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This response was not only arrogant, but knowingly false. The Web is not "public domain" but subject to the exact same copyright conditions as printed media. And the "badly needed editing"? It consisted of changing deliberate anachronisms (it was on a medieval subject) to modern form and spelling. Apparently this Judith Griggs is about as smart as a box of rocks.
Of course the word got out, and the Wrath of the Internet soon descended upon Cooks Source, propelled by articles like this one in Live Journal. Word spreads very fast on the Web, and content publishers there have a very lively interest in copyright matters.
From there it made it into the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other print media. From all that hoopla people took a closer look at Cooks Source and found it had stolen lots of stuff, from up to and including Disney. I think somebody's going to end up in court - Disney and some of the other victims have money, and a very bad attitude towards content thieves.
Update: Cooks Source went under within a few days of the news getting out, and Judith Griggs has a new entry for her resume: "Killed a magazine that employed me by using lies, theft and arrogance".
If you would like a little more on how copyright works, in print and on the Web, see the Copyright page right here on this site. Copyright is always automatic, and automatically goes to the author or creator, with all rights reserved. The creator may then, or may not, choose to waive some of those rights in writing.
For those interested, here's the original article in it's original environment. A Tale of Two Tarts - "Redactions of two English apple pie recipes and a discussion of how they changed over time."