[cc-community] my problem with Free Beer

Greg London email at greglondon.com
Mon Mar 10 02:05:39 EDT 2008


> The way these explanations are drafted now they are involuntarily
> promoting the idea that ingredients + steps is protected.
>
> If enough people believe in idea protection like this, it will become a
> reality without anyone changing any laws.
>
> But well, the geekyness (geekiety, geekhood?) of Free Beer seems to
> immunise it against critique in general. So may St. IGNUcius be with us
> all ...

I think there is a difference between (1) acknowledging that a
recipe cannot be copyrighted and doesn't need a CC license and
(2) arguing that Free Beer recipes will cause a sea-change in
creating a false public understanding of how copyright law works.

I will admit (1) is true. I don't see (2) as a real threat.

Since I don't believe (2) is a real threat, I don't see any
need for security theater to deal with it.

As for (1), I'm not sure what can be done about it here.
If you feel sufficiently motivated, you could go around
to different Free Beer recipe sites and point them to this
post or this thread whereby they can be informed of the
limitation with regard to CC licenses and beer recipes.

--------------------------------------------------------
Notice to anyone placing a Free Beer recipe under a CC license:
--------------------------------------------------------

The functional aspect of a recipe cannot be copyrighted(*).
Therefore, a CC license cannot place restrictions on the
functional aspect of the recipe, because a license only operates
through copyright law, and if copyright does not apply, the
license has no traction. Recipes remain Public Domain.

As for any creative expression around the recipe, those
expressions can be copyrighted. This might be a little
story about how your first batch of brew exploded and
you had to move out of your apartment building. Artistic
photos of brewing equipment could also be covered by
copyright. Drawings of how equipment is set up might also
be covered to some extent, at least in the expression,
though not the idea it represents.

If you come up with a drawing of brewing equipment and
instructions on how to assemble it, those drawings may
or may not contain enough creative expression to  warrant
protection under copyright law. A judge would probably
have to decide your case.

However, even if your drawing, your instructions, or your
recipe can be copyrighted due to its artistic expression,
copyright only applies to the artistic expression, and not
the information contained in that expression.

Your drawing may be get some protection under copyright,
but someone else could come up with a diagram for a functionally
identical configuration, and that would not violate copyright.

And while you can use a Creative Commons license to
license the artistic expressions in your Free Beer project,
the recipes themselves, the list of ingredients, and the
functional steps needed to make Free Beer, those all remain
outside of copyright and can be considered Public Domain.

The only reason the Coco-Cola recipe is legally protected
is because it is protected by Trade Secret laws, not
copyright laws. If you make your recipe public, then the
functional aspect of your recipes become public and cannot
be restricted by copyright law.

I do not represent or work for Creative Commons.
I am not a lawyer.
This is not legal advise.
This is not a substitute for legal advice.

Greg London


(*) for most jurisdictions.




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