A group of food bloggers on Google+ has formed a group called PIPO, for Protect Intellectual Property Online, to inform each other of pages they’ve found that scrape recipes and photos. Susan Powers of Rawmazing wrote this guest post about the situation:
“Something ugly is happening on Facebook, and as a food blogger, I am not only disturbed, I am alarmed.
People are starting Facebook pages that copy photos and recipes from food blogs and repost them on their page, either without attribution or improper attribution. Some even go as far as to claim the photos and recipes are theirs. And some are actually threatening the food bloggers who contact them.
Typically, these page administrators create recipe collectives and post photos (even watermarked ones!) and complete recipes without permission. This is a copyright violation and violates Facebook’s Terms Of Service.
If this wasn’t bad enough, administrators of these Facebook pages encourage followers to “share” the recipe, which engages Facebook’s Edge Rank and throws their pages to [Read more…] about Food Bloggers Fight Firestorm of Abusive Facebook Pages