Gavin Webber, a cheesemaking YouTuber, was threatened with legal action after posting a video of him making a Grana Padano-style cheese. The ingredients and methods of recipes are not copyrightable, but the Grana Padano consortium claims that mentioning the name (which refers to a "protected designation of origin") breaks the law, even though he was clear that what he was making was not, in fact, Grana Padano cheese or cheese from Grana Padano. Which it couldn't possibly be, obviously, because he's making it in a YouTube video.
That fact hardly matters, unfortunately, when the cost of defending even the most blatant nuisance lawsuits is astronomical. Even if he makes a stand, YouTube has a private IP enforcement system that the Grana Padano consortium could use to kill the video (and perhaps even Webber's channel) without troubling the courts at all.
So down it comes.
Thing is, though, the video is now on Google Drive, re-uploaded by an unknown party. It's elsewhere, too. Soon, it might be everywhere.
Moreover, the legal threat has already drawn attention to a document from which the real method for making Grana Padano cheese can be deduced, as disclosed to European Union regulators in return for the protected designation of origin.
Voila! Now everyone is making their own exactingly-accurate Grana Padano at home, all because the Grana Padano consortium wanted to kill one video showing people how to make hard salty Italian cheese that tastes a bit like it.
UPDATE: The cheese consortium backed off and even offered Webber a trip to learn the true recipe. However, it still insists that it is "improper" to use the name even by way of comparison.
