Cooks Source gets its just desserts

When I blogged today on Dr. Freelance about "would a magazine editor steal my story idea?", I had no idea that it would be the day that Cooks Source editor Judith Griggs announced the magazine's demise, precipitated by their stealing a freelancer's story in its entirety. (Certainly a magnitude greater than idea-filching.) If you haven't been privy to the scuttlebutt, the background can be found here.

Heaven knows I'm just piling on by even writing about this, but I'd be remiss if I didn't add my one overriding thought: As businesspeople, freelancers deal in intellectual property, and that's a lot harder to defend than installing an alarm system or pulling out your shotgun on a home intruder. It's nebulous. People don't understand it, or choose to ignore it. We live in a time when music and video file-sharing is considered A-OK by a good percentage of the population. Copy and paste is part of getting through an average person's day, and apparently part of an occasional publishing person's day — one who should have known better.

I won't shed a tear for Ms. Griggs, who seems focused on enumerating excuses rather than repenting. I can't say if the punishment, the loss of everything she's worked for, fits the crime.

But perhaps, just perhaps, freelancers owe her a debt of gratitude while they're enjoying a steaming bowl of schadenfreude. If Judith Griggs has served a purpose, let's hope it will be as a deterrent — to make other folks think twice about stealing intellectual property.

UPDATES: 
Gawker snarks.
TechCrunch says "Congrats, Self-Righteous Internet Mob. You Killed a Magazine."