How Canadian!

By now, most people know of the Cooks Source Kerfluffle. If not, here's the short form:

LiveJournalist Illadore found that her work regarding 15th Century apple pie recipes had been lifted entirely into an obscure for-print cooking magazine. When she complained to editor Judith Griggs, the response she received was:

The web is considered "public domain." You should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! ... You as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. ... You should compensate me!

Grigg's "editing" consisted of "fixing" the 15th century spellings, which Illadore had kept for authenticity. Needless to say, this so outraged the Internet writing community that whole-hog attention dropped on Cooks Source like the hand of Hestia, which quickly unveiled the magazines' operation: every article seemed to be lifted from an Internet source, including Martha Stewart, Disney, The Food Network, and Time-Warner Lifestyles.

At this point, the mainstream press picked it up. The headlines were written to be searchable, but headline writers still found the energy to be funny:

• How Not to Piss off the Internet (PC World)
• Recipe for disaster: An editor, plagiarism and a non-apology (The Globe and Mail)
• Exclusive: Cooks Source Writer Marvels at the 'Nerd Rage,' Keeps Waiting For That Apology (Time)
• Food magazine gets roasted online over copyright claim (CNN)
• Magazine Tells Author She Should Be Glad They Stole Her Work (San Francisco Chronicle)

And so on. Fury, rage, "cooked," "poached," the puns and anger (and there was a lot of righteous anger) was all on display there in the headlines themselves.

There is an old joke in the press that the most boring headline imaginable is this: "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." The Canadian press play up this warm but calm reputation often, and they've outdone themselves this morning. The Canadian Broadcast Corporation wins an "Oh, Canada," (no exclamation points, please) award for this headline:

• Blogger victim of infringement wins support