I’ve just watched an interesting video by a guy called Kam, about AI created content and copyright laws in the US.
What I found most interesting was the story of Kam’s previous money making adventures.
He previously made a lot of money by publishing content which was either in the public domain (copyright protection had elapsed) or that could not be protected by copyright.
Cooking recipes and instructions cannot be copyrighted in the US as they are basically a list of ingredients.
Kam made a lot of money by simply collecting recipes for various foods, pizza and Mexican foods etc, and then published them as eBooks on Amazon.
Cooking instructions can be copyrighted here in the UK apparently, but I am not sure to what degree that covers.
According to a quick search on Google:
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes are not copyrightable (e.g., the list of ingredients for recipes are not copyrightable, but the recipes’ instructions are protected).
In the US, copyright covers ‘human expression’ which means how the instructions and recipe is written and delivered.
Human expression is basically ‘creation’ such as creating music, creating art, creating a piece of writing.
But just like a list of ingredients, cooking instructions are also a vital part to the science of cooking and baking.
So I think the instructions such as ‘mix in the bowl until firm’ and ‘put into a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 225 degrees’ is not going to be copyrighted and I doubt you will land in trouble if you wrote simple instructions like that without any extra ‘expression’ or story.
If someone wrote ‘my grandma would put it in a hot oven for 45 minutes at 225 degrees’ and you wrote the same, then yes, you are infringing on copyright.
As for the instruction itself, baking a cake requires the mixture of ingredients being put into an oven and heating through at a specific temperature for a specific set time.
It is a scientific process, that is a fact… and you cannot copyright fact.
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So I am not fully sure what is meant when they say ‘the recipes’ instructions are protected’, but I am going to say that it refers to more individual preference and the way the instruction is written rather than the actual instruction itself.
Another thing Kam said he published which I found interesting, was old comics that were in the public domain.
Comics and books written before the copyright laws changed giving long term protection, had to have their copyright protection updated after a while and many people/companies didn’t bother to update the protection on books and comics that where were no longer being published and sold.
Back in those days, books and comics were physical items which needed to be printed and distributed to shops. Unless they were incredibly popular and reprinted every few years, most books and comics were a one-time product.
So you can understand why companies didn’t renew copyright protection on books and comics that they hadn’t been actively selling for many years.
Also, many publishers closed down and so there was no company to renew the copyright on the books and comics they published.
Kam sourced classic comics that were out of copyright protection, scanned them and had them made into digital editions which he sold on Amazon.
He made a lot of money doing this.
I have talked about this before.
Publishing content that has no copyright protection is a profitable business model, as long as you publish stuff which people want to read.
However…
You are no longer selling to a small local community like the high street shops of yesteryear, you are now selling to people globally and because of that, you can find more than enough people who would be interested in buying things that are not deemed popular.
One person in your town may be interested in brass rubbings, but globally, there may be a few thousand who might be interested in buying an old book on the subject… I say might, I’m not suggesting you try it.
People love to consume and enjoy content and it doesn’t matter if that content is old.
People today still enjoy the works of Shakespeare and Dickens, and there’s nothing new about their stories.
The BBC has just made a new – and controversial – adaption of Dickens’ Great Expectations starring the wonderfully talented Olivia Coleman.
Old is not necessarily bad… old can be incredibly profitable.
Learn more here:
Public Domain Profits
Kind regards.
John Harrison.
PS…Even if you don’t use the original ‘as is’, you can take the original idea and concept and create something new based on it.
One of our team has been watching yet another television adaption of the classic H.G. Wells War of the Worlds story on the Disney+ channel starring Gabriel Byrne and Daisy Edgar-Jones… the story was originally published in 1898.
Here’s that link again: