Now, whether FN would’ve done so depends on whether (a) they got wind of it; (b) they decided it hurt the market value of those recipes; or (c) who knows? They might’ve given it a pass if the network execs were McCain supporters.

And while a random list of ingredients cannot be copyrighted, a recipe certainly can. Technically, anything published without an explicit copyright notice before 1989 is in the public domain; anything published since is copyrighted—even if it doesn’t have a copyright notice. So, great-great-Grandma’s apple pie recipe may be in the public domain if it’s her original recipe; if she got it from a recipe book and didn’t alter it, it’s likely copyrighted … but the likelihood of your getting busted for handing that recipe around to friends is pretty darn low. (If you reprint it online, the likelihood increases a little.)

Me? Like most people here, most of my recipes come from the Web, or from Cooking Light magazine. I don’t really make any family recipes from my side because my mother … wasn’t a great cook. I do make a pumpkin bread recipe that I got from MIL, which has been passed through a few generations from some forgotten cookbook. I’ve tinkered with the spices, though, so I think my version counts as a derivative work now.

As for why this matters, I’ll quote Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:

“Nobody forced the McCain campaign people to put up Mrs. McCain’s supposedly-favorite recipes, just as nobody forced them to delegate the job to, supposedly, an intern, who was not forced to plagiarize them.

The McCain campaign people cared, and apparently they did this stuff this way because this is the way they do stuff they care about.”

Hensley took the fall for Marley and did some time in prison for illegal liquor sales. When he got out, Marley rewarded him with the beer distributorship. There was also some mafia involvement in the purchase of Ruidoso Race Track in N.M.

A reporter investigating Marley was killed by a car bomb, and his last words implicated the sydicate who owned Ruidoso. Marley also put out a contract on the AG Babbitt.

So, Cindy is a daughter of the mob. McCain was supported by this dirty money in Arizona, to the effect that all employees of the Bud company were ‘encouraged’ to ’support’ McCain. Everyone of a certain age in Arizona knows this story. teh google will tell you more.

What is the statute of limitations on mafia money? No wonder she wants to ‘protect her children’ by not releasing her tax returns.

Nobody forced the McCain campaign people to put up Mrs. McCain’s supposedly-favorite recipes, just as nobody forced them to delegate the job to, supposedly, an intern, who was not forced to plagiarize them.

The McCain campaign people cared, and apparently they did this stuff this way because this is the way they do stuff they care about.

As for Cindy McCain, well, I agree that it’s not totally implausible that the food network recipes really are her favorites. It still would have been better to link rather than copy. And I’m a bit curious about who out there actually cares about favorite recipes of potential presidents’ spouses.

It’s a goddam recipe. They aren’t owned by the people who make them.

I see you’re serving Seared Red Herring today?

The issue isn’t, really, whether the McCain campaign owes the Food Network damages. It’s that they ripped off recipes that have nothing to do with anything Cindy McCain’s ever done, in order to project the folksy housewife image.

It’s possible to point out the many levels of dishonesty going on here, all the way from having Cindy’s name on a web page that I doubt she ever saw to the pattern of disguising the reality of who these people are, without nasty sexist comments about cosmetic surgery and the like.

In terms of how and why this garnered media attention, yes, it’s because of intellectual property rights.

The McCain campaign was discovered to have stolen the recipes from the Food Network website, where they were credited to two cooking shows, and not to Cindy McCain.

If it was just the left trying to find something to mock about Cindy McCain, I’m not sure we would be taking this particular tack. Not to mention of course that I’m pretty sure this story did not break on the left, but was discovered and made public by the MSM. It’s not like this first appeared in Utne Reader or something…

Unless, of course, they’re copyright, and you simply cut and paste from the web, word for word from whoever it is that writes out Giada deLaurentiis and Rachel Ray’s recipes.

Recipes from a cookbook or other published source (I’m pretty sure the web counts, and their appearance on the Food Network totally counts) are intellectual property, subject to the same rules as anything else.

If it turned out your mother’s former neighbor’s mother in law’s sister got her recipe out of a Martha Stewart cookbook, and you claimed it as your own in some kind of public sense (for instance said so on your widely visible website), you would be subject to copyright law if anyone ever discovered that was the case.

OK, off to find something to do with these Portobello mushrooms I picked up at the greenmarket yesterday…

Oh please. When I got married, my mother gave me a bunch of recipe cards from her group of friends. I haven’t ever made half of them, but whatever. They’re not trademarked or copyrighted. If I made one and it became my favorite whatever, I don’t really need to credit the other person (”my mother’s former neighbor’s mother-in-law’s sister’s favorite recipe for spaghetti sauce”). It’s a goddam recipe. They aren’t owned by the people who make them.