Cooks Source calls it quits after copyright infringement dispute on Internet
SUNDERLAND - The publisher of Cooks Source magazine says the November 2010 issue will be its last after biting email exchanges about the publication's copyright infringement spread like wildfire on the Internet.
"Cooks Source is gone," Judith D. Griggs said Tuesday, just days after personally distributing her last issue of the free magazine in western New England. "It's done."
Also Tuesday, Griggs posted a lengthy statement at Cookssource.com., again apologizing to freelance writer and blogger Monica Gaudio for publishing an article Gaudio wrote on medieval use of apples without her permission. Gaudio's article and two recipes had been published in 2005 on the online food site "Gode Cookery" and then appeared, re-edited, in the October 2010 issue of Cooks Source, with Gaudio's byline.
In Griggs' latest statement, she details the events leading up to an email exchange with Gaudio, who published excerpts of it on her LiveJournal blog, Illadore's House o Crack.
Gaudio published a passage from Griggs in which the publisher tells Gaudio that the Web is considered "public domain" and that Gaudio should be happy that she didn't just "lift" her whole article and put someone else's name on it. Griggs also suggested that Gaudio compensate her given the time she put in to rewriting and editing the piece. Those comments unleashed a backlash from Internet users and has fueled a furious debate about intellectual property rights.
In both her recent online statement and in a lengthy interview with the Gazette last week, Griggs said she takes full responsibility for her actions and regrets writing the email to Gaudio. She said she used Gaudio's article during a late-night push to put out the free publication.
"One night when working yet another 12-hour day late into the night, I was short one article," Griggs wrote on the website Tuesday. "Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and 'found' something."
In a phone interview Tuesday, Griggs said she will leave her statement up a few more days before eliminating the Cooks Source website altogether. She earlier took down the magazine's Facebook page after Internet users barraged the site with negative criticism and, it appears, set up other sites with the logo and images from Cooks Source.
"The name is compromised, big time," Griggs said.
During the past week, Griggs said she made a $130 donation to Columbia University's School of Journalism at Gaudio's request and a smaller donation to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
Meantime, Gaudio wrote on her blog Tuesday that the most recent posting on the Cooks Source website paints her as "a big meanie" and that she would be happy to post all of her email exchanges with Griggs in full with Griggs' permission.
"I do not think of myself as a big meanie in all of this," Gaudio posted on her blog. "I think of myself as a woman as mad as hell for having her work stolen and then being talked down to like I was a child. As I said, again, it was the principle of the thing - my work was republished without my permission, my copyright was violated and I stuck up for myself.
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.









