The Internet as Public Domain - Plagiarism be Damned

This past week a furor occurred over a cooking magazine that was discovered to have lifted pieces from Internet sites and published them without permission or paying royalties. The site also edited the pieces to fit its "standards." (such as they were!)

The good news was the original writers were credited. The very, very bad news was the editor believed she had a pass to reproduce anything she found on the Internet without permission and TO EDIT IT.

Let me be perfectly clear here. I do not consider anything I have written on these pages or elsewhere to be the property of anyone but myself. I don't care what disclaimers the sites I use make (including Facebook, Blogger and Google). I am the author for better or worse. I am absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to speak to an Internet audience. I absolutely LOVE it when someone publishes a "link" to my page. But I deny anyone's right to use or edit my writing without my specific permission. I take full responsibility for any grammatical or spelling shortcomings, for any awkwardness of phrase, for the (often intentional) use of slang.

I do not consider this a legal matter. Lawyers can argue any side of a dispute with equal skill. I consider it a moral one.

In my opinion, those who can't copy and paste. I am VERY careful to link to any materials I have used as sources. I expect others to do the same.