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Cease and desist for video on how to make “Grana Padano Style Cheese” [video]

169 points by notRobot 6y ago

olliej 6y ago
[edit: I just realized that the original video explicitly stated that this was a Grana Padano style cheese. The C&D tries to say he's teaching people how to make counterfeit cheese ?!??!?] The cease and desist is over the name, or more specifically using the name of the cheese when you aren't making it in the correct part of the world. This is a guy on YouTube describing how to make that cheese, the only thing he can say he's making is that cheese. This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now. There is no way you could describe making that type of cheese without referring to it by name. The fact that they don't like people making identical cheese to them is inconsequential - it seems like this kind of usage should be trivially covered under fair use. That said he sounds Australian to me, and I have no idea how trademarks and fair use work in AU.
- postingpals 6y ago
  I have every reason to believe that countries protecting the name of their products has only helped local producers from becoming beaten out the market or losing their culture with virtually no cost to anyone outside of those markets, since you can still make the actual product with a different name.
- globuous 6y ago
  They like to do that with alcohol as well, scotch, bourbon, tennessee whiskey, champagne, cognac etc. I guess it's to protect producers. In a way, it's a nice protection against globalization. A microprocessor can be produced anywhere, champagne cannot ;p
  - olliej 6y ago
    Champagne can be produced in numerous areas, only they can only say they're using the champagne method. In fact the first actual records of sparkling wine predate the various French Champagne producers (e.g. Dom Pérignon) in Italy and England, with some suggestion it was England first due to their stronger glass and tendency to add the necessary sugar to wine - for example there's no documentation of why Dom Pérignon spontaneously switch to bottling wine. The English were also the first to see the bubbles as an advantage. The original French champagne was a flat wine, so maybe Champagne from the Champagne region of France should actually be flat and sparkling champagne (from England) be renamed?
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  Nominative fair use applies to trademarks. You can refer to something by name without infringing
- namdnay 6y ago
  Puttin aside the absurdity of a C&D for some random youtuber showing how to replicate a particular cheese, I don't agree with "This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid". If I want Roquefort I want Roquefort, not another blue cheese. No problem selling another cheese and putting it next to Roquefort in the stalls (looking at you Saint Agur..), but words have meaning and places have meaning
  - olliej 6y ago
    But Roquefort cheese is the combination of specific bacteria and production conditions. If I have the same ingredients and the same production technique and conditions, then the only difference is that one was made in a specific location, and one was not. So what if mine tastes slightly different? No cheeses produced in the same region and in the same way taste exactly the same. As for your "another blue cheese" comment - if someone makes a blue cheese using different bacteria, techniques or conditions then it isn't a roquefort so shouldn't be able to be labeled as such. But that difference is due to the place of origin - if I made a generic cows milk blue cheese in the south of france I could claim it's a roquefort just because of the origin.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I am absolutely fine with origin naming legal defenses. You can’t sell something as though it was made somewhere when it wasn’t. That is an entirely different issue than using naming rights to prevent people from making a similar agricultural product somewhere else, or sharing information about it using the name. The rights should extend to product labeling and thats it, and they do. This C&D to a youtuber is comical.
  - olliej 6y ago
    Why does origin naming only apply to "fancy" products from France and Italy - cheddar originates in England, but no one claims that cheese made exactly the same way elsewhere isn't cheddar.
    - colechristensen 6y ago
      Origin naming protections are all over the place. In fact “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” is a protected name. Another example is bourbon whiskey, it must be produced in the US out of 51% corn in a certain kind of barrel in order to carry the name.
      - olliej 6y ago
        What makes “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” different from "West Country Farmhouse Grana Padano"? By the logic that leads to WCFC, Grana Padano shouldn't be protected. Only "Piacenza Grana Padano" should be. It is an identical situation: a method of making cheese, with an origin in a specific area. I can make cheese the same way, using the same ingredients for both cheeses, but one I can call cheddar, and the other I have to call "Not Grana Padano".
- 4gotunameagain 6y ago
  > This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now. This is not stupid at all. Apart from being an equivalent to a patent/license (if that justifies it in your point of view), the final outcome of traditional products can be affected very much by the local environment (breeds, feed, weather, water, even microbiota etc). You simply cannot make traditional Mozzarella di bufala campana or Pouligny-Saint-Pierre in Wisconsin. You can make something similar, sure, but never the traditional.
haunter 6y ago
>your video seems to describe how to create counterfeited replicas of Grana Padano. I think that's a valid take. If someone made a video "How to make your own Rolex style watch" that are from 3d printed parts and works and looks like a Rolex then I guess they would also get a same c&d letter. Also I'm 100% behind protecting this restricted foods [0]. At least it's something against globalization (the guy is from Australia for example) 0, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...
- pgt 6y ago
  Why? What if you are making replacement parts for you own watch?
  - haunter 6y ago
    I don't know? I didn't say that I was saying making a Rolex fully from your own 3d printed parts and assembling it from scratch.
    - yuliyp 6y ago
      Even still there's nothing about trademarks to prevent someone from building such a replica. Trademarks prevent selling such a replica to someone else, though.
- hellotomyrars 6y ago
  Except they’re not the same. A video that tells you how to make your own Rolex-style watch, aside from being a bad analogy, isn’t a video of how to make a counterfeit rolex. If you attempted to sell it and brand it a Rolex and represent it as a legitimate Rolex, then you’d have an issue. I’m not inherently against geographically-restricted products (Though it definitely gets silly in spots) but he isn’t counterfeiting anything. You can’t have a counterfeit without a false representation of what something is. The creator isn’t doing that. Nor is the creator somehow commercially exploiting their precious cheese.
- 6y ago
pepy 6y ago
He should make a new video about "Cheese that must not be named". It should definitely be popular among the Harry Potter fans.
avhon1 6y ago
A convenient link to the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T_BJjitGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T_BJjitGQ
- iso1631 6y ago
  A quick scan of the complaint indicated they might have a case -- trademarks are important to protect the consumer. However watching the infringing video, he goes to great length to make it clear how it's in the style of Grana Pedano, it's not actually Grana Pedano. His "Feta" video on his channel's home page is more supicious in my layman opinion.
  - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
    The funny part is that Grana Padano were infringing on Parmigiano-Reggiano for centuries.
    - qalmakka 6y ago
      Lol, that's kind of true. They've been producing basically a _slightly_ inferior, cheaper knock-off version of Parmigiano-Reggiano for centuries and nobody ever complained; at least they always steered clear from associating themselves with the "Parmesan" brand because like many knock-offs they basically achieve what is arguably a less prestigious and blander product by having laxer quality standards. For instance, Parmigiano-Reggiano can only be made by cows eating certain kinds of grass, which should be dried and not fermented. Farmers grow their own alfalfa, which is then turned into bales and stored away for the winter months; this is a taxing and expensive process, but avoiding fermented, cheeper feeds (like maize trimmings) makes the milk more shelf stable, with less unwanted bacteria, which then reflects into a cheese less prone to spoiling or tasting off. The insistence of Grana Padano (which is mostly made on an industrial scale, compared with the smaller, cooperative dairies in the Parmigiano-Reggiano area) to allow farmers to use lower-quality feed stored in silos forces them to allow preservatives like Lysozyme in their formulation, because their milk gets inevitably contaminated by the Clostridium bacteria from the fermented feed they give to their cows. Before anyone complains, I might be a bit biased towards Parmigiano-Reggiano because I was born and raised in the area it is produced, so I ate a lot of it in every form, shape and size, but I think every cheese connoisseur knows that there's definitely a taste and quality difference between the two; I like Grana Padano overall, but even when long aged it's definitely not as deep, flavourful and complex as an equivalent wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's simply not the same.
varbhat 6y ago
Some of our laws and it's interpretations are just weird and absurd. They must be revaluated in current age.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Origin naming laws are fine as they are, this is just a ridiculous demand that has nothing to do with the law.
- vesinisa 6y ago
  I believe the law in this case is good. It's just how they are interpreting it. If some hobbyist makes a video "how to make Grana Padano style cheese", they send a cease and desist. Had they made a video "how Grana Padano cheese is made" and mentioned in the video that they are showing their version of the process but had specifically and clearly mentioned the resulting cheese is not and can not be actually called Grana Padano, they'd been okay I think. They are probably okay now as well if the matter progressed to court and they had a good IP lawyer, but then again I am not one.
  - pteraspidomorph 6y ago
    They do specifically mention that in the original video, though...
    - vesinisa 6y ago
      Semantics might be important here. Saying you are manufacturing "Grana Padano style" cheese might be the problem since it could be seen as diluting the original designation (essentially, a special trademark). There is either Grana Padano or non-Grana Padano cheese, nothing in between. Describing the process of making Grana Padano should be no problem at all, as long as you don't claim the resulting product is Grana Padano or anything like it. It wasn't manufactured by an authorized person in the authorized region so it can't be Grana Padano. I know it is a bit silly.. And I agree he was indeed probably enough careful in the original video. This could certainly be winnable for the tuber in court with services of a good IP lawyer.
cpach 6y ago
This sounds a bit absurd. But laws are sometimes absurd... Maybe he could call it ”Po River Valley Cheese” or something like that instead. [Edit: The threat might not hold up in court, but it can be expensive to find out...]
rstarast 6y ago
The C&D seems baseless, considering the video goes out of its way to remark that it's not making "the real thing". I could still see this working out well in terms of publicity for the Grana Padano brand -- seems unlikely there's any real risk of a Streisand effect here where everyone makes their own Grana Padano at home following the video's viral spread.
- veselin 6y ago
  This request is not baseless at all. If you have in the supermarket a noname cheese that is branded "Grana Padano style", it would hurt the trademark.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    Reminds me of a case here in Norway a few years ago back in 2016 where Synnøve Finden, one of the biggest dairy companies in the country, produced a new cheese and marketed it as a “Jarlsberg type cheese”. The dairy company that makes Jarlsberg did not look happily at this and was able to get a ruling that Synnøve Finden was not allowed to do this. https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2016/12/16/TINE-and-Synnoeve-Finden-case-over-Jarlsberg-ended https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2016/12/16/TINE-and-Sy... What the article I linked here does not mention however is that Synnøve Finden complied in a bit of a joking matter where for all of the cheese that had already been packaged with such labeling they printed out black stickers that said “CENSORED” over where the wording with Jarlsberg was. In doing so they managed to get an extra bit of publicity. I only ever bought Kongsgård once and prefer the original Jarlsberg, but I know that some people liked Kongsgård. Seems that in a blind test more people liked the original Jarlsberg better too. https://www.tv2.no/a/8119934/ https://www.tv2.no/a/8119934/ (article in Norwegian). And it looks like the Kongsgård cheese is no longer being sold since 2018. https://dagligvarehandelen.no/2018/kongsgard-ost-ut-av-hyllene https://dagligvarehandelen.no/2018/kongsgard-ost-ut-av-hylle... (paywalled, Norwegian)
  - visarga 6y ago
    > This request is not baseless at all. If you have in the supermarket a noname cheese that is branded "Grana Padano style", it would hurt the trademark. You don't sell cheese on YouTube, though. Why should private commercial interests be able to censure free speech around the globe?
jfoster 6y ago
YouTube became popular because it was a central place where you can find videos and get good recommendations and such. The fact that it became "the place for video" has made it a battleground for this type of thing. It makes me wonder if the future of video hosting could be smaller sites where videos are less likely to be taken down, demonetized, etc.
ajb 6y ago
It says his video shows his to make counterfeit Grana Padano cheese. But if I understand correctly, if someone from the correct region followed body instructions, the cheese they made would actually be a perfectly legitimate Grana Padano....
- bzb6 6y ago
  You can only call it that if you make it there and have a licence.
  - blackbear_ 6y ago
    The license being the fundamendal part for authentic taste. /s
    - bzb6 6y ago
      The licence being the fundamental part to protect the livelihoods of those who live in the region producing these valued products. But I guess we should outsource the production of this cheese to China instead, right?
      - mantap 6y ago
        If China could make cheese as good as European cheese, they would. PDO is not currently stopping them.
        bzb6 6y ago
        It is, because they would be unable to sell it in the first world.
        lb1lf 6y ago
        They can sell it, but the PDO ensures they have to find some other way of gaining market share than piggybacking off the reputation the products they imitate have earned over the years. (Which, in fairness, equates to being unable to sell it if other people shop like I do - nine times out of ten I pick cheeses (to stay with the original example) I already know.)
zozbot234 6y ago
I'm not sure why this is controversial. Trademark owners must defend their trademarks to show that they're in active use, otherwise the trademark might be lost. You're not prevented from making a cheese that's in a similar style, you just can't refer to it in a way that's confusingly simillar to a trademarked name.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  It's not a trademark, it's a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Similar but not the same and I'm not aware of an area being required to exercise their PDO to keep it.
  - elmo2you 6y ago
    Also, it was always my understanding that a PDO only/just forbids selling a good under a protected name/title, from another origin. I never expected that to include/extend to the production process, let alone for personal use. I thought these regulations were all about commercial trade, to protect local producers against (supposedly unfair) outside competition. I don't really see how demonstrating a production process harms that. In fact, considering the PDO protection local producers enjoy, it might just as well be argued that there is no need for any ban on the production of the same goods elsewhere, since those can already not be sold because of the PDO. Did I just misunderstood the PDO doctrine, or is this just overreach (if not abuse) of it? A case of wanted to have their cheese and it it too?
    - visarga 6y ago
      > Also, it was always my understanding that a PDO only/just forbids selling a good under a protected name/title, from another origin. This guy wasn't selling, he was just making a video. It seems PDO allows censure of media as well.
      - elmo2you 6y ago
        > It seems PDO allows censure of media as well. That is, assuming this recourse was (legally) valid in the first place. I'm not sure of that. I have no more than a laymen's understanding of these rules, but I at least expect that they apply to commercial entities (businesses) and not private individuals. This is an important distinction, which these days is often ignored/overlooked by many. Probably not in the least become so many people actually run (freelance) businesses as individuals, more often than not bordering on illegality, if not actually (unenforced) illegally. Much of that depends on national/local laws though. Maybe the plaintiff does see it as YouTube being a business, or the person making these videos doing this professionally (if there's any money being made from the videos, it sort of is), but neither of those two business are (professionally) producing the protected product in question (let alone commercially sell it). If the PDO regulations actually allow/warrant this action, then I'd argue that this goes way beyond the original intent and mandate of this PDO doctrine. Sadly, it would not be a first for an idea being (politically) adopted and then substantially changed/extended before being implemented into actual law/regulation. But with the (at best questionable) culture of lobbying going around in Brussels, that can hardly come as a surprise. Maybe the lawmakers who voted in favor of this doctrine should be asked if this is what they actually voted for. It might just annoy them, being "harassed" (if not insulted) with such "unimportant incidents", but that might be just what is needed here. If this is unforeseen/unintended (ab)use of these regulations, it is most likely to stop when lawmakers get annoyed/pissed off and demand some kind of public statement, saying that this is not what is supposed to happen under this doctrine.
MakersF 6y ago
I think it's important to notice that the point is not to keep how to make the cheese secret. The recipe for the cheese is actually encoded in the law, and you can download it freely ( https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/it/consorzio-disciplinare-normative https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/it/consorzio-disciplinare..., in italian). During lockdown I was trying to make a regional cheese, and the law was the best recipe I could find, with extremely detailed steps. I think they are trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming, as consumers associate the "something" with the knock off. I saw it a lot in recent years in the UK, even knowledgeable people end up buying "parmesan style" cheese and refer to it as parmesan, when the taste is not the same. To protect the name in general, they might be going after every instance of the "style" usage, even if in this case it's clear there is no intention to trick, and probably no commercial incentive.
- avhon1 6y ago
  > trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming The law prohibits exactly this. From the Wikipedia article [1]: [Under Protected Geographical Status laws] it is also prohibited to combine the indication with words such as "style", "type", "imitation", or "method" in connection with the protected indications [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union#Protection_and_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Interestingly, the article mentions that the protection in Australia applies to wines but not Cheese
    - blunte 6y ago
      Can't imagine why Australian wine needs protection... Who would try to copy it?
      - ryall 6y ago
giorgioz 6y ago
Also the youtuber set the video preview screenshot to showing only an image with written "Grana padano" https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/search?query=grana%20padano https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/search?query=grana%20p... It seems to me the youtuber is clearly exploiting the name Grana Padano to gain views. As much as Trademarks can't be used freeily by other users so you can't use products of Denominazione di Origine Controllata (Controlled Origin Denomination). Imagine the shitstorm if someone would make a video called "How to make Coca Cola style soda".
- vertis 6y ago
  IANAL but doesn't adding 'style' shove it firmly into fair use?
  - giorgioz 6y ago
    Well to start he didn't write "style" on the video screenshot preview, he just wrote Grana Padano. Also he could have made a video generically called "How to make parmesan style cheese" but he decided instead to use the very specific protected product Grana Padano. To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views.
    - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
      To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views. But the whole point of a trademark is to reference the thing that is trademarked. As long as it is clear that he's not affiliated with them then I think it is fair. If he said unofficial guide to make Grana Padano. Or my recipe that's better than Grana Padano then it would be fine.
      - M2Ys4U 6y ago
        >But the whole point of a trademark is to reference the thing that is trademarked. But "Grana Padano" is not a trademark. It's a protected designation of origin.
anotheryou 6y ago
Obviously the name is good for seo. Does anyone know what the rules are here? Could he say "NOT grana padano" in the description? In general the claims wouldn't hold in court, would they?
xuhu 6y ago
We need an urban dictionary for trademark names. Search for Grana Padano there, then go to Youtube and search for Grainy Po Valley Cheese.
- kps 6y ago
  This existed for typefaces back to the hot metal days, because like PDO the names were legally protected but the styles were not; e.g. Palatino (Stempel/Linotype) = Book Antiqua (Monotype) = Palladio (URW) = Zapf Calligraphic (Bitstream) = TeX Gyre Pagella.
Manheim 6y ago
Obviously, this is the result of the tyranny we get when we have a lawyer run IP protection program. They serve to protect, but the results of their activity is to bury all interest and knowledge of the IP they protect. I suspect that most of the Italian Grana Padano cheese makers are perfectly fine with the video this guy published, even glad for the interest he has in their product. I love the t-shirt, btw
vertis 6y ago
I had no idea that Grana Padano was a PDO. I can't help but feel that going around cease and desisting people that are passionately pursuing hobbies is a really bad idea. It reminds me of when the word Champagne was taken to court. The court ruled that the word could only be used by wine makers in the given region. What this resulted in was not I believe good for the Champagne region, despite the intent. The mind share for that word went down. Instead we found ourselves hearing people asking for Prosecco or bubbly. Champagne might now be able to assert that only the'quality' product from their region has the name, but I suspect it's just caused the companies that produce wine to make sure that they own the trademark, and push their brand, not the term champagne. Regardless of whether it's from that region. On the flip side there are several products in Europe (and potentially elsewhere) that use the term Aussie or Australian, and they're not actually Australian businesses[1]. Both were originally American businesses. So I get the need for some level of origin protection. Both of the Australian products imply something that isn't accurate, either manufacturing or ingredients. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aussie_(shampoo) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aussie_(shampoo) [2]: australiangold.com
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Champagne continues to maintain a pretty solid price premium though? The case of Moet-Chandon is instructive: the French variety usually retails for a solid $20/bottle more than Chandon's Australian or Californian wines, even though they're all made by the same house and the same methode champenoise.
  - vertis 6y ago
    But that's exactly my point. I hear people talking about bottles of 'Moet', not champagne. I've been given or bought several Moet-Chandon bottles over the years, and I would not be able to tell you with certainty whether they were filled with wine from the Champagne region. Anecdotal for sure. I would also argue that you could use any reasonably French sounding place name, 'Trois-Rivières' and people would make assumptions.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
Yizahi 6y ago
The funny thing is that such bans really pointless in the cheese creation area at least. It is so insanely expensive and complicated to make quality cheese on scale that we might as well not bother. You need a specific cows which cost as much as a Mercedes, eating a specific food which may not be available or available too far with prohibitive transportation cost, living in a specific conditions (where a personnel entering looks more like entering an Umbrella corp facility), requiring a specific highly regulated facilities around (e.g. butchery), you need to have all production line sterile and clean, nothing can be reused even from another line, and all that's just the milk part. Then we need some extremely complicated facility to grow cheese and it may fail anyway because some parameter was off. PS: the takedown notice is stupid of course
tsar_nikolai 6y ago
Never would have imagined I'd witness Big Parma sending cheese and desist letters.
- naetius 6y ago
  This one, people. This one.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I'd guess most of you don't know that "parmesan" (in the US, and elsewhere) is nothing like the real "parmigiano reggiano". It's tens of times cheaper to produce, and I'd venture to say that it might as well be several times less healthy than the original. Same thing for "grana padano". If you don't know anything about wood pulp in the parmesan, or fake olive oil, I suggest you read "real food, fake food" [0]. It opened my eyes. I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes. I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Fake-Youre-Eating/dp/1616204214 https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Fake-Youre-Eating/dp/161620...
- brobdingnagians 6y ago
  That book is also on Kobo, for those of us who don't want to give more money to Amazon: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/real-food-fake-food https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/real-food-fake-food
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  > I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes. It's not "otherwise stupid" it _is_ stupid. They should be going after the counterfeiters not someone who is both trying to educate people on making as authentic a cheese as possible while simultaneously making very clear that his cheese is not a true grana padano. Personally after seeing the consortium act like this, I consider all their other actions suspect. In my mind, this weakens their legitimacy as an organization. I'm sure I'm not the only person with this reaction. > I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell. That has _nothing_ to do with this youtuber.
wackget 6y ago
Surely the uploader could just re-title it "Home-made cheese inspired by Grana Padano". I doubt there'd be any legal issues with that.
- cowpig 6y ago
  There aren't any legal issues with this either. He's not selling the cheese, he's explaining how to make it. That's fair use, and the recipe for Grana Padano is public (defined in the law).
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    >That's fair use, and the recipe for Grana Padano is public "Fair use" is an exception in copyright law - this isn't a copyright issue.
poma88 6y ago
The very best cheese ever. Why parmeggiano got better PR?
citrusui 6y ago
The creator of this YouTube video recently published a follow-up that presents an apology letter from the Consortium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE The original video in question, however, is still getting taken down.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

169 points by notRobot 6y ago

[edit: I just realized that the original video explicitly stated that this was a Grana Padano style cheese. The C&D tries to say he's teaching people how to make counterfeit cheese ?!??!?] The cease and desist is over the name, or more specifically using the name of the cheese when you aren't making it in the correct part of the world. This is a guy on YouTube describing how to make that cheese, the only thing he can say he's making is that cheese. This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now. There is no way you could describe making that type of cheese without referring to it by name. The fact that they don't like people making identical cheese to them is inconsequential - it seems like this kind of usage should be trivially covered under fair use. That said he sounds Australian to me, and I have no idea how trademarks and fair use work in AU.

postingpals 6y ago
I have every reason to believe that countries protecting the name of their products has only helped local producers from becoming beaten out the market or losing their culture with virtually no cost to anyone outside of those markets, since you can still make the actual product with a different name.
globuous 6y ago
They like to do that with alcohol as well, scotch, bourbon, tennessee whiskey, champagne, cognac etc. I guess it's to protect producers. In a way, it's a nice protection against globalization. A microprocessor can be produced anywhere, champagne cannot ;p
- olliej 6y ago
  Champagne can be produced in numerous areas, only they can only say they're using the champagne method. In fact the first actual records of sparkling wine predate the various French Champagne producers (e.g. Dom Pérignon) in Italy and England, with some suggestion it was England first due to their stronger glass and tendency to add the necessary sugar to wine - for example there's no documentation of why Dom Pérignon spontaneously switch to bottling wine. The English were also the first to see the bubbles as an advantage. The original French champagne was a flat wine, so maybe Champagne from the Champagne region of France should actually be flat and sparkling champagne (from England) be renamed?
gnopgnip 6y ago
Nominative fair use applies to trademarks. You can refer to something by name without infringing
namdnay 6y ago
Puttin aside the absurdity of a C&D for some random youtuber showing how to replicate a particular cheese, I don't agree with "This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid". If I want Roquefort I want Roquefort, not another blue cheese. No problem selling another cheese and putting it next to Roquefort in the stalls (looking at you Saint Agur..), but words have meaning and places have meaning
- olliej 6y ago
  But Roquefort cheese is the combination of specific bacteria and production conditions. If I have the same ingredients and the same production technique and conditions, then the only difference is that one was made in a specific location, and one was not. So what if mine tastes slightly different? No cheeses produced in the same region and in the same way taste exactly the same. As for your "another blue cheese" comment - if someone makes a blue cheese using different bacteria, techniques or conditions then it isn't a roquefort so shouldn't be able to be labeled as such. But that difference is due to the place of origin - if I made a generic cows milk blue cheese in the south of france I could claim it's a roquefort just because of the origin.
colechristensen 6y ago
I am absolutely fine with origin naming legal defenses. You can’t sell something as though it was made somewhere when it wasn’t. That is an entirely different issue than using naming rights to prevent people from making a similar agricultural product somewhere else, or sharing information about it using the name. The rights should extend to product labeling and thats it, and they do. This C&D to a youtuber is comical.
- olliej 6y ago
  Why does origin naming only apply to "fancy" products from France and Italy - cheddar originates in England, but no one claims that cheese made exactly the same way elsewhere isn't cheddar.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    Origin naming protections are all over the place. In fact “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” is a protected name. Another example is bourbon whiskey, it must be produced in the US out of 51% corn in a certain kind of barrel in order to carry the name.
    - olliej 6y ago
      What makes “ West Country Farmhouse Cheddar” different from "West Country Farmhouse Grana Padano"? By the logic that leads to WCFC, Grana Padano shouldn't be protected. Only "Piacenza Grana Padano" should be. It is an identical situation: a method of making cheese, with an origin in a specific area. I can make cheese the same way, using the same ingredients for both cheeses, but one I can call cheddar, and the other I have to call "Not Grana Padano".
4gotunameagain 6y ago
> This kind of region-of-production-defines-the-allowed-name-of-identical-products idiocy is of course beyond stupid, but lets ignore that for now. This is not stupid at all. Apart from being an equivalent to a patent/license (if that justifies it in your point of view), the final outcome of traditional products can be affected very much by the local environment (breeds, feed, weather, water, even microbiota etc). You simply cannot make traditional Mozzarella di bufala campana or Pouligny-Saint-Pierre in Wisconsin. You can make something similar, sure, but never the traditional.

haunter 6y ago

>your video seems to describe how to create counterfeited replicas of Grana Padano. I think that's a valid take. If someone made a video "How to make your own Rolex style watch" that are from 3d printed parts and works and looks like a Rolex then I guess they would also get a same c&d letter. Also I'm 100% behind protecting this restricted foods [0]. At least it's something against globalization (the guy is from Australia for example) 0, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...

pgt 6y ago
Why? What if you are making replacement parts for you own watch?
- haunter 6y ago
  I don't know? I didn't say that I was saying making a Rolex fully from your own 3d printed parts and assembling it from scratch.
  - yuliyp 6y ago
    Even still there's nothing about trademarks to prevent someone from building such a replica. Trademarks prevent selling such a replica to someone else, though.
hellotomyrars 6y ago
Except they’re not the same. A video that tells you how to make your own Rolex-style watch, aside from being a bad analogy, isn’t a video of how to make a counterfeit rolex. If you attempted to sell it and brand it a Rolex and represent it as a legitimate Rolex, then you’d have an issue. I’m not inherently against geographically-restricted products (Though it definitely gets silly in spots) but he isn’t counterfeiting anything. You can’t have a counterfeit without a false representation of what something is. The creator isn’t doing that. Nor is the creator somehow commercially exploiting their precious cheese.
6y ago

pepy 6y ago

He should make a new video about "Cheese that must not be named". It should definitely be popular among the Harry Potter fans.

avhon1 6y ago

A convenient link to the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T_BJjitGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T_BJjitGQ

iso1631 6y ago
A quick scan of the complaint indicated they might have a case -- trademarks are important to protect the consumer. However watching the infringing video, he goes to great length to make it clear how it's in the style of Grana Pedano, it's not actually Grana Pedano. His "Feta" video on his channel's home page is more supicious in my layman opinion.
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  The funny part is that Grana Padano were infringing on Parmigiano-Reggiano for centuries.
  - qalmakka 6y ago
    Lol, that's kind of true. They've been producing basically a _slightly_ inferior, cheaper knock-off version of Parmigiano-Reggiano for centuries and nobody ever complained; at least they always steered clear from associating themselves with the "Parmesan" brand because like many knock-offs they basically achieve what is arguably a less prestigious and blander product by having laxer quality standards. For instance, Parmigiano-Reggiano can only be made by cows eating certain kinds of grass, which should be dried and not fermented. Farmers grow their own alfalfa, which is then turned into bales and stored away for the winter months; this is a taxing and expensive process, but avoiding fermented, cheeper feeds (like maize trimmings) makes the milk more shelf stable, with less unwanted bacteria, which then reflects into a cheese less prone to spoiling or tasting off. The insistence of Grana Padano (which is mostly made on an industrial scale, compared with the smaller, cooperative dairies in the Parmigiano-Reggiano area) to allow farmers to use lower-quality feed stored in silos forces them to allow preservatives like Lysozyme in their formulation, because their milk gets inevitably contaminated by the Clostridium bacteria from the fermented feed they give to their cows. Before anyone complains, I might be a bit biased towards Parmigiano-Reggiano because I was born and raised in the area it is produced, so I ate a lot of it in every form, shape and size, but I think every cheese connoisseur knows that there's definitely a taste and quality difference between the two; I like Grana Padano overall, but even when long aged it's definitely not as deep, flavourful and complex as an equivalent wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's simply not the same.

varbhat 6y ago

Some of our laws and it's interpretations are just weird and absurd. They must be revaluated in current age.

colechristensen 6y ago
Origin naming laws are fine as they are, this is just a ridiculous demand that has nothing to do with the law.
vesinisa 6y ago
I believe the law in this case is good. It's just how they are interpreting it. If some hobbyist makes a video "how to make Grana Padano style cheese", they send a cease and desist. Had they made a video "how Grana Padano cheese is made" and mentioned in the video that they are showing their version of the process but had specifically and clearly mentioned the resulting cheese is not and can not be actually called Grana Padano, they'd been okay I think. They are probably okay now as well if the matter progressed to court and they had a good IP lawyer, but then again I am not one.
- pteraspidomorph 6y ago
  They do specifically mention that in the original video, though...
  - vesinisa 6y ago
    Semantics might be important here. Saying you are manufacturing "Grana Padano style" cheese might be the problem since it could be seen as diluting the original designation (essentially, a special trademark). There is either Grana Padano or non-Grana Padano cheese, nothing in between. Describing the process of making Grana Padano should be no problem at all, as long as you don't claim the resulting product is Grana Padano or anything like it. It wasn't manufactured by an authorized person in the authorized region so it can't be Grana Padano. I know it is a bit silly.. And I agree he was indeed probably enough careful in the original video. This could certainly be winnable for the tuber in court with services of a good IP lawyer.

cpach 6y ago

This sounds a bit absurd. But laws are sometimes absurd... Maybe he could call it ”Po River Valley Cheese” or something like that instead. [Edit: The threat might not hold up in court, but it can be expensive to find out...]

rstarast 6y ago

The C&D seems baseless, considering the video goes out of its way to remark that it's not making "the real thing". I could still see this working out well in terms of publicity for the Grana Padano brand -- seems unlikely there's any real risk of a Streisand effect here where everyone makes their own Grana Padano at home following the video's viral spread.

veselin 6y ago
This request is not baseless at all. If you have in the supermarket a noname cheese that is branded "Grana Padano style", it would hurt the trademark.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  Reminds me of a case here in Norway a few years ago back in 2016 where Synnøve Finden, one of the biggest dairy companies in the country, produced a new cheese and marketed it as a “Jarlsberg type cheese”. The dairy company that makes Jarlsberg did not look happily at this and was able to get a ruling that Synnøve Finden was not allowed to do this. https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2016/12/16/TINE-and-Synnoeve-Finden-case-over-Jarlsberg-ended https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2016/12/16/TINE-and-Sy... What the article I linked here does not mention however is that Synnøve Finden complied in a bit of a joking matter where for all of the cheese that had already been packaged with such labeling they printed out black stickers that said “CENSORED” over where the wording with Jarlsberg was. In doing so they managed to get an extra bit of publicity. I only ever bought Kongsgård once and prefer the original Jarlsberg, but I know that some people liked Kongsgård. Seems that in a blind test more people liked the original Jarlsberg better too. https://www.tv2.no/a/8119934/ https://www.tv2.no/a/8119934/ (article in Norwegian). And it looks like the Kongsgård cheese is no longer being sold since 2018. https://dagligvarehandelen.no/2018/kongsgard-ost-ut-av-hyllene https://dagligvarehandelen.no/2018/kongsgard-ost-ut-av-hylle... (paywalled, Norwegian)
- visarga 6y ago
  > This request is not baseless at all. If you have in the supermarket a noname cheese that is branded "Grana Padano style", it would hurt the trademark. You don't sell cheese on YouTube, though. Why should private commercial interests be able to censure free speech around the globe?

jfoster 6y ago

YouTube became popular because it was a central place where you can find videos and get good recommendations and such. The fact that it became "the place for video" has made it a battleground for this type of thing. It makes me wonder if the future of video hosting could be smaller sites where videos are less likely to be taken down, demonetized, etc.

ajb 6y ago

It says his video shows his to make counterfeit Grana Padano cheese. But if I understand correctly, if someone from the correct region followed body instructions, the cheese they made would actually be a perfectly legitimate Grana Padano....

bzb6 6y ago
You can only call it that if you make it there and have a licence.
- blackbear_ 6y ago
  The license being the fundamendal part for authentic taste. /s
  - bzb6 6y ago
    The licence being the fundamental part to protect the livelihoods of those who live in the region producing these valued products. But I guess we should outsource the production of this cheese to China instead, right?
    - mantap 6y ago
      If China could make cheese as good as European cheese, they would. PDO is not currently stopping them.
      - bzb6 6y ago
        It is, because they would be unable to sell it in the first world.
        lb1lf 6y ago
        They can sell it, but the PDO ensures they have to find some other way of gaining market share than piggybacking off the reputation the products they imitate have earned over the years. (Which, in fairness, equates to being unable to sell it if other people shop like I do - nine times out of ten I pick cheeses (to stay with the original example) I already know.)

zozbot234 6y ago

I'm not sure why this is controversial. Trademark owners must defend their trademarks to show that they're in active use, otherwise the trademark might be lost. You're not prevented from making a cheese that's in a similar style, you just can't refer to it in a way that's confusingly simillar to a trademarked name.

globular-toast 6y ago
It's not a trademark, it's a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Similar but not the same and I'm not aware of an area being required to exercise their PDO to keep it.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  Also, it was always my understanding that a PDO only/just forbids selling a good under a protected name/title, from another origin. I never expected that to include/extend to the production process, let alone for personal use. I thought these regulations were all about commercial trade, to protect local producers against (supposedly unfair) outside competition. I don't really see how demonstrating a production process harms that. In fact, considering the PDO protection local producers enjoy, it might just as well be argued that there is no need for any ban on the production of the same goods elsewhere, since those can already not be sold because of the PDO. Did I just misunderstood the PDO doctrine, or is this just overreach (if not abuse) of it? A case of wanted to have their cheese and it it too?
  - visarga 6y ago
    > Also, it was always my understanding that a PDO only/just forbids selling a good under a protected name/title, from another origin. This guy wasn't selling, he was just making a video. It seems PDO allows censure of media as well.
    - elmo2you 6y ago
      > It seems PDO allows censure of media as well. That is, assuming this recourse was (legally) valid in the first place. I'm not sure of that. I have no more than a laymen's understanding of these rules, but I at least expect that they apply to commercial entities (businesses) and not private individuals. This is an important distinction, which these days is often ignored/overlooked by many. Probably not in the least become so many people actually run (freelance) businesses as individuals, more often than not bordering on illegality, if not actually (unenforced) illegally. Much of that depends on national/local laws though. Maybe the plaintiff does see it as YouTube being a business, or the person making these videos doing this professionally (if there's any money being made from the videos, it sort of is), but neither of those two business are (professionally) producing the protected product in question (let alone commercially sell it). If the PDO regulations actually allow/warrant this action, then I'd argue that this goes way beyond the original intent and mandate of this PDO doctrine. Sadly, it would not be a first for an idea being (politically) adopted and then substantially changed/extended before being implemented into actual law/regulation. But with the (at best questionable) culture of lobbying going around in Brussels, that can hardly come as a surprise. Maybe the lawmakers who voted in favor of this doctrine should be asked if this is what they actually voted for. It might just annoy them, being "harassed" (if not insulted) with such "unimportant incidents", but that might be just what is needed here. If this is unforeseen/unintended (ab)use of these regulations, it is most likely to stop when lawmakers get annoyed/pissed off and demand some kind of public statement, saying that this is not what is supposed to happen under this doctrine.

MakersF 6y ago

I think it's important to notice that the point is not to keep how to make the cheese secret. The recipe for the cheese is actually encoded in the law, and you can download it freely ( https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/it/consorzio-disciplinare-normative https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/it/consorzio-disciplinare..., in italian). During lockdown I was trying to make a regional cheese, and the law was the best recipe I could find, with extremely detailed steps. I think they are trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming, as consumers associate the "something" with the knock off. I saw it a lot in recent years in the UK, even knowledgeable people end up buying "parmesan style" cheese and refer to it as parmesan, when the taste is not the same. To protect the name in general, they might be going after every instance of the "style" usage, even if in this case it's clear there is no intention to trick, and probably no commercial incentive.

avhon1 6y ago
> trying to discourage the usage of "something style" naming The law prohibits exactly this. From the Wikipedia article [1]: [Under Protected Geographical Status laws] it is also prohibited to combine the indication with words such as "style", "type", "imitation", or "method" in connection with the protected indications [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union#Protection_and_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Interestingly, the article mentions that the protection in Australia applies to wines but not Cheese
  - blunte 6y ago
    Can't imagine why Australian wine needs protection... Who would try to copy it?
    - ryall 6y ago

giorgioz 6y ago

Also the youtuber set the video preview screenshot to showing only an image with written "Grana padano" https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/search?query=grana%20padano https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/search?query=grana%20p... It seems to me the youtuber is clearly exploiting the name Grana Padano to gain views. As much as Trademarks can't be used freeily by other users so you can't use products of Denominazione di Origine Controllata (Controlled Origin Denomination). Imagine the shitstorm if someone would make a video called "How to make Coca Cola style soda".

vertis 6y ago
IANAL but doesn't adding 'style' shove it firmly into fair use?
- giorgioz 6y ago
  Well to start he didn't write "style" on the video screenshot preview, he just wrote Grana Padano. Also he could have made a video generically called "How to make parmesan style cheese" but he decided instead to use the very specific protected product Grana Padano. To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views.
  - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    To me it doesn't seem fair use and there is a monetary incentive for the youtuber to use the term Grana Padano to have more views and/or get paid more by Youtube for views. But the whole point of a trademark is to reference the thing that is trademarked. As long as it is clear that he's not affiliated with them then I think it is fair. If he said unofficial guide to make Grana Padano. Or my recipe that's better than Grana Padano then it would be fine.
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      >But the whole point of a trademark is to reference the thing that is trademarked. But "Grana Padano" is not a trademark. It's a protected designation of origin.

anotheryou 6y ago

Obviously the name is good for seo. Does anyone know what the rules are here? Could he say "NOT grana padano" in the description? In general the claims wouldn't hold in court, would they?

xuhu 6y ago

We need an urban dictionary for trademark names. Search for Grana Padano there, then go to Youtube and search for Grainy Po Valley Cheese.

kps 6y ago
This existed for typefaces back to the hot metal days, because like PDO the names were legally protected but the styles were not; e.g. Palatino (Stempel/Linotype) = Book Antiqua (Monotype) = Palladio (URW) = Zapf Calligraphic (Bitstream) = TeX Gyre Pagella.

Manheim 6y ago

Obviously, this is the result of the tyranny we get when we have a lawyer run IP protection program. They serve to protect, but the results of their activity is to bury all interest and knowledge of the IP they protect. I suspect that most of the Italian Grana Padano cheese makers are perfectly fine with the video this guy published, even glad for the interest he has in their product. I love the t-shirt, btw

vertis 6y ago

I had no idea that Grana Padano was a PDO. I can't help but feel that going around cease and desisting people that are passionately pursuing hobbies is a really bad idea. It reminds me of when the word Champagne was taken to court. The court ruled that the word could only be used by wine makers in the given region. What this resulted in was not I believe good for the Champagne region, despite the intent. The mind share for that word went down. Instead we found ourselves hearing people asking for Prosecco or bubbly. Champagne might now be able to assert that only the'quality' product from their region has the name, but I suspect it's just caused the companies that produce wine to make sure that they own the trademark, and push their brand, not the term champagne. Regardless of whether it's from that region. On the flip side there are several products in Europe (and potentially elsewhere) that use the term Aussie or Australian, and they're not actually Australian businesses[1]. Both were originally American businesses. So I get the need for some level of origin protection. Both of the Australian products imply something that isn't accurate, either manufacturing or ingredients. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aussie_(shampoo) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aussie_(shampoo) [2]: australiangold.com

howlgarnish 6y ago
Champagne continues to maintain a pretty solid price premium though? The case of Moet-Chandon is instructive: the French variety usually retails for a solid $20/bottle more than Chandon's Australian or Californian wines, even though they're all made by the same house and the same methode champenoise.
- vertis 6y ago
  But that's exactly my point. I hear people talking about bottles of 'Moet', not champagne. I've been given or bought several Moet-Chandon bottles over the years, and I would not be able to tell you with certainty whether they were filled with wine from the Champagne region. Anecdotal for sure. I would also argue that you could use any reasonably French sounding place name, 'Trois-Rivières' and people would make assumptions.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago

Yizahi 6y ago

The funny thing is that such bans really pointless in the cheese creation area at least. It is so insanely expensive and complicated to make quality cheese on scale that we might as well not bother. You need a specific cows which cost as much as a Mercedes, eating a specific food which may not be available or available too far with prohibitive transportation cost, living in a specific conditions (where a personnel entering looks more like entering an Umbrella corp facility), requiring a specific highly regulated facilities around (e.g. butchery), you need to have all production line sterile and clean, nothing can be reused even from another line, and all that's just the milk part. Then we need some extremely complicated facility to grow cheese and it may fail anyway because some parameter was off. PS: the takedown notice is stupid of course

tsar_nikolai 6y ago

Never would have imagined I'd witness Big Parma sending cheese and desist letters.

naetius 6y ago
This one, people. This one.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I'd guess most of you don't know that "parmesan" (in the US, and elsewhere) is nothing like the real "parmigiano reggiano". It's tens of times cheaper to produce, and I'd venture to say that it might as well be several times less healthy than the original. Same thing for "grana padano". If you don't know anything about wood pulp in the parmesan, or fake olive oil, I suggest you read "real food, fake food" [0]. It opened my eyes. I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes. I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Fake-Youre-Eating/dp/1616204214 https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Fake-Youre-Eating/dp/161620...

brobdingnagians 6y ago
That book is also on Kobo, for those of us who don't want to give more money to Amazon: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/real-food-fake-food https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/real-food-fake-food
CogitoCogito 6y ago
> I guess the reason why the Italian consortium sent this (otherwise stupid) cease-and-desist to this poor Australian guy, is because they're desperately trying to defend the real stuff from the fakes. It's not "otherwise stupid" it _is_ stupid. They should be going after the counterfeiters not someone who is both trying to educate people on making as authentic a cheese as possible while simultaneously making very clear that his cheese is not a true grana padano. Personally after seeing the consortium act like this, I consider all their other actions suspect. In my mind, this weakens their legitimacy as an organization. I'm sure I'm not the only person with this reaction. > I sympathize with the guy, but it's a global battle; and organizations that are supposed to defend the consumer are doing next to nothing (expecially in the US). This is not about protecting a "brand"; it's about the fact that when you buy grana padano in the US and it's made of sh*t, you as a consumer should be able to tell. That has _nothing_ to do with this youtuber.

wackget 6y ago

Surely the uploader could just re-title it "Home-made cheese inspired by Grana Padano". I doubt there'd be any legal issues with that.

cowpig 6y ago
There aren't any legal issues with this either. He's not selling the cheese, he's explaining how to make it. That's fair use, and the recipe for Grana Padano is public (defined in the law).
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  >That's fair use, and the recipe for Grana Padano is public "Fair use" is an exception in copyright law - this isn't a copyright issue.

poma88 6y ago

The very best cheese ever. Why parmeggiano got better PR?

citrusui 6y ago

The creator of this YouTube video recently published a follow-up that presents an apology letter from the Consortium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE The original video in question, however, is still getting taken down.

deleted 6y ago

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