This is a subject I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time, and Meg touched on it recently: Can a Recipe Be Stolen?
I like making things in the kitchen, mainly food, and a lot of times I use sites like Recipe*zaar, where it’s common to see people add comments like "I got this recipe from" followed by some food show, or cookbook, or box of whatever. Now, this is something I wouldn’t do, but then again, I’m a Creative Commons geek, and I believe in the rights of the creators, and wouldn’t just take someone else’s work and republish it (to a world-wide audience) without making sure it’s ok to do. (This view probably represents 0.0001% of the people who use sites like this.)
I make my own pizza crusts, and the recipe I use is from some magazine I can’t remember… I ripped out the page about 4 years ago, and eventually added it into my home wiki (where I keep many of my recipes) for use when I need it. I won’t publish it, because I’m sure I don’t have the rights to do so. It may be like 100 other pizza crusts recipes, but still, I didn’t create it.
I don’t have any answers to this problem, other than everyone adopting Creative Commons licenses, but even those have their own set of problems…