Primarily because recipe creation is not one of the biggest cost centers for restaurants?
In other words, the challenge is not to understand “what exactly is being owned,” and instead, to understand “what exactly being owned is.”
Thank you, this is beautifully put and very astute. Does a recipe, a culmination of a lifetime of experience, technique, trials, errors, and luck constitute a form of someone/thing's person-hood such that it can be Intellectual Property.
Have you taken reasonable steps to keep it secret? It could be a trade secret and if course if you steal the recipe for KFC’s herbs and spices, you will be liable for civil damages for your misappropriation of their trade secret.
And if you describe a recipe in flowery prose, reminiscing about the aromas in grandmas kitchen, of course that prose is copyrightable.
Should you invent a special kind of chicken fry mix and give us a fanciful name, the recipes identifier if origin - its trademark -could be protectable.
But the fact that your chicken fry mix is made of corn starch and bread crumbs is a fact, like a phone book. Under most circumstances, not protectable.
ianyl tinla
They barely work. Recipes are trade secrets, and the cooks who use them are either paid very well, given NDAs or given only part of the most guarded recipes
What is different about the production of Micky Mouse cartoons? Why is it normal for industries to compete in manufacturing of physical product, but as soon as you can apply copyright, now you exclusively have rights to control anything that produces a similar result?
Musicians I suppose can tour, which is grueling but it’s something. Authors, programmers, actors, game studios, anything that’s not performed live would immediately become non-viable as a career or a business.
Large corporations would make money of course, by offering all you can eat streaming feeds of everything for a monthly fee. The creators get nothing.
I've purchased books that were in the public domain and without copyright. I've paid for albums I could already legally listen to for free. I've paid for games and movies that were free to play and watch. I'm far from the only person who has or would.
The people who pirate the most are also the spend the most money on the things they pirate. They are hardcore fans. They want official merch and special boxed sets. People love to give the creators of the things they love their money and often feel conflicted about having to give their cash to a far less worthy corporation. There are people who love music but refuse to support the RIAA by buying albums.
There are proven ways to make profit like 'pay what you want' or even "fund in advance" crowdsourced models. If copyright went away or, more ideally, were limited to a much shorter period of time (say 8-10 years) artists would continue to find fans and make money.
Part of what muddies the water here too is that copyright lasts too long. Companies like Disney lobbied for this successfully. It should have a time horizon of maybe 25 years, 50 at most.
So make copyright like patents. That’s what a lot of the copyleft movement has been arguing for forever. Make a copyright holder demonstrate their idea is unique, manifests into a tangible output, and if so protect the creator for a limited time. Everyone is free to use the work in their own provided they pay royalties at a reasonable rate for the duration of the patent.
But the status quo now with basically perpetual copyright controlled by large media conglomerates 100% stifles culture and is a net negative on society. It’s not the right to copy that needs defending, it’s the first right of a briefly protected enterprise, a reward to the creator, that needs to be protected. Copyright is like trying to cure a cough by sewing someone’s mouth shut.
2. You greatly underestimate the creativity of a capitalistic market. For example, on the web, it's generally difficult and frowned upon to copyright designs. Some patent trolls do it, but most don't. If you make an innovative design for your website, you're bound to be copied. And yet many programmers and tech companies still have viable business models. They simply don't base their entire business model around doing easily-copyable things.
But if you want to make money and do it from riding the brand name association of Harry Potter or Mario, they can.
A couple of years ago, I would have agreed that this would be a big and complicated issue. But do we all really think this is a problem in 2025? By now we actually have proof that it isn't impossible.
First of all, there is already, today, a plethora of FOSS projects where the developers get regular salaries without relying on royalties. Good experienced people work, make a career, yet the end product is free. We have hard proof that it won't "become a non-viable [...] career". The field might shrink, or at least change, but it won't die entirely. There is still value to be gained, so someone somewhere will pay to have it created.
Furthermore, now a days there are also websites such as Patreon, Kickstarter, and the like that have clearly demonstrated that the same can also be applied to creative endeavors such as art, music, or writing. You just pay people as they work, monthly salaries, rather than afterwards based on royalties. Yes, it comes with other issues, and for many years it was hard to say if those would be crippling. But by now we can actually see, with real world examples, that it's a feasible way to fund creative projects, and the people working on them, even if the digital products were released for free after completion. It turns out that millions of people are willing to pay for these things, to speed up the development presumably, even though they would have gotten the same product for free later, it's no longer a hypothetical.
I also think that the future will show us even more ways to finance creative intellectual work without making things into 'intellectual property' that you have to guard fiercely with copyright as if it was in short supply.
Yes, it would probably become very hard to earn really big money, millions or billions, in the industry if everyone was working for salaries rather than royalties. The distribution would presumably be less top heavy, and more similar to other industries where "going viral" isn't really a thing. But is that such a bad thing? And it's not even a guarantee that this would change, after an artist goes viral their next project would presumably have a lot more fans and investors willing to ensure they continue working, since they loved the first album/film/etc so much.
What's in Coca Cola?
What are the 11 herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken?
How do I make the sauce in a Big Mac?
Today? All the time? I just went into a new local joint today, talked to the owner about adding some vegetarian meals, and we hashed out some ideas in terms of both ingredients and preparation.
As a pescetarian and cook myself, I frequently ask establishments detailed questions about ingredients and preparation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Snow_White_tale
I see a mention of Ovid ... copyright has probably expired.
I could just be wrong about Snow White's original copyright. As indicated by my use of "I imagine", no I didn't search the origins of it. I'm not seeing a big "double down" moment where I asserted that Snow White is definitely owned by Disney--that would be the cinch. In fact nothing about my reply contradicted the GGP adding that maybe Snow White isn't the best example. Why are you so bothered? Anyway, Snow White doesn't have a recent progenitor then it kinda proves the point that the world works perfectly well in the absence of copyright, and that the ability to freely remix culture is a fundamental human right. TIL that Snow White was originally a German fairytale and I'm relieved that Disney hasn't asserted copyright over it.
But less obtusely: you don't copyright a book--which is why knowledge, language, literature should not be closed source. We'd have to find a different model to support authors than trying to prevent people from copying books. Patreon style models where you subscribe and get behind the scenes access to the creative process, additional content, early access, etc. seem to work well as do sponsorship models like YT where the more viewers you draw the more you get paid, rather than a fixed fee per individual to watch a video. And, simply pay-what-you-want based models where everyone understands they can contribute in a way that matches the value to them and their means also work. One of the strongest arguments for piracy is that the pirate would never have paid $700 for Photoshop in the first place so the value "lost" isn't real and never would have been realized by the author(s). (Note this argument doesn't work for petty theft of physical property because the thief deprives the owner of tangible property.)
Private - this includes funding by selling item(s), licensing work, and private equity
State
Charity - this includes volunteers, patrons, donations, sponsorships.
Charity relies on people willing to donate for the betterment of others.
State funding fails because of the political nature of the person holding the purse strings.
Licensing, copyright, physical sales are the only thing that artists have to sell.
You "patreon" style falls somewhere between closed source - you can only access if you buy your way behind the curtain, and charity, where creators have to rely on people donating so that their works can be seen by others (for free)
Why wouldn't big corps win by default? They have the brand name, own the resources to make more polished version of any IP, and have better distribution channels than anyone else.
Can you tell me how this scenario won't play out?
1. Big corporation has people looking for new and trending IP.
2. Instead of buying the rights to it, they get their army of people to produce more polished versions of it.
3. Because they have branding and a better distribution channel, the money goes 100% to them.
> Ask why would people need protection from having their work stolen when the only ones welding weaponized copyright are the corporations.
People working in the field sell their copyright like Gravity Falls' Alex Hirsch: https://x.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1906915851720077617
I do not agree with your conjecture that big corps would win by default. Ask why would people need protection from having their work stolen when the only ones welding weaponized copyright are the corporations. People need the freedom to wield culture without restriction, not protection from someone having the same idea as them and manifesting it.