Copyright and Raw Food: Sproutgate

Sproutgate: Steve Meyerowitz is Upset over Plagiarism
(Steve's photo credit: Boston Meetup)

Fellow raw food blogger Penni Shelton got into a scuffle recently about copyrighted content by "Sproutman" Steve Meyerowitz.

Apparently, Penni forgot to hyperlink to Steve's article on Living-Foods.com about sprouting in a blog post from a few weeks ago.

This seemingly minor incident has grown to epic proportions and I am now calling this....

Sproutgate.

Steve and his people must have been quite upset, because they sent emails to an unknown amount of raw food bloggers, alerting everyone with an email address to this grievous error that Penni has plagiarized content from Steve Meyerowitz.

This is the response we here at RFRN recieved about the incident 8 hours ago, one hour before a comment was left on Penni Shelton's offending blog post:

Dear Blogger:

am writing on behalf of raw food community awareness
regarding plagiarism. Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s words, text, or
content, in part or in whole, and then publish it as your own without obtaining
the permission or endorsement of the original author. It is the same thing
as theft or copyright infringement and professional writers or anyone that
publishes their works with integrity take this violation very
seriously.


Recently Penni Shelton, who publishes a blog titled “Real Food
Tulsa”, copied entire paragraphs word for word of the previously published works
of popular author and health advocate Steve Meyerowitz under a post entitled,
“Let’s Talk About” dated August 21, 2008. The original 2005 content from
which she copied can be referenced athttp://www.living-foods.com/articles/sproutbenefits.html and http://www.isga-sprouts.org/nutrit1.htm .
Ms. Shelton posted this content as her own, not only without Mr. Meyerwitz’s
permission but without even using proper quotes or referencing the original
author.
After being made aware of this incident, we have repeatedly contacted
Ms. Shelton asking her to remove the content. She has either refused or
chosen to ignore our requests.

We have no other recourse but to contact those in her blogging
community to bring this issue to light. Again, plagiarism is theft.
It is an unacceptable practice and regrettably we must take measures to prevent
this from happening in the future.

Tina Diamond
Representative, Sproutman Publications
rawfoodnews@yahoo.com

Well Tina, first we would like to say hello as we have never communicated with each other before.

It is interesting that you define what plagiarizing is in case we were not previously aware. We haven't wanted to talk about this before, but now seems like the best time to say that Justin and I are acutely aware of what plagarizing is.

The truth must come out:

Raw Food Right Now has been plagarized.
More than once.
We know how it feels.

It feels awful when it happens.

So far it has happened to us involving a raw food magazine, many instances involving my raw food recipes, and it happens daily as content is taken from our blog and placed into the cesspool of spam blogs. At least, these are the instances we are aware of. There are probably more.

It can feel frustrating and upsetting when things like this happen. But Justin and I choose to handle each situation delicately. Only the individuals who need to know about each plagiarizing event have known the particular circumstances. We have never talked about it with anyone else, and we are not going to give out any of the details of who has been involved.

Take A Lesson From Us - Handling Plagiarism 101:

Since we have experienced plagiarism, we have created our own unofficial policy on how to handle each situation. Here is the step-by-step guide on how we have handled previous instances of plagarism:

1. When we find out about an instance of plagarism, we do not get angry.
   
   
2. We always assume that there must be a mistake. Mistakes happen and unless it has already been printed on paper, it can easily be changed.
   
   
3. Hold your emotions until the facts are found. While it can be hard to hold back emotion, we strive to avoid an "out to get you" attitude. That can only make things worse.
   
   
4. Contact individuals directly until you get a response. We contacted the authors directly and alerted them to the situation. We contact them in a pleasant, friendly manner. We alert them to the fact that we believe they have written something that was originally written by us, and asked if they could credit us in the written work, or credit the recipe and where it came from.
   
   
5. Case-by-case basis. Every situation is different. Each situation is unique. In all but one instance each situation has been resolved quickly, easily and painlessly...I bet you are reading this and never knew anything like this has happened with us. That's because we handle many things discretely.
   
   Unfortunately It Doesn't Always Work Out As Planned
   
   In one case we had known individual for over a year and had even considered having them become a guest blogger at RFRN. If you know raw food blogs and raw food bloggers you would know who this person is.
   
   They ended up plagiarizing us, and the result was not pretty. We asked them nicely to credit us for our work, but they refused. We had to get the publisher involved, and the publication researched the situation, and ended up crediting us for the work. The whole situation got resolved well enough as it could. But, in the end, we could no longer work with the individual who plagiarized us because they completely denied that they had plagiarized us. It was obvious to everyone involved except the author them self. We are no longer in contact with that person, but remain in contact with the publication. And so, we move on.

Key Points on How We Handle Plagiarism:

• We are polite.
  
  
• We alert the individual(s) to the situation as we see it.
  
  
• We ask for what we want.
  
  
• We start a dialogue.
  
  
• We handle each situation on a case-by-case basis.

There is a fine line between plagarism and forgetting to credit an author. We see that the original post does contain the entire Living-Foods article written by Steve Meyerowitz, and that it was originally uncredited. However, Penni has taken rapid action to remedy this situation and has given credit to Steve's work. All this in less than 8 hours.

This all could have been remedied through getting through to Penni directly.

It is interesting to note once again that we received an email from Steve's representative one hour before the blog comment was sent to Penni's blog. And according to Penni, she found out about the situation not directly in her inbox or in her blog comments, but from another raw food friend who got the email first, as we did.

This is Blog-ism

What startles us the most is that I believe that this is an instance of blogism. This is a phenomenon where individuals do not understand blogs. They may know that blogs exist, but because they have no real involvement in a blog or in blogging culture, they fail to understand the workings of blogs. And they do not understand how to interact with bloggers.

Steve, do you have blog-ism? It sure seems that you and your representative have a serious case of blogism. It seems you don't have much experience with raw food blogs because this email seemed so inflamatory. The tone of the email from Tina is full of legal threats instead of a conversation involving two raw foodists.

Here is some information we'd like
to pass on about raw food blogs:

To Steve Meyerowiz and Tina Diamond, we would like to publicly say the following:

1. Raw food blogs are big. BIG. The raw food movement is bigger than ever before. There are a lot of people yearning for raw food information. You are aware that raw food is big. Very big. And with the growing raw food community means there are a lot of people looking for resources and information. Many people are finding that information through websites like our own Raw Food Right Now and other raw food blogs. From these blogs people find out about different authors, new books, old books, and more. That means people are finding out about your work from raw food blogs. That is a good thing.
   
   This could have been a promotional opportunity. You could have used this opportunity to establish a relationship with Penni, and maybe find a way to post one of your articles as a feature on Penni's blog. Tina, you could have emailed Penni and let Penni know that although the information she posted was from an article by Steve, if Penni would credit Steve and post a link to Steve's website, that would be great.
   


2. Raw food bloggers are some of the smartest individuals on the planet. I say this because I have seen the wide spectrum of raw foodists being a part of the raw food community for over four years. I have seen some pretty idiotic individuals who somehow eat raw food. But the large majority of raw foodists are extremely intelligent individuals. You should know that with your years of experience, Steve. And raw food bloggers are usually more intelligent than the rest because you have to have some computer skills to start a blog and all the technology that goes with it. Justin and I are both college educated individuals who have taken countless English courses. It is because of those English courses that we are able to write the high quality blog posts, eBooks, articles and more that we provide on a daily basis. We have studied copyright and plagiarism as it is an important part of any raw food business. To email me with an opening statement defining plagiarism was a slap in my face. I felt belittled by that opening statement. Who do you think I am? Who do you think raw food bloggers are?
   
   
3. Raw food bloggers are easy to get a hold of. Most of us have multiple ways of contacting us and are easy to get a hold of. There is Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, and direct commenting on blogs. If one method does not work, there are usually other ways to contact people. Spam is a huge issue right now. Spam bots in email occasionally label emails as spam when they aren't. Technology is not perfect.
   
   Then again, Tina, with the amount of people you must have sent this message to, it is possible that your email address is now being marked as spam. Perhaps your original messages, if you did send original messages, did not get to Penni because her email program unknowingly marked it as spam. It happens.
   


4. Most Raw Food bloggers are connected to each other. Penni is one of the most prominent, highest quality raw food bloggers out there. We know because we here at Raw Food Right Now watch over 275 raw food blogs and it is growing every day. Those are 275 people who write about raw food, just like you write books about raw food. When these emails were sent out you probably did not think this would have a ripple effect, but it will affect "Steve the Sproutman's" reputation as people read about this situation and how poorly it has been handled so far.
   
   The raw food bloggers have our own community. We network with each other. It may not be a community you are familiar with so you may not understand us and how we work together, but we are a pretty tight knit group. Most of our networking happens behind email doors, not in person. We keep in touch all over the world.
   
   

Innocent until proven guilty

We live in a society where the individual is considered innocent until proven guilty. In this case, we do not know exactly where Penni found this information. Who knows where Penni could have found this original information. She may not have really known who was the original author! When Penni was contacted about this situation, she explained not only where she got the original article but she also gave Steve credit. She even wrote an entire blog post explaining the situation.

Instead of attacking her, informing her as to whom the original work was authored by would be a good first step. However it seems in this case Penni was found guilty as she was sentenced by judge Tina and countless emails were sent out regarding her guilt.

Steve, This is Not Cool

I just don't understand. I think I am missing something here.
I want to know:

Steve, are you or is your assistant picking a fight?

Seriously. This seems like Tina took the time to tattle-tale on Penni. This is nonsense.

What saddens Justin and I the most about this is that Justin and I have been sprouting more than ever. We have been considering interviewing Steve for a future RFRN podcast but had not yet contacted his people because it was not the right time. What a shame to have an event like this be our first contact.

We have thought highly of Steve and his work. And to have our first contact with Steve's people be in regards to an event that could have been handled privately, it is disappointing.

After these turn of events, I hope that we can communicate with Steve and his people and all of us can get Sproutgate to have a happy ending.

The Bottom Line

This must have happened for a reason. There must be some good reason why this has happened, and hopefully we can all learn from it.

It all comes down to being polite and respectful of other people. We are all part of this big thing called the raw food community. We have seen recent events like this have ripple effects in fragmenting the raw community even more than it already is.

We don't know all of the circumstances related to this event. No matter what the damage has been done, and hopefully we as a community can find some way to remedy this situation.

In an upcoming Raw Food Right Now post, we will give tips and tricks on how to credit authors and other copyright issues.

We want to try to prevent a situation like this from ever happening again.

And Steve, your people should contact our people, and we'll do lunch.
But after this whole situation, I would prefer to not have any sprouts on the menu.

~ Heidi

Raw Food Right Now!

Photo credits: To prevent our own Sproutgate, we would like to credit the sources of where we found the photos of Penni Shelton and Steve Meyerowitz:

Penni Shelton Photo Credit
Steve Meyerowitz Photo Credit

Don't sue us!