Over the past week, a regional niche publication became one of the most well-known magazines in the social media world for one of the worst possible reasons. There are a couple lessons to learn from the tale of Cooks Source; lessons about copyright infringement in the digital age and about how to not respond to a snafu in the absolute worst way possible.

A series of events came to a head concerning Monica Gaudio, a blogger and writer, discovering that an article she had written had been copied wholesale and reprinted in an edition of Cooks Source without her permission. During email conversation with the editor, Judith Griggs, she requested compensation for the copyright violation in the form of an apology (printed and via Facebook) and a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism (roughly $.10/word). Ms. Gaudio, astonished at the reply she received to this request, printed Ms. Griggs’ response on her livejournal(excerpted):

“But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”

After Monica posted about this interaction, the story spread like wildfire with notable social media influencers such as John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton helping to share the story and turn “Cooks Source,” “#buthonestlymonica” and “crookssource” into trending topics on Twitter. Meanwhile on Facebook, over a thousand people liked the Cooks Source page so that they could express their displeasure over the incident (that number is currently close to six thousand). In addition, many were trawling through the pages of the current and older issues of Cooks Source to find other possible incidents of copyright infringement and still more were compiling lists of the advertisers (Cooks Source is a free, advertising supported newstand magazine) and calling them to inform them of what their advertising dollars were supporting.

Cooks Source was seemingly quiet all weekend (an astonishingly condescending post was put up by Cooks Source on their Facebook page at 5:33pm Thursday, but was assumed to be a prankster who had taken control of the account). On Monday, their website (which had been up at various points during the weekend, but with all contact information removed) was changed to reflect their official statement on the controversy. Notice that I call it a statement, rather than an apology. Of the 862 words included therein, only 150 are an actual apology to Ms. Gaudio. The largest portion of the letter explains how their Facebook page was “hacked” and that those who were upset about this “hacking” should report any “hackers” to Facebook for Intellectual Property Infringement. Irony, thy name is Cooks Source.

Let’s look at what made the internet so (somewhat disproportionately) mad at Judith Griggs. Ms. Griggs’ first (and biggest) offense was having a crucial misunderstanding of how copyright applies to the Internet. The Internet is not, as she claims, public domain. The Internet is public, yes, and it is social, yes, but content still belongs to the creator, regardless of whether it is made available for free access or not. In fact, by default, everything on the Internet copyrighted (ask George Mason University if you doubt that). After that, the superior tone she took in informing Ms. Gaudio of the way the world works made her response a perfect storm of bad PR. By entitling herself to take content, at will, Ms. Griggs showed disregard for the vocal minority of influencers on the Internet: people who make money through the words the put on the Internet. She, as the representative of a company completely dismissed a reasonable request from a potential customer (and was rude to boot)… A worst case scenario that every consumer can sympathize with.  And one that thousands would stand up for.

What can we learn from these two big mistakes?
1) Don’t steal. It seems like a simple concept, but one that the editor of a printed publication couldn’t understand. Just because you see a picture you like on the internet doesn’t mean you can use it for your own purposes. How do you find content to use and share? The Creative Commons organization (http://creativecommons.org/) allows content creators to apply licenses on their information indicating what the content they create can and cannot be used for. They can stipulate that attribution must be given and that it can be used for commercial purposes (or not) and that derivative works are allowed (or not). Flickr even lets you specify its search to find CC licensed materials only.

2) Watch your words. In the digital age, it takes only a quick click of the mouse to share your badly chosen words with a rapt (and hypercritical) audience. Problems are going to happen and people are going to be unhappy with your company at some point. It’s how you solve the person’s problem that defines your company in how it relates to its customers.

Check back next week for a follow-up post with more bad and good examples of companies dealing with problems through social media.

Image: /doh, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from striatic’s photostream