Bloggers be aware of plagiarism in New Zealand

It is sad to have to write posts like this one instead of a recipe, or posting images of lovely landscapes, but I feel that it needs to be done.


Today I would like to invite you, especially if you are a New Zealand food blogger, to visit Johanna from Wild Picnic and read her post Puha and plagiarism?
I heard a few stories about plagiarism among bloggers overseas, but this beats them all: what Johanna and others have experienced here is having their recipes taken without being credited or even asked about it, used to make a popular New Zealand TV show (often claiming that they were the creations of the TV show presenters) and then put on the show website.


Now I know that recipe copyright is a feeble issue, you just need to change a few ingredients or dosages or methods, and you are ok (although bloggers' etiquette requires that you cite the original source of inspiration), and many researchers do just that. Not here, here some entire texts have been cut and pasted from one site to another, whoever did it didn't even bother to change a word or two. What were they thinking??


I can only say these two things to the TV show recipe researchers:


We may not be able to claim copyrights on a recipe idea, but we can on text,


and


Remember that if you copy from the net the truth is only one click or two away.


I heard of similar things happening overseas, at one stage some Italian bloggers were talking about it so much that it has created a network of solidarity: now as soon as a recipe/text is copied they all contact each others, write posts and talk about it, and the word spreads, fast. Our best defense is solidarity and collaboration, there are quite a few bloggers in NZ now, networking already, and if we are all aware of what is going on we can keep a check on this and make sure that it doesn't happen again.

I would really love to know your opinion about this, and also invite you to show your support to Johanna and any other blogger that has his/her words stolen away. And to the producers: it is so easy to put a link, cite a source, and say thank you for the recipe. After all a show that it is liked by bloggers always gets more followers and free publicity!

Update: wrote this in the comments, but just in case you missed it: the recipes have been removed from the website in question. I am sure that this is a positive start, and I would like to thank again Johanna for her courage and generosity in sharing the information. Thank you also to all that replied, and left a comment on Johanna's blog too. :-)