising, but I do think it's a different perspective on why crediting a source is so important. It is so much more than just giving the nod to the originator of a recipe or an idea or whatever. It is a matter of giving your readers or viewers a greater opportunity to pursue things on their own. I think not giving that type of credit is more than illegal, it is terribly selfish and ungenerous. Those are terrible (and sadly prevalent) qualities, but they're not illegal.

 

BTW - I'd also very much like to know who you are referring to. (No pressure, of course!!)

[Martin Fisher]

16 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I am not sure how anyone here or anywhere else can possibly offer any sort of opinion without knowing what or who we are talking about.

 

Yeah! That!

[Tri2Cook]

2 minutes ago, GlorifiedRice said:

What if someone took her book and copied it and made money off of it. What if someone opened up another restaurant and served all Vivians food?

What if your Grandma spent all week perfecting a recipe for some contest, won the prize and someone else copied that same recipe and sent it in to another contest and won. Its just wrong.

I understand what you're upset about but again, morally wrong and illegal are frequently not one and the same. To call it stealing or plagiarism would be to call it illegal, which this (as described) is not. Calling it morally wrong is a completely different argument. Maybe of equal importance to you but probably not so much to the person making the money. There are probably moral objections to be found regarding a large percentage of the completely legal ways people make money. The only real recourse for moral objections is to not support the person, company, etc. in question.

[Anna N]

58 minutes ago, GlorifiedRice said:

I dont think naming names would be good as it could bring a silly flame war here, which isnt what eG is all about.

.....

 This suggests that if you name this person then many here will come to this person's defence else why worry about a flame war.   I really think you will either have to come clean or lick your wounds in private.  I know this site is very strict on giving credit where credit is due and acknowledging sources.  Not all sites are as scrupulous. 

[teonzo]

What about most pastry shops? Do you think each and every pastry shop uses only personal recipes? I would say that at least 50% pastry shops (I'm speaking for here in Italy) never developed a single new recipe, they just copied from someone else.

If the requirement for making money with food was to be restrictively creative then most professionals should have to close shop.

We all build from stones created by someone that came before us, we can't claim to be purely original, neither Pierre Hermé nor Albert Adrià can claim that. We can only put our own twist, someone put a bigger one, someone else a smaller one. Just repeating a recipe written by someone else means putting our own twist, since it's impossible to make it the same way, each person unconsciously make things in a slight different way.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[cakewalk]

I don't think the YouTube issue is the same as the bakery shop issue. I don't think anyone expects a bakery to say whether or not everything (or anything) in their shop is from an original recipe, and if it isn't, to explicitly state where it's from. I don't think such an expectation even exists. A bakery is not a website, and even if money is made in each instance, I don't think the item being sold is the same. I really see no point of comparison here. Websites and YouTube clips are not selling physical items. They're imparting (and sometimes selling) information and instruction. The question of whether or not that information is original is very different from the question of whether or not your cake is your own invention. I think these are two different, and incomparable, questions. 

[chromedome]

I would also point out that the creation of a YouTube video does, to some extent, add value. My ex-wife, to name just one, was a very visual learner...watching a recipe prepared on YouTube would do much, much, more for her than just reading the recipe. For those who are less experienced cooks or bakers, it also neatly answers the question "Is it supposed to look like that?", which is one I remember well from my younger days.

 

I don't know if that makes it a "derivative work" under the accepted norms applying to intellectual property (we lament the absence of The Fat Guy even more during this kind of discussion) but I believe that's what it is. 

[rotuts]

ingredient lists cannot be copyrighted :

 

" 1 cup Flour " , etc

 

what and how you describe your plan for that cup can.

 

MarthaFelon, before she became a felon  used several Rx's from Richard Onley , way back when . Way back.

 

Simple French Food

 

as I recall she was sued and lost.  no matter to MF , she did it again , was sued and lost again.

 

making an Rx from VivianHoward and posting it on YouTube, with mention of where you got the Rx I feel is fine.

 

you've put your work into that Rx.

 

its done here all the time.

 

implying the the dish on the whole is your is not fine.

 

 

[cakewalk]

2 hours ago, chromedome said:

I would also point out that the creation of a YouTube video does, to some extent, add value. My ex-wife, to name just one, was a very visual learner...watching a recipe prepared on YouTube would do much, much, more for her than just reading the recipe. For those who are less experienced cooks or bakers, it also neatly answers the question "Is it supposed to look like that?", which is one I remember well from my younger days.

Oh definitely. The first time I made puff pastry I think I looked at every single YouTube video on the subject, and it helped immensely. Same with strudel dough. The visuals are extremely important. But this is for method more than it is for recipes.

[teonzo]

19 hours ago, cakewalk said:

I don't think the YouTube issue is the same as the bakery shop issue

 

A shop gets money for repeating a recipe, most of the times created by others.

A YouTube video gets money for repeating a recipe, most of the times created by others.

The value for a shop is phisically creating an item and making it available to the customers.

The value for a YouTube video is phisically recording/editing the video and making it available to the viewers.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[cakewalk]

1 hour ago, teonzo said:

 

A shop gets money for repeating a recipe, most of the times created by others.

A YouTube video gets money for repeating a recipe, most of the times created by others.

The value for a shop is phisically creating an item and making it available to the customers.

The value for a YouTube video is phisically recording/editing the video and making it available to the viewers.

 

 

 

Teo

 

Yes, you are right. It is exactly the same.