Bee Yinn Low has something to say to those who plagiarize from food blogs: Stop! Back in 2007, Low, the blogger behind the popular Rasa Malaysia food blog, posted a photo she'd taken of an elegantly plated sliver of miso-marinated black cod (pictured), which she'd made with a recipe from her Nobu cookbook.
Almost two years later, she spied the very same photo on the email advertisements of Florida-based Rosas Farms, advertising their sustainably farmed black cod. Low might have been surprised, but this was not the first time this had happened - she had discovered Rasa Malaysia photos and stories being passed off as other people's work everywhere from food blogs to eBay seller sites to the awning of a Malaysian cafe.
Neither Rosas Farms nor any of the other sites had credited Low as the creator of the photos, breaking the terms of her Creative Commons license. The photos, like the rest of Rasa Malaysia's content, are also protected with Copyscape, a service which helps prevent plagiarism by searching the web for sites that have been using your content.
So Low finally decided to fight back. Under a post titled "An Open Letter to My Thieves," she posted screenshots of the offenders. The topic clearly hit a nerve, with more than 60 commenters wring in to express sympathy and share their own plagiarism stories. One commenter even suggested starting a food bloggers union with a lawyer on retainer!
Blogger Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim has also written about post plagiarism in the past, and has linked to a site advising bloggers what to do when someone has used their writing without proper credit.
Have any of you food bloggers out there had your work plagiarized? What did you do?
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