Digital Authorship

Have a great summer!

2008-06-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

n/t!

Blogging 101

2008-05-07T07:05:00.003-05:00

I have never blogged before this semester. In the beginning, I was intimidated. I felt forced to contribute. Later, though, I began to enjoy this experience. While I felt timid in class to share my interpretations and thoughts about readings, I was able to share more "vocally" on the blog. Writing has always been my preferred form of communication. It affords me the opportunity to thoughtfully and methodically piece out my thoughts. Participating in the blog enriched my understanding of the material we read and the reading responses were great summaries of that material. Reading other classmates' responses provided me with insights that I could not garner in the limited construct of the classroom. I hope for more of this experience in other classes. I am now a convert.

Enter the Blogosphere

2008-05-05T17:24:00.002-05:00

For several years I wrote a political blog. I quit because the demands of graduate school afforded me no time. I have enjoyed doing so again, under my anonymous moniker no longer so anonymous. I'm sure I was so when I posted at Howard's blog, however. She actually replied to my post on her blog, but only on her blog, and only half-condescendingly.

I have found our discussions here to be quite useful, particularly since blogging fit the topic of this course. I have learned from my colleagues, and hope that I have somehow contributed to our online discussion. I must confess, however, that I find some of the overheated and hyperbolic claims (not by my colleagues) made by some of the writers and specialists in the field to be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Some of the authorship claims defy one's sensibility at times. On the other hand, I found the issues of copyright and fair use to be compelling. In fact, those issues sparked my political blogging spirit, and I wanted to march out of the room some nights, decrying the injustice of the corporatocracy (oligarchy, plutocracy, GOP - grand old plutocracy).

For the rhetoricians amongst us, I would recommend taking a look at Stephen Pinker, Daniel Dennet, Richard Dawkins, and James Q. Wilson. Using Foucault, Barthes, and Bakhtin as models for authorship and sources for cultural analysis is more than just primitive. It's like trying to study biology without Darwin.

Cheers!

Blog Reflection

2008-05-05T14:45:00.002-05:00

I'm not especially new to blogging, I've done it for personal projects for a few years, and participate in some discussions that interest me online in other forums. At the same time, I have to agree with some of the other class members sentiments that I did, at times, feel pressed to post something just to meet a requirement. I think the blog is a valuable tool to extend the classroom discussion outside in a relatively seemless way, at the same time, I don't want to post something just because it was Saturday and I hadn't yet for the week.

I think one of the coolest things about the blog is the ability to link, post videos, and give all around multi-media representations of what we're working on, especially in a class that focuses on things that are not so seemlessly translated to paper. Also, being able to check the blog or contribute to it from anyway has really proved to be an easy way to stay connected to the course from home, to check what's going on, and to get some quality feedback from classmates on our own ideas.

It's an excellent tool, and I feel like we're using it well. Other than the pressure to contribute when I might not have anything, just to meet the requirement, it's been a really pleasant and positive experience.

My 2 cents worth...

2008-05-05T14:18:00.002-05:00

Like others, this was my first experience using a blog for anything, much less class discussion. I agree with Dan that it is a good forum for the quieter among us to express ourselves, but like We-um, sorry, entremanureal I often felt that when I had to post, I just didn't have much to say. I never dedicated the time or energy to follow this conversation out in the blogosphere; in fact, I had a hard enough time just following our own blog—where do you people find the time? The one time I chimed in on another blog, my comments were ignored. :( Serious, thoughtful blogging is hard work and not for the timid; unfortunately, it's easy for me to be lazy.

I really liked the blog as a repository of all of the quirky and interesting links our class found pertaining to authorship and copyright issues. I also thought it was beneficial for some extended rants. Nonetheless, it did feel like a chore and a bother most times (I think I've been in school too long). Will I blog on my own? Probably not. Will I leave the occasional comment? I think it's safe to say yes. And as this is my last class at NIU, shy of writing my thesis this summer, here's a big thank you, ENGL 529!

In Retrospect, A Cool Thing

2008-05-05T07:12:00.002-05:00

My experience with blogs before this class was mostly in reading other people's blogs, which I'd always found a strange practice, sort of like reading other people's diaries. This, I suppose, is because that's how I'd always thought about them -- as public diaries. Obviously they are much more complicated than that, and, I now think, much more useful. I came to enjoy our class blog quite a bit, and I found it especially helpful as a place to sort out my responses to the readings -- which sometimes bordered on ranting, but which were always helped by reading what other people had to say. As an extension of the classroom, I think this was a great idea, and one that I will probably apply to my own classes. And given that my paper (which, yes, I also need to get to work on) is also about the blog phenomenon, I shall certainly pay more attention to them in the future -- who knows, maybe I'll even start my own. Okay, so that's really optimistic and unrealistic, knowing myself as I do, but you never know. I have friends who do it, and it certainly is good exercise. At the very least, I will keep my eyes open for what other people are doing in the blogosphere (a concept I still have some issues with).

Like others here, I somehow never got around -- or never worked up the courage -- to post elsewhere, but I think the more time I spend exploring the more comfortable that will get responding to what other people have to say. I will also agree with the comment that I sometimes posted here largely because I had to, which sometimes left me struggling to find something worthwhile to say. But on the whole I ended up really enjoying our class blog, and I do believe I will miss it.

Blog Infant

2008-05-04T18:40:00.002-05:00

Like many who have already posted, I will admit that this class blog was my first blogging experience. What I liked about the blog:

The ability to read classmates' thoughts on the readings helped me more thoughtfully respond to the articles and books. I wasn't simply reacting to the readings; the blog allowed me to digest additional context and perspectives because of my peers' analysis.
Other postings unrelated to the readings opened up a world of literature, parody and scholarship I never would have found without the blog. Thanks!
The blog encouraged us to form a community beyond what I usually experience as a part-time student who visits campus twice a week. While I still don't know everyone's pseudonym, it was nice to understand more about my classmates' perspectives beyond what you can discern from class discussions or ten-minute breaks. I don't think I would have reached beyond my ol' technical writing buddies without having familiarized myself with others on the blog.

What frustrated me about the blog:

Often, I felt the need to just post something in order to meet a class requirement. This frustration may have more to do with my unfamiliarity with blogging combined with my overwhelming workload this semester, but I often wondered if I was really contributing anything that a fellow student could use or reflect on.
While some of you disagreed with my reticence to post on external blogs during a brief class discussion, I have to admit I still felt reticent all semester. Though many of you encouraged me by assuring me any posting would be anonymous, I sadly regressed into feeling isolated without a cyberspace community. Just as I would rarely if ever interrupt a conversation I walked into in person, I would rarely if ever contribute to a blog I hadn't been monitoring for a while. And unfortunately, there just wasn't time during my juggling act. It wasn't clear to me until late in the game that my contribution on this end might have publicized our efforts and lured external folks to our discussions. I'm sorry I didn't contribute to that.
I have to agree with ehrengard and jb that the visual style of our blog made it difficult to follow a strand of comments or related postings. Some of us tagged our postings, but in no real systemmatic way.

Having said all of this, I want to end by sharing that this has been one of the most active group of classmates I've encountered in terms of discussion, both verbal and written. Thanks for making the semester interesting and lively!

so long, class blog

2008-05-04T15:30:00.003-05:00

This semester has sold me on the usefulness of blogs at the graduate level (I don't share e's doubt about its use for undergrads, but I think it all depends on how these are understood and meant to be used). I guess I have done this before, but here I've found this blog to be much more useful in reading others' responses to and thoughts on the class readings.

I regret not taking a more active role in reading/responding to the scholars on our blogroll. I did post to Sivacracy (it's somewhere, maybe I'll dig it up) but I don't think I linked back to our blog here. I guess it wasn't really related to authorship and copyright, so I suppose I failed on that end. I still, for whatever reason, generally thought of our class as the primary audience and did not consider that someone like John Logie or Rebecca Moore Howard might be reading.

Perhaps it's because I understood this blog space mostly as another way to interact with and understand the readings. I liked when conversations would migrate from here into the classroom. This is not to say I don't see the potential to reach a wider audience here, but that is a goal for my paper while these posts were more spontaneous efforts. Perhaps that stems from my perceived sense of privacy I get from my super secret pseudonym.

I'm rambling (and, wow, I need to get to work on the paper we're workshopping tomorrow), so I should go. Best of luck with your papers, everyone! There I go again with the audience thing. Ahem. Farewell, loyal readers!

End of Semester Thoughts on the Blog

2008-05-03T17:51:00.004-05:00

I have had a long and sordid history with blogs. My first one was back in '01, which was updated rarely and was written in Dreamweaver and updated to my personal site. I've kept one (or 6) on and off for years. The blogging has outlived Dreamweaver in usefulness. (Yes, I write the code for my sites by hand. Yes, I am a snob about it.)

However, even my collaboratively written blogs did not have this consistent level of activity (and, I am pained to admit, quality), which is very important and very exciting.

Additionally, though others have said it, an advantage of this forum is that those of us who have a hard time talking can come out of their proverbial shell. I can see the advantage of this virtual space for classrooms, even if they are not specifically "endorsed" or a requirement of the professor, just as a place for questions and answers.

Lastly, I've been in kind of a creative weird place lately, and so, when that is the case, I read some poetry or related prose. In this case, I'm re-reading Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," and I've come across this bit, and his words on copyright are better than mine.

"Finally, as to my own books, I wish I could send you any of them that might give you pleasure. But I am very poor, and my books, as soon as they are published, no longer belong to me. I can't even afford them myself--and, as I would so often like to, give them to those who would be kind to them."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, April 23,1903

Thoughts on Blog

2008-05-03T17:05:00.003-05:00

As others, I too had little experience with blogs before this class. In terms of this class, I found the blog very engaging because as I read through other's posts I was reminded of bits of the reading I had forgotten, or I made connections that I hadn't before. And, the weekly blogging requirement forced me to look for outside material to pull into our discussion--something that I might have done once or twice, but surely not weekly. This extra step led me to find many blogs of personal interest that I will continue to follow long after this class ends.

On a larger level, though, and I believe this was the most beneficial element of the blog, I have become familiar and comfortable with blogging and web 2.0. This is showing in the classes I teach, as I introduce new technology to my students and as my understanding of writing and composition has developed from a linear writer-to-reader approach to a much more circular writer-reader discussion.

Blog Geographies

2008-04-30T12:58:00.008-05:00

I have enjoyed this blog experience. I do not like, Sam I am, the confining linear structure that archives all my posts the second five more appear, but I appreciate the radial/rhizomic linkage.

Blogs have a ton of potential for expanding classroom discussion. We didn't utilize the blog to its fullest possible imaginable (!) potential, but I think all we did added exponentially to the value of this class for me. I've always enjoyed classes where we can have this freer space to write-think. I don't know if the average student below junior level could make good use of this, but for the rest of us, yes.

I'm thinking about architecture and geographies and spaces ever since RSA plus hearing Kathleen Turner's Arnold Fox-winning paper this semester on "fourthspace" (a concept by NIU's own James Giles). The blockiness, the linearity, of this blog is so limiting and unorganic. I'd prefer a setup like the Huffington Post's homepage or something where blog posts had larger or greater sizes according to how much they were read/used. Something more open, more expandable, less cephalopodan (sorry: I now have all these fun metaphors I now use every chance I get).

Spatial relations. Thinking about space in modern psychological torture (Guantanamo, etc.). Thinking about that Austrian who imprisoned his daughter in his cellar for 24 years. Industrial cement. Bare-bones squares. Square trapdoors. Dark boxes. Pressure devices. Desensitizing acoustics.

What does space look like on this blog? Featureless squares. Windows and doors. Anonymous fonts. What does our space say about us? What content matches all this blankness?

The "blogosphere" - spherical, radial, more organic - is that where the radical comes in? In our connections despite the liminality, the limitations, of our form? Why do I hear this fear, this hesitation, to break out of this safebox, this box, this safe, this square, this imprisoning form, -- and comment on someone else's blog? Come on, take a baby step, I challenge you, everyone in the class (who hasn't already), comment on one other blog and post a link to your comments! Cherry-dipped foam-on-top double-dare ya!

Here is one of mine on Sivacracy.net. (Sivacracy rocks! We should all be posting a million posts there.)

---
“The Wild Iris” by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

Editorial in Northern Star: Online file sharing is not a crime

2008-04-30T10:05:00.004-05:00

I guess we somehow missed this editorial written by John Benson last week. He's responding to ITS's decision to disable Internet access for student file sharers if they see suspicious activity.

Some notables from John's editorial:

"In an environment where students share computers and set up ad hoc wireless networks for educational (and, let’s face it, gaming and entertainment) purposes, it’s not always easy to prove, exactly, who did what....

There are perfectly legitimate reasons one might transfer a lot of data for educational purposes, and I encourage students to investigate for themselves the Internet Archive and Creative Commons, where a plethora of information and digital media is freely available and freely distributed....

Suspending students from the network without concrete evidence that they’ve broken the law seems pretty bold to me. If I still lived in the residence halls, I’d be terrified. The absence of due process is scary indeed."

I couldn't have said it better. There have been no comments on the article on the Northern Star website. Leaving your thoughts there might help to spur discussion.

class blog

2008-04-29T08:20:00.003-05:00

Being a new blogger, the role of the blog in this course has probably been different for me than for most of my classmates. The weekly posting requirement not only helped familiarize me with this blog but others as well. As for its specific role in this course, I used the reading responses to get a better understanding of the readings. And I used the various links (like the EFF link) to come up with an idea for my paper and to find information for my class presentation.

Coldplay follows in Radiohead's Footsteps

2008-04-28T15:15:00.002-05:00

Coldplay will make available - free - for one week only their new track "Violet" starting tomorrow. The album is entitled "Viva." They also have two dates for free concerts. Why only one week? I thought the idea behind making free music was for fans who couldn't afford to attend concerts or download music. Back in the day, that was the meaning of free music. Accessing free music today means that fans are pirates and the band provides a small slice as a marketing tool.

Scalia on 60 Minutes

2008-04-28T09:29:00.003-05:00

If you didn't get a chance to see this last night, here's the link to read the interview with Scalia. I'm posting this because I know how fond of Justice Scalia many of you are.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290.shtml

One great quote: "Anyway, that's my view," Scalia says. "And it happens to be correct."

Reading Response: Authorship in the Academy

2008-04-28T01:31:00.002-05:00

In “The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities,” Unsworth concludes that a large interested readership (i.e., audience) is necessary for the continuation of scholarship in the humanities (5) and argues that the readership already exists but yearns for the scholarship to be readily available electronically. Although, the idea of online articles as legitimate publication has been a topic of interest among academics for a least a few years now (Into the Blogosphere, Unsworth), university faculty administrators promote the traditional method of printed publications, particularly authoring books, and perpetuate the sense of prestigious accomplishment by directly tying award-winning recognition and professional development to it (2). Somehow Unsworth “flew under the radar” of the typical tenure-track process and climbed up the “institutional” ladder on the merits of his articles—many that are collaborative works and accessible in digital form. He advocates for a new type of scholarly publication, the “Thematic Research Collection” online, and suggests that the number of online users who access the electronic texts would far outweigh the number of customers who purchase printed manuscripts by traditional means, for example, physically going to a bookstore (4). He believes that the “Collection” will be more advantageous to academics and universities alike.

In “Who Owns My Work?” Herrington examines the contributions academics in technical communication make to their universities and the rare cases of litigation between them or between academics and professional organizations. She charges academics to be familiar with university policies and guidelines and even copyright and patent laws to protect their intellectual property and to intelligently advise their students—future academics or professionals (126). Herrington explains that the “work-for-hire” agreements signed by numerous academics are not legally binding; therefore, when a case goes to court, judges look to the agency-partnership laws to determine the best course of action (136). Additionally judges must determine whether or not the “properties” are created under reasonable work responsibilities. She goes on to summarize cases such as Williams v. Weisser (Williams, the professor, won) and Hays v. Sony Corp. of America (Sony Corp. won) and illustrates the arbitrariness of court rulings. To avoid conflict specifically between academics and universities, Herrington encourages the universities to remove the heavy hand from intellectual property and instead cultivate the interests and activities of their academics because their continuing expertise in the field will only enrich their campuses and improve their reputations.

Both Unsworth and Herrington’s articles describe the institutional attitudes of value placed on scholarly work by university faculty administrators as well as judges in the court of law. In Unsworth, electronic publication is not seen as valuable as printed publications. In Herrington, academics and universities fight for the rights of what they perceive as valuable information to them. Though Ede & Lunsford’s “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship” is not mentioned above, the “value” theme is also present in their article. They discover that a high or low value is placed on scholarship depending on single (high) or collaborative (low) authorship. The conclusion in each of these readings seems to imply that an attitudinal change toward modern ways of publishing, writing, and owning scholarly work will depend on progressive, forward-thinking academics and their students. Those who want to see changes take place will most likely need to be the agents of change in their institutions.

“Into the Blogosphere Review Process: A Statement from the Editors” Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs." Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. June 2004. 27 April 2008

Is it all about the money?

2008-04-27T18:26:00.002-05:00

Call me naive, but I found it strange that universities would seek patents or copyrights to the work of some faculty, mainly those working in the sciences. What benefit would a university have by claiming such a thing? Reputation? If so, maybe it's a ploy to keep the research at the university, instead of having it follow the individual researchers. However, that doesn't really make sense, because most research is person-dependent, I think, in the sciences; major breakthroughs or epiphanies usually escape documentation, and when they are documented, it's usually the person rather than the institution getting the credit.

If the university held the patents, it could potentially cash out if they sold the patent to a private company, but how often does that happen? From the research I've done on open source software, in the case of the UNIX operating system that was developed jointly with AT&T and UC Berkeley, it was UC Berkeley who fought to maintain rights over their work, and when they won suite against AT&T, UC Berkeley promptly gave the OS to the world as Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX, which exists to this day in several open source formats (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.) Another example is the Apache server software, the most popular in the world, which was developed at UIUC National Center for Supercomputing Applications; when developers of the project moved elsewhere, rather than let the project die it was completely open sourced and became free to everybody. IBM even later gave support because they figured rightly that making their hardware compatible with the free software everybody had would be an incentive to buy from IBM, and they were right. Here are two cases where patent or proprietary interests from universities worked to everyone's advantage, because such interests where essentially ephemeral from the start. So I guess I've come full circle; maybe it's not so bad that universities seek patents over some of the work of their faculty.

What is curious is that work in the humanities is outside this control; is it because it is unprofitable? As Unsworth points out, that is largely the case; academic monographs are lucky to sell a few hundred copies, if that much. Is there no audience? I think using the example of Postmodern Culture is a little misleading; at least the title sounds interesting to someone who is moderately curious about cultural trends; would Victorian Poetry have the same draw? You decide. Maybe it all comes down to money...

A Moment of Clarity

2008-04-27T17:11:00.003-05:00

I've been wondering all semester why I'm so "schizophrenic" about my ideas of authorship. On the one hand, I'm convinced by the criticism of the romanticized individual author and understand the role we all play in authoring knowledge. I'm a new convert to public domain advocacy, for goodness sake. On the other hand, I still feel the tugs of an individual author inside of me (i.e., writing my own final paper rather than collaborating with a fellow student or feeling the pangs of envy when a dean's name goes on a grant proposal I primarily have written).

In addition to recognizing that the individual notion of author is a cultural phenomenon that is easy to succumb to, this week's readings also made me realize that my own education may have had a hand in the "brainwash." After reading Ede and Lunsford as well as Herrington, I'm realizing that this class is the first class I've ever encountered that embraced the collaborative author. Otherwise, I've been learning within institutions that reward individual authorship and from faculty who often must play the single-author game to maintain their status. It's a trite epiphany, I know, but one that at least helps assuage my guilt when the single-author in me rears its ugly head.

Mein Kampf Critical Edition

2008-04-27T09:17:00.002-05:00

Here is an interesting story on the issues surrounding Mein Kampf publication.

Apparently Mein Kampf is banned from publication in Germany, though, as this article points out, it can easily be found online. I did a quick search of Google and found an online copy very easily (second hit!). Scholars are arguing that before Mein Kampf goes into the public domain in 2015, a critical edition with annotations, pointing out Hitler's inconsistencies and factual errors, should be published. They argue that doing so will inform people and allow them to dispute claims of neo-nazis who will use Mein Kampf to their benefit.

Interesting argument. I agree that a critical edition is definitely needed, and the sooner the better, since as the article points out, we don't have 7 years until publication (in Germany), but rather negative time as the text is available online for free. Keeping Mein Kampf carefully tucked away under the disguise of copyright only hurts those seeking to study the text and analyze its rhetoric.

turnitin.com does not violate copyright

2008-04-22T22:09:00.003-05:00

I thought this was already posted, but maybe not--I might be reading too many things online!

Bottom line:

Judge declares turnitin.com does not violate copyright (The decision was last month, but eschoolnews just recently published this article).

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/news-by-subject/litigation/?i=53564;_hbguid=606186df-e5c3-438c-906b-a191add1bfe6&d=top-news

YouTube "Muting" Instead of Suspending

2008-04-22T09:49:00.003-05:00

Just got this through my RSS feed on YouTube's blog that YouTube is revising its system of "enforcing" copyright infringement and managing misbehavior. YouTube is softening its response to angry users who get their accounts suspended - i think it's all about the benjamins $.

Writers push for laws to maintain Internet freedom

2008-04-22T09:41:00.002-05:00

Ripped from the headlines:

Tue Apr 22, 6:52 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Writers are pushing for legislation to guarantee the Internet's status as an open forum for communication. Partic Verrone, the president of the Writers Guild of America, West, is scheduled to appear today before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee at a hearing entitled "The Future of the Internet." - Associated Press

Net neutrality is being defended again.

"Science 2.0"

2008-04-22T08:30:00.003-05:00

Collaborative science. It's come up a few times in class (by Walter, IIRC).

Anyway, Scientific American has an article called "Science 2.0--Is Open Access Science the Future" (Printer friendly format, yay!) about collaboration on scientific discoveries using the Web 2.0 model of collaboration (e.g., Wikis).

How would this kind of thing work in the humanities? I wonder how shifts in ideology would affect such an entity in the humanities.

Via Slashdot. I mentioned the Sokal Hoax in the discussion...we'll see how that goes over.

Reading Response

2008-04-21T14:30:00.001-05:00

Personal Response: When people ask me, “What are you studying in school?” I respond that I am majoring in English. Then they ask, “Oh, are you going to teach?” Then, I respond no. Then, they ask, “Oh, so what are you going to do?” I respond that I am in the Rhetoric and Professional Writing program at NIU and I am going to write. Then they ask, “Oh, are you going to write poetry or books?” I respond no. Then, they ask, “Oh, so what are you going to do exactly?” I respond that I am going to do technical writing. Then, they ask, “Oh, so you’re going to write how-to manuals?”

Reading Response: Having a technical writing background, I have felt like the proverbial underdog. I truly appreciate the articles Dr. Reyman asked us to read for tonight’s class. In particular, I appreciate the Slack et al. reworking of the role of the technical communicator beyond “a purveyor of meanings…” and “a mediator of meanings…” I appreciate their push to view the role of the technical communicator as an “author who acts as articulator.”

I agree with the authors that outdated notions and analogies of technical writers as mere transmitters of packages of information and encoders telegraphing to decoders have defined the traditional technical communicator. I agree that these simplistic views limit the role and scope of the work done by the technical communicator. What I hoped for next in the article was a clear delineation of the new and improved technical communicator as authorial articulator. In a rare moment of agreement with Walter Jacobson, I, too, stumbled on the “identity train.” The analogy served to be more of a distraction than an enhancement to my understanding of the authors’ claim. I do agree that technical communicators influence the information they re-write through a Bakhtinian “articulation of voices.” I agree that technical communicators act as the author of technical text and do have an authorial power. I do not believe that they will ever attain the “status” of the traditional author. Shakespeare we ain’t.

In the last portion of the article, the authors push theoretical knowledge as being critical to the technical communication field. I think that the notion of the technical writer has changed since this article was conceived. Searching through job ads on Careerbuilder.com or Monster.com, one can see job postings for the outdated technical writer archetype as a 'robotic' cut-and-paste typist diminishing. The demand for a sophisticated communicator who can “skillfully use effective grammar, edit, media management, and so on” must also participate in “the early stages of project design”, manage the project, and act as a critical thinker is on the rise. The call for a master’s degree in many, many job postings, for me, implies that employers are searching for “technical communicators as authorial articulators.” I think that this article may have been relevant to the writing community at some point. However, it seems a little redundant now. I think the writing community has gravitated to the idea that a technical communicator does act as an author – at least as a collaborative author. I think digital media has significantly affected the job function of a technical writer. Just speculation, perhaps technology has enabled the technical author to move beyond formatting and re-typing and granted more “authorial power” and collaboration.

Anyhow, the people who ask me what I’m going to do for a living can and will continue to think of me as a “messenger.”

2008-04-21T14:28:00.002-05:00

Read this article in today's Northern Star if you are still curious about how our university responds to filesharing. I find this section rather interesting:

The MPAA is trying to get legislation passed that would pressure universities to police their own networks – something that would be unmanageable, he said.

“The MPAA has been consistently trying to get [universities’] funding changed,” he said. “For some reason, they’ve decided we are weak.”

In addition to the MPAA and the RIAA targeting individuals, ITS, on rare occasions, will disable a student’s Internet access if they see suspicious activity, Czerniak said.

“If we detect an inordinate amount of activity on a particular IP, we may go shut it down,” Czerniak said. “We then contact the student and see what’s going on. It may or may not have to do with copyright issues.”

I'm writing a letter.
/jb

Reading Response

2008-04-21T12:09:00.002-05:00

As I was reading this week’s articles, specifically Herrington’s “Work for Hire for Nonacademic Creators,” I continually found myself trying to relate the discussions of technical communication to my limited related experience. Despite knowing that today’s authors were not writing about copy editors and newspaper columnists (my former jobs), I wanted to find ways to equate my work to their writings. Even though I don’t believe I could accurately call myself a technical communicator at any point in my history, the arguments that were made in this week’s reading, mainly that students need to be informed of their role in and knowledgeable of the applicable laws surrounding the technical communications profession, would have benefited me greatly in my former occupations.

Herrington illustrates the nonacademic applications of work-for-hire doctrine, individually showcasing each determining factor that courts use for deciding legal authorship and then relating each to the teaching of technical communication by suggesting why students should be aware of specifics of legal authorship. As I was reading her article, I was reminded of some writing I did will while employed as a copy editor for a veterinary organization.

Although my main job was to copy edit manuscripts to be published in a research journal, occasionally I was asked to write newspaper-type stories for the yearly conference newspaper. For last year’s conference, I wrote a series of ten-question trivia quizzes about Washington, D.C. Upon publication, I was quite upset to see that I was not given credit for writing the quizzes and that the quizzes had been heavily edited, something that as creative writing student, I was not used to. In school, I frequently participated in writing workshops and received much feedback and many suggestions from fellow students, but I was never told to change anything in my writing. To have my writing, even though it was a series of quizzes, edited without my knowledge and published before I was able to even see the edits, felt like a slap in the face.

As I was reading this past week and formulating ideas about technical communicators, I started to see how an understanding of this “different” authorship, as N. Nyl points out in a comment to June Cleaver’s plagiarism and PowerPoint post, would have prevented these hostile feelings I held towards my employer and would have prepared me for the workplace that I entered. What I wrote wasn’t mine, from a legal standpoint; I wrote as a representative of the organization I worked for, and as such, my writing could be edited by another representative without my knowledge, or as far as the organization was concerned, without me caring.

Many English and other majors will find themselves in jobs that they did not foresee while in school. Many of these jobs will require these students to write (or create) collaborative or technical projects for which they may or may not receive authorial credit (they will hopefully receive credit indirectly in terms of salary, bonuses, and promotions). Many, if not most, of these students, just as myself, will not have taken any technical communications courses before entering the workplace. Herrington and Reyman both call for an increased awareness by students of how their work will be used in an employment setting. But, not having foreseen their future occupations, where will these students come upon this insight into the ways of the technical communications profession? I would argue that students need to be exposed to these ideas of varying types of authorship early and repeatedly in college courses. Writing or composition classes can discuss these ideas as they apply to genre, and other classes in the students’ majors can illustrate more specific instances of how authorship applies to their discipline. By showing all students that our Western model of single authorship is not the only practicing model, we will prepare them for the corporate and collaborative author-role that they will likely encounter in their future employment.

YouTube Campaigning

2008-04-21T09:53:00.002-05:00

A look at presidential candidates trying to keep it real with the peeps online: "The Web has replaced TV, and e-mail has replaced direct mail, as the current modes of wholesale campaigning."

Is it realer online? Is there a real-feeling or authenticity or authority to the YouTube/Facebook types?

plagiarism

2008-04-20T12:26:00.001-05:00

I have been thinking about plagiarism and PowerPoint presentations (interesting the way spell-check wanted to capitalize that, but can’t find ostrobogulous in its dictionary). Point taken already—give credit where credit is due. So why can we all use PowerPoint to express ourselves and seemingly hold a copyright on the show itself? Isn’t the format copyrighted to the extent that we can’t legally do that? No, you say, because books have pretty much the same format and so do academic papers for that matter. Then why capitalize Power Point? And why do we have to pay to use it? This is where all the talk about technical communication starts getting funky for me; I’m just not sure where the lines are drawn. You can borrow some things, but not others. In Reyman’s “Rethinking Plagiarism for Technical Communication,” the author attempts to shed some light on this subject as well as propose that new lines be drawn, specifically for technical communication. In order for me to wrap my feeble brain around some of the issues, I’ve had to liken them to an area I have (albeit not much) experience in, which is writing lesson plans.
Attend any English conference and you will walk away with an armload of lesson plans, usually none of which have a “copyright” clearly emblazoned on them. In fact, teachers are encouraged to plagiarize—that is, take the plan, use it, and make any changes you like whereby it becomes yours. Personally, I have written “adapted from” at the bottom if I used someone else’s plan and changed it, but that’s certainly not a requirement (and only when I was giving the changed version to someone else). There are websites, such as the National Counsel of Teachers of English (NCTE), which have tons of viewable lessons plans complete with a “printer-friendly version” icon. No one seems worried about getting paid for the print and every lesson I’ve received from an author comes with the implicit agreement to email the author if you can improve the plan in any way. Long story short, it’s a collaboration. I think technical communication is pretty much the same because the formats are similar and people consistently work together toward the improvement of the final product. Read: “progress.” Furthermore, regarding technical communication, it seems silly to consider something as “plagiarized” just because the format is standardized. Letters, numerals, colors, tastes, are all standardized. We have to all speak the same language if we are to understand and learn from one another and/or work together.
So here I am, fighting for the right to say that these things aren’t plagiarized, but there’s a sneaking suspicion about the motivation. I realize that while I’m busy yelling to consider things “standardized” instead of “plagiarized,” the people who are making the standardization so free are actually the people who would most like to see Americans as cattle to be herded. Ah ha, that’s the long-term goal nowadays, isn’t it? For everyone to speak/think/behave alike and be good workers for big business? Why else would PowerPoint presentations be so user-friendly? So they’ve got me fighting for what they want. Amazing. Great. Now I’m even more confused.

Rowling and Copyright

2008-04-16T18:52:00.002-05:00

Interesting bit about Rowling getting upset about a Harry Potter encyclopedia. Couple of questions: are reference works on books not in the public domain usually allowed? Why is this becoming an issue now when the work is going to print and not over the last few years when the site has been online? Could Rowling be jealous that someone else got to the project before she did (Rowling has admitted before that she plans to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia)?

On a personal note: as I've been working on a large Harry Potter project, I have frequently used the Harry Potter Lexicon as a reference.

still hilarious after all these years

2008-04-14T21:06:00.001-05:00

9:41 of pure gold.

huh.

2008-04-14T16:30:00.003-05:00

I just received Michael Chabon's new book in the mail five minutes ago. I thought the epigraph was interesting:

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.

-- Herman Melville, on the writing of fan fiction

Man "writes" 200,000 books

2008-04-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

Surely even Asimov wasn't that prolific. But this guy has some help (via Boing Boing post by Cory Doctorow).

Related to that, one of my "followers" on Twitter posted this little blurb about automating authorship.

There is no doubt, though, the book — or at least the physical artifact we know as “book” — is in something of a crisis. Not too long ago, I heard Ken Wark, a Professor of Culture and Media at The New School’s Eugene Lang College, remark that the professor is now really a “DJ,” as books are no longer assigned to students; rather, collections of essays are gathered up in readers, or, increasingly, just pointed to on the web. What was “the book” is now a mashup. It’s significant that the academy no longer views the book as the center of learning.

Are our syllabuses degenerating into patch-writing? So, all you teachers are to blame!

What would happen if your students wrote a program to write their papers?

I don't even want to bring up copyright.

An Example of What I'm Talking About

2008-04-14T12:22:00.003-05:00

Bruce Catton has long been recognized as one of our greatest Civil War historians and one of the most elegant and eloquent writers to address that monumental subject -- the Homer of our national Iliad, if you will. Here's a passage about the battle of Gettysburg from This Hallowed Ground:

"It was the queer fate of the men who fought over the great question of Union that this most desperate and spectacular of all their battles should not be entirely comprehensible until after all of the dead had been buried, the wounded tended, the field itself made into a park, and the armies gone far below the horizon, fighting other battles in other places. Then the President would come and speak a few sentences, and the deep meaning of the fight would at last begin to clear. Then the perplexing mists and shadows would fade and Gettysburg would reveal itself as a great height from which men could glimpse a vista extending far into the undiscovered future."

All he's really saying here is that Gettysburg would come to symbolize the entire war for many, that it changed everything, that it was, to put it in the terms we all got from our sixth-grade history teachers, the turning-point of the war. Of course he's also saying much more than that -- that the battle would come to be seen as the defining event of the war, just as the war itself was the defining event of nineteenth-century American history. In both cases, nothing could ever be the same again.

Now, I have actually assigned chapters from Catton's book in first-year composition classes (including the chapter on Gettysburg), and what I'm most struck by is the extent to which virtually ALL of my students recognize this as great writing, and, in fact, a clear example of great autonomous authorship. They get that WHAT he's saying isn't particularly new (nor was in 1955 when the book was first published), but that HOW he says it is uniquely his. The individual expression of common ideas here is what matters to them. They also get that "patchwriting" something out of this passage would not somehow make it less Catton's or more theirs.

Seems to me they have a clearer understanding of authorship than Howard and her cohorts are willing to admit.

Authorship: Not so hard to grasp, really

2008-04-14T12:15:00.003-05:00

A few thoughts on the subject of authorship, provoked mostly by our readings:

An awareness of intertextuality is not the same thing as authorship. Film is an inherently intertextual medium, and individual films are constructed through the collaboration of writers, actors, photographers, designers, editors, composers, and technicians. We recognize the screenwriter as the author of the screenplay, the composer as the author of the score, the actor as the author of the performance, and the director as the author of the film.

Frankly, I (and, I would submit, most of us) don't find the concept of authorship nearly as problematic as some of our theorists would like. I fail to see how the idea that our conception of authorship is comparatively recent changes anything -- it is still OUR conception. Besides which, I would also like to suggest for the record that, while the concepts of originality, individualism, and spontaneity ARE relatively recent additions to our notions of authorship, the concept of individual or autonomous authorship has been with us for just about as long as human expression itself. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides are all unproblematically recognized by Aristotle as the autonomous authors of their respective works -- interesting considering that Homer's epics were most probably composed orally as part of a long oral tradition and Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were all playwrights who wrote for performance, to say nothing of the fact that every single one of them was dealing with well-known stories that were ancient even to them (all four of them, for example, dealt with the events and characters of the Trojan War).

And it's this very fact that gets at the heart of how unproblematic authorship really is: nobody in fifth-century Athens cared about the STORY, which was recognized as public property; what mattered to them was the individual expression or treatment of the story. Believe me, Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Sophocles' Electra, and Euripides' Electra are very different plays, though they deal with exactly the same characters and exactly the same events. What makes them different is the autonomous author who gave individual expression to the story.

My point? No one is suggesting that writing or authorship happens in a vacuum -- obviously writers are all influenced by other writers and creators (which is not the same thing as collaboration). But if we do not teach our students that there is a difference between giving original expression to commonly held facts and ideas (whatever the source of those ideas might be) and claiming someone else's expression of those ideas as your own, we are not only setting them up to fail, we are also quite simply refusing to do the jobs those very students trust us to do.

Howard and Turnitin

2008-04-12T21:42:00.002-05:00

For anyone interested (and because we are required to post to other sites), Dr. Howard has a rather lengthy post on Turnitin. It might be a good time to read her recent thoughts on plagiarism and invite her to join our discussion here.

A thought.

Copyright Info for Middle Schoolers

2008-04-12T21:08:00.003-05:00

This is TMI (too much information) for middle schoolers, don't you think?

I guess by the time these middle schoolers reach college, they would not be plagiarists or patchwriters for that matter.

http://www.waunakee.k12.wi.us/midlschl/msb/copyright.htm

Parody vs. Plagiarism

2008-04-12T20:36:00.003-05:00

I know that parodic material is not in danger of copyright infringement, but today, for some reason, I'm bothered by this. Maybe bothered is too strong. Puzzled may be the right word. Here's how I see it.

Those who use copyrighted material to poke fun at others and draw attention to negative publicity do not need permission to use the material and are not in danger of the "copyright police." In contrast, those who use copyrighted material to edify others and create derivative works that are shared freely with society may find themselves in legal battles surrounding copyright laws if they did not get permission or pay for the right to use the material.

Have I missed something? If so, please help me understand.

If what I said above is essentially right, then isn't something terribly wrong?

Fanning "Napster" VW Commercial

2008-04-12T20:10:00.005-05:00

I just saw this commercial on television. Isn't it interesting that Fanning has gone from the promoter of p2p filesharing to the corporate spokesperson for a car company, all while promoting legal downloading methods. I mean...Legal is so much cooler.... Who would have thought that the creator of Napster would one day end up a spokesperson for the same thing as Heidi Klum. The mind boggles.

Net Neutrality

2008-04-12T19:46:00.003-05:00

For those of you who are interested on how others are trying to stimulate public will around Internet-related issues...

"Support Net Neutrality: Say 'No' to Corporate Control "

When I saw this bumper sticker, I was intrigued to see what issue fueled (excuse the pun) the vehicular picket sign. My Google search led me to "Save the Internet," a site built by a coalition focusing on how corporations use the Internet to control access to information. The coalition warns:

...Corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we've come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don't like:
In October 2007, the Associated Press busted Comcast for blocking its users' access to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Gnutella. This fraudulent practice is a glaring violation of Net Neutrality.
In September 2007, Verizon was caught banning pro-choice text messages. After a New York Times expose, the phone company reversed its policy, claiming it was a glitch.

I find it interesting that the site is using the anti-corporate rhetoric we've come to know and love, but also that they are trying to create a framework using one of Boyle's requirements: finding a common interest which cuts across traditional oppositions. On the homepage, they invite readers to "learn more about an issue that unites the Christian Coalition, Teamsters, PETA, video gamers, the ACLU, Gun Owners of America and many more."

DeVoss and Porter

2008-04-12T17:28:00.001-05:00

DeVoss and Porter work towards an understanding of the cultural impact of Napster and the ripple effect that it has had on the academic community, particularly the teaching of writing and rhetoric. With the idea that the emergence of Napster caused a cultural shift in the way that people, especially students, deal with and understand printed material, DeVoss and Porter connect the copyright crisis to writing instruction. With this shift in mind, the authors reiterate the initial understanding of copyright law. As it was originally conceived, copyright law was meant to balance the interests of authors, publishers, and their readers. DeVoss and Porter argue that we, as a society, have lost sight of the original aims of the law and that as a result we are sacrificing information and media that should be available to the public. Furthermore, since the attack is already well underway on those who infringe on entertainment copyrights, the academic world, that necessitates a free exchange of information, is the next field at risk.

By hindering the free transference of information between academics, DeVoss and Porter fear that the creativity of the academic community will be stifled by less exposure to new ideas and thoughts. The reality that these authors see is the opposite of the more utopian ideas of Lessig. For Lessig, in an ideal situation, all culture would freely available to whomever was interested. This idea encourages an understanding of piracy as productive and innovative, yielding more positive things for society than negatively taking away from them.

Ultimately, DeVoss and Porter are calling for an altered understanding of the relationship from writing an object to publishing. In the post Napster era, the publication process takes on new levels of meaning and begins to resemble something more free form and constantly evolving. This contradicts current academic models of publication, but speaks to technological advancements that allow for more up to date information. As a result of this changing model, DeVoss and Porter call for a change in the understanding and teaching of plagiarism in the writing classroom. Rather than merely discouraging the act, the authors encourage teachers to instruct their students to think of their own writing as something that is inherently formed by their experiences and exposure to other writing, music, video etc... Rather than understanding that borrowing from any other source and working it into their own object is plagiarism, students should be encouraged to understand their place in the academic world, and appreciate that all writing is influenced by something else, including famous pieces of written works or culture.

DeVoss and Porter – Meet the New Boss (same as the old boss?)

2008-04-12T11:31:00.002-05:00

Of course, my title comes from a song lyric; have I used it fairly? Am I required to provide a citation, footnote, or other acknowledgment? To whom, Pete Townsend, Roger Daltry, the Who?

Since most of the first half to two-thirds of the essay reads as a summary of Logie and Lessig (with a few points added in), I will address only two claims in the concluding sections. Generally, DeVoss and Porter (as does Howard to a degree) enlarge upon the classical models of learning and classical attitudes toward plagiarism to support the insistence that the concept of single authorship is a more contemporary creation (see footnote 30, 197). Well, so is mass literacy and general education. In Classical Greece and Rome, rhetoric and oratory were the exclusive properties of males. Moreover, the number of those males was restricted to the well-born. Would DeVoss and Porter argue that we adopt the exclusivity inherent in such elitism with their “liberal” attitudes toward authorship? Would they recommend that we adopt the ancient attitudes toward education generally, an attitude that excluded women for the most part? Should we adopt the special privileges adult males enjoyed in their relationships with boys? Should we return to the ancient attitudes toward women and slaves?

Cherry-picking from a culture because it fits a particular view one has is much like quoting out-of-context (of course for those advocating patchwriting that probably wouldn’t be a problem). It would in fact be similar to citing Marx as an expert on human nature because he understood economics – at least in part he did. He seemed to be wildly off the mark in his predictions for capitalism and the glorious workers’ revolution. Perhaps the Greek and Roman models worked well for them because they met the needs of fewer than twenty-thousand, when in all likelihood one couldn’t get away with plagiarism anyway because most of the audience knew the sources. One could argue in fact, that this “truth” might have applied to most of Europe until book publishing became a profitable market.

My other issue with DeVoss and Porter applies not only to them specifically but to postmodern theory generally. DeVoss and Porter exclaim: “As we see it, the purpose of writing is not to reward the author, or for the author to gain prestige, credit, wealth, and fame” (200, their italics). Hmmm. There’s carrion we should nose here somewhere. When asked by Socrates’ biographer why the humble collaborators did not themselves publish in the online communities they advocate, DeVoss and Porter demurred: “We don’t always necessarily want money from our work. . . . Most of us do want: (1) wide distribution and recognition of our work, and (2) credit for our work (whether in the form of dollars, prestige, appreciation, reciprocity)” (196, footnote 28, my italics). How does one square these views? The above constitutes the problem for postmodern theory: the expressed purposes and pronouncements are at odds with the practices of the theorists. What is the Greek word for hypocrite?

2008-04-11T19:15:00.004-05:00

In the time since Monday's class I've been occupied with other things, but every time I have gone into my classroom I feel a overwhelming urge to talk to them about plagiarism. Not because I'm especially concerned that the group of students in front of me at the time is going to run out and plagiarize their final paper for my course, or because I'm concerned that some have already slipped by me, but because I am interested in their thoughts on our Monday night discussion. I truly believe that the most important thing that we can teach our students is the form and process of writing an academic and intelligent paper. I also believe, as I said in class, that if a student understands the structure of a paper and what separates their writing from that of the ongoing academic discussion, they can work to address those things regardless of vocabulary or experience. Isn't the most important thing about writing following the form of the academic model? And, isn't a key component to that model the uptight and rigid manner in which academic ideas are usually expressed? I find it hard to accept that any other than laziness accounts for plagiarism when I take stock of the wide range of writing styles that we willingly accept as academic and intelligent on a daily basis. This has been more of my own rambling than any attempt to make a solid point, but there it is...

Kindle?

2008-04-11T12:45:00.004-05:00

While shopping online at Amazon.com for a birthday present for my sister, I discovered Kindle. Has anyone seen this? Have we talked about this in class? Have I been living under a cultural rock? I'm sure someone brought this up in class or on the blog and I spaced out. Wow.

Part III, Collaborators: A Funny Thing Happened in the Forum (Part II)

2008-04-10T14:08:00.008-05:00

I will state it categorically at this point: Foucault is an ass who has done irreparable damage to our discipline. The misapplication of his nonsensical “theories” has led to too many attempts such as Howard’s to excuse academic laziness and mediocrity. But don’t let me try to persuade you; here’s a snippet from Richard Dawkins’ ”Postmodernism Disrobed”:

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

I recommend reading the remainder of the essay; it is hilarious, and you will come across some familiar names. Rather than relying solely on scientists, however, try the following from Joe Carroll’s Literary Darwinism:

By eliminating truth, poststructuralism yields epistemological and ontological primacy to rhetoric or "discourse," and it simultaneously delegitimizes all traditional norms. Since poststructuralism treats all norms as arbitrary, it has a convenient application within the field of radical political ideology. (16)

Theorists do not need to be abstruse and evasive, unless what they theorize lacks coherence or even common sense. We do not need to be ashamed for having once believed in an Oedipal complex, but we should be ashamed for believing it today or peddling variations of it (some feminist and Lacanian theories) when a whole body of scientific and social scientific evidence has soundly refuted Freud’s pseudo-psychology. Howard’s problem here is that she has tried to create a problem that only exists if one accepts postmodern premises that ignore scientific evidence to the contrary. Humans are social creatures; we are moral. We tend to expose cheaters because we have been designed (randomly by natural selection) to expose cheaters. Plagiarism is indeed a cultural phenomenon, but it is also a moral one. We were not designed specifically to address plagiarism; we were, however, designed to address instances of moral transgression. Plagiarism maps onto that moral algorithm quite nicely.

Part III, Collaborators: A Funny Thing Happened in the Forum (Part I)

2008-04-10T13:45:00.006-05:00

Rebecca Moore Howard completes her tour de force with a patch-written consortium of suspect theories stated as fact, and strident conflations of copyright and plagiarism – one a criminal violation of a statute, the other a breach of ethical conduct outlined in academic handbooks. Her tortured (and torturing) logic, or lack thereof, often borders on the hilarious. In one instance, she avers: “Plagiarism-checking software excludes both authorial intention and reader interpretation in the construction of authorship. By automating textual purity, plagiarism-checking software naturalizes the increasingly embattled modern economy of authorship, even as the human factors that it elides would reveal that economy as a cultural arbitrary” (130). I would have paraphrased this passage, but in order to do so, I would need to know just what the hell she means. First, software designed to detect plagiarism can only do what it has been designed to do – detect instances of plagiarism. Suggesting that software is a soulless machine that cannot take into account current theories (and theories, not empirical truths – those could be programmed into the software) of authorship would be like complaining that the ATM would not give me a thousand dollars when it is only designed to dispense three hundred. Her second claim builds upon the false premise of the first to conclude that software designed to detect plagiarism has become an arbitrary guardian of “textual purity” at the expense of all these more modern theories of authorship (emphasis on theories, mind). At least, that is what I think it means. The phrasing is so convoluted that I have my doubts that one can reasonably discover any meaning. Nevertheless, this overture leads to an even greater leap of logic on the next page.

In a nod to the turbulent period at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries – or the birth of modernism – Howard marshals all her metaphors and allusions to attempt to spin her “mess” (flap): mechanized plagiarism in the twenty-first century and the postmodern attempt to free authorship from cultural arbitrariness (all the while making it even more arbitrary as they go along) becomes a power struggle between the old guard (regime) of “originary” and “proprietary” authorship and the liberators of academic cheats (my interpretation) (131). Foucault’s panopticon might indeed be an accurate description of the way prison systems use surveillance to minimize the number of guards necessary to guard prisoners, or the way totalitarian states turn individuals into a fearful watching herd, but it hardly equates to plagiarism-detecting software surveilling student papers; software, in fact, that in many cases only works if students are willing to submit their papers. Now if Howard wanted to analogize the NSA’s current data-mining of all our internet activities (or Orwell’s telescreen and thought police monitoring the citizens of Oceania), then she might have a case. But such silliness only undermines her claim.

Because I would have exceeded five hundred words, and your patience, I have added a second post, which represents a broader response.

The Solitary Author

2008-04-09T22:00:00.004-05:00

When I read a book I want to dive down into a world, or a consciousness, and listen to just one voice tell a story. I want to absorb just one person’s insights. I want to stay, listening to that story, and that voice, without interruption, for more than two minutes at a time. The thought of that one voice interrupted by a thousand others disturbs me to no end. -- Posting Titled "Lost in the Tower of Babel" from Dogpoet's blog.

Dogpoet writes the above paragraph in response to an article that claims that Web 2.0 will change authorship as we know it. New technologies allow readers to respond to author's works-in-progress. Dogpoet (hereafter, DP) sees this as a major loss. What I find especially interesting though, and I have posted this on DP's blog, is this idea of the solitary author, writing alone and uninfluenced by others.

This notion, though romantic wasn't ever really a reality. We can see this in many circumstances. First, most books aren't actually written by just one person. Editors step in at many stages in today's publication process. Similarly, writers' workshops offer writers instant feedback from up to twenty readers. And even asking a friend for her thoughts risks altering that "one voice" of the author.

On a deeper level though, we can see that the author has never really been alone. This blog post on plagiarism clearly points out the intertextual influences, known or unknown, that each writer is subject to. Bakhtin also calls attention to this interplay of ideas of words when he writes, "our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others' words" ("The Problem of Speech Genres" 89). Similarly, in "The Death of the Author," Barthes argues, "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author."

And, the more I read Rebecca Moore Howard's Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators, the more I'm coming to understand that this (incorrect) notion of the original author, uninfluenced by those around him, is unique to our time and culture.

What does all this mean? As writers (and scholars) it means that we need to acknowledge the influence of others' words on our thoughts, actions, and words. We need to be aware that our culture, even our culture before the web, holds our hand as we write, constantly directly and reshaping that work-in-progress. If we accept this, we can embrace the true potential of the cacophony of voices in our lives and blend them to a unified, unique whole.

Google

2008-04-09T21:29:00.002-05:00

While researching, I found this Google search page. Google Scholar. Amusing in light of our reading...

Howard Blog Redux

2008-04-09T19:24:00.005-05:00

annaluna2369 already mentioned the Turnitin suit on Howard's blog. I think if you look at a followup post on her expert witness report for that, you'll see some things that are agreeable. And interesting in light of how they relate to her relatively older musings in the book we're reading:

- Genre and situation matter: Turnitin "quantifies and universalizes writers' use of sources, rather than acknowledging that the acceptability of source use is governed by local conditions such as the assignment, the student's grade level, and the syllabus for the course"

- Better ways to avoid plagiarism exist than fascist policing: "There are much better ways of teaching writing pedagogy than using PDSs in general, and Turnitin.com in particular. These better ways include (a) sequenced assignments, so that students are mentored through the process of producing major papers; (b) the use of common sources to begin a writing project, so that the class can work together through the problems of source use, and then each student can branch out into his or her own research; (c) instruction in critical information literacy, so that students locate compelling, pertinent sources rather than basic documents produced immediately in a quick Google search" (and she gives plenty more too)

- "The use of [Turnitin and similar programs] casts instructors and students as adversaries and describes writing and reading as mechanical procedures of extracting and citing information"

I just find her conflation (variously) of what I would separate into plagiarism, patchwriting, and mimesis (not that I would stop there in my methodology) confusing. What is okay? What is not okay? What is natural?

Open Source Licenses

2008-04-08T20:49:00.004-05:00

During discussion about open sourcing, some questions regarding licenses and whether or not they effected the saved/produced work (e.g., does some coder own your text, or do you have to give it away, if it's created in their program). I guess I would call these "Resultant Works," unless someone has a better name for them.

The short answer is I didn't think so, but some people are more into the open source thing than others. I am not a lawyer.
The slightly longer short answer is: "No" for most programs that use the GPL (the most common) license. Here is a direct answer from the Free Software Foundation, regarding their GPL license. Here's a documentation license from the same group, since we're not programmers.
The long answer is: here is a short list of licenses that can be used. Remember, these are primarily related to code.

More stringent examples and practices exist, such as Debian GNU/Linux free software guidelines. This distribution of Linux is what I have used in the past. It still runs my old iBook, when the power supply works right, that is.

Anyway...

Back to Page 11 - My last 2 pennies

2008-04-08T11:22:00.002-05:00

I think the work on page 11 was properly cited. As we discussed in class, the writing may be poor; however, the student cited the source. I agree with those who believe that a conversation could take place with a student to improve the "quality of writing" or to properly paraphrase work. I don't believe that this is intentional plagiarism or that it should be treated as such. Arghhh.

And another thing. While hotly debating plagiarism last night, it seemed that there were many distinct opinions floating around addressing what Howard was believed to be advocating rather than what Howard has observed. While listening to the debate about page 11, I noticed that students who write poorly were slammed. I think that there is this elitist attitude toward students who struggle with writing. I know I've been guilty of it. It isn't just students, classmates, etc. I have found in my professional life that I have acquired a certain snobbery, because I may know how to more clearly articulate (as someone mentioned last night) what I think than someone else.

What I'm trying to say (not very clearly articulated) is that I want to constructively discuss what drives students to patchwrite rather than to toss out negative, shmarmy labels, judgements or assumptions about why students engage in this activity. As Howard states on page 23, "Understanding the excluded plagiarist and his or her moral beliefs takes a prominent place in the scholarship of plagiarism. Like the scientific model of anthropology that is now in eclipse, this approach to plagiarsm sets up a textual "Us" and "Them," in which the civilized, researching "Us" endeavors to understand the native, pagan "Them."" I think our discussion last night was leaning toward the us/them model. Please add your pennies to this posting.

plagiarism, American style...

2008-04-07T14:30:00.004-05:00

I looked at OWL /Purdue for a take on the topic of plagiarism and found this interesting:

"The key to avoiding plagiarism is to make sure you give credit where it is due. This may be credit for something somebody said, wrote, emailed, drew, or implied. Many professional organizations, including the Modern Language Association and the American Psychological Association, have lengthy guidelines for citing sources. However, students are often so busy trying to learn the rules of MLA format and style or APA format and style that they sometimes forget exactly what needs to be credited. Here, then, is a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented:
· Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
· Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
· When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
· When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
· When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media
Bottom line, document any words, ideas, or other productions that originate somewhere outside of you."

Government act on File Sharing

2008-04-07T12:14:00.002-05:00

I just stumbled across this article that focuses specifically on the relationship between colleges and the MPAA. It seems especially pertinent given our discussion in class last week. I'm still wondering why so much of the focus falls on colleges.

Malvolio Reading Response

2008-04-06T21:35:00.002-05:00

My thoughts about Howard’s book are a little helter-skelter at the moment. I’ve been struggling all weekend with how to approach my response, where to focus, what to address. My sense of it is that I’m juggling two primary reactions: on the one hand an awareness that I should be open-minded and willing to entertain radical ideas, however uncomfortable or angry they make me, and on the other hand an instinctive rejection of most of the basic principles on which her theory is based. The problem is that I’ve learned to trust my instincts; I’ve been an artist and an educator long enough to have a sense of when I’m being bamboozled.

And of course I realize that in rejecting pretty much everything Howard has to say I am falling into the cunning little trap she has set for me and other writers and teachers like me. So I may as well get this out of the way now: part of the calculated effect of Howard’s book is to position anyone who disagrees with her as backward, unenlightened, and an enemy to progressive composition theory (she has, elsewhere, called herself a “martyr”—a deeply disturbing characterization—and her opponents “jerks” [see her paper “Public Intellectual, or Public Object? Mass Media Representations of Plagiarism Scholarship” at http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Papers/CCCC2003.caucus.htm]). Walter Jacobson has, not surprisingly, already articulated a response that echoes my own, but let’s see if I can articulate why I think Howard’s attempt to reconsider writing and composition pedagogy within a context informed by the open-source or remix culture of the Internet is both false and dangerous. For while it’s clear that her zeal for radical revision of our understandings of such concepts as mimesis, collaboration, authorship, and plagiarism comes from an honest desire to improve the teaching of composition and promote genuine learning, it’s also clear to me that this right idea has led her very far astray.

Howard seeks to confound utterly our understanding of such common—and commonly understood—concepts as authorship, text, collaboration, and plagiarism. This, she tells us, is born out of a personal teaching experience that led her to question her own definitions of all these concepts, and especially plagiarism. And she found her answers in postmodern literary theory, specifically the works of Foucault and Barthes. The first part of the book is devoted to laying out the various problems in defining plagiarism; here Howard is largely focused on the idea of what she calls patchwriting: “copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one synonym for another” (xvii). The entire book is, in some sense, an explication of her belief that this particular practice is not only common among students but, in fact, the way all writers always compose; thus the very notion of plagiarism requires some radical reconsideration. Her concern with the criminalization of patchwriting particularly is connected to what she describes as a tension between dichotomous pedagogical models she refers to as “gatekeeping” and “facilitating”—the gatekeepers being invested in weeding out those deemed unworthy of admission into the sacred halls of academe, the facilitators being those more interested in helping all students succeed. At the very least Howard is advocating that patchwriting specifically be “decriminalized” so that we begin to recognize the practice as a kind of learning in which students engage and actively collaborate with the texts in question.

It all comes across as very bold and revolutionary, but the problem with this deliberately carnivalesque approach to composition is its very insistence on its own radical nature. Howard is clearly aware that her revisions—indeed, reversals—of previously received concepts of authorship and pedagogical technique are going to be discomfiting on some level to many of us, but she insists that those reversals are legitimate because they reflect the ways writers—both student and professional—actually compose. I would like to suggest instead that the reason they make so many of us so uncomfortable (if not downright angry) is our sense that they seem so radical and opposed to our actual methods of constructing texts because, in fact, they are. She asserts repeatedly that “all writing is collaborative” (41) and that “[patchwriting] is something that all academic writers do” (xviii), but she is unable to marshall any actual evidence to support these assertions. And I’m fairly certain that that’s because there can be no evidence to support such wild claims—short of surveying “all academic writers” or reading “all writing.” She even admits that she has so far failed to convince her own students. And though she places the blame for this failure squarely on the deeply entrenched cultural paradigms against which she so assiduously works, I think it’s far more likely that her students don’t accept it because it just ain’t so.

The major problem that I have with Howard’s book is not her clearly poststructuralist attitude toward authorship or her (to me) deeply troubling notions of plagiarism—she is certainly entitled to her own point of view. No, what most concerns me is that, by insisting that patchwriting is not only our default compositional method but one that should be actively encouraged in students, what she advocates and perpetuates is, more usually, just bad writing (context is of course important; as many here have pointed out, patchwriting can be perfectly appropriate in certain professional circumstances, though I contend that the composition classroom is not necessarily one of them). Even if the average student will instinctively patchwrite when asked to integrate sources into her writing, my sense of it is that it has very little to do with creative engagement with the text and a whole lot to do with simplicity and convenience. The best of my students have no trouble recognizing that patchwriting is at least bad writing, and at most not writing at all. I don’t mean to be cynical, but at the college level, how many of our students who patchwrite do so because it affords them a fast and simple way of getting through what they see as an unpleasant chore? And yes, it is absolutely a failure of pedagogy when our students think of their writing as something unpleasant to be avoided. But I would suggest that instead of enabling bad writing habits we should try to find genuine ways to get them to engage not only with the texts to which they respond (or, if you prefer, with which they collaborate), but also with the texts they produce as independent, autonomous authors. Denying that there is such a thing as authorship strikes me as counterproductive. And insisting that all learning is constructed by the learner only accelerates our already rapid decline into irrelevance.

Internet culture—remix culture, open-source culture, whatever we want to call it—has almost certainly helped foster the perception among some students that patchwriting is an acceptable way of engaging with texts. But it seems specious to me to suggest that because a method is valid in one context it is also valid in others. The concept of collaboration is certainly useful, but Howard’s appropriation of it (as well as her use of the related concept of mimesis) is highly problematic. For any theater artist—to use my own discipline as an example—collaboration implies reciprocity. Directors, actors, designers, playwrights, even audiences, all collaborate in two ways: by working with texts and by working with each other to create works of theatrical art. There is a silent agreement that exists between playwrights and their interpreters: the playwright writes specifically so that other artists can interpret her work. In other words, no matter how dictatorial a particular playwright might be (consider, for instance, George Bernard Shaw or Samuel Beckett), it is understood that the interpreters who will be responsible for performing the text are not the enemy but actual collaborators—Julius Caesar has been staged literally countless times since it first appeared in 1599, and each of those stagings represents a collaboration with the text and with Shakespeare and his collaborators (the performers and printers). Similarly, every published edition—publication being a kind of performance—is also a collaboration between an editor and the text. The idea of collaboration is thus written into the text. It is a fundamental aspect of the very act of playwrighting, of creating dramatic texts that are meant to be performed and interpreted by other artists.

But Howard isn’t speaking of theatrical collaboration. Nor, unlike Aristotle, is she speaking of theatrical mimesis. She is in effect applying concepts that were born in the theater (and, in the case of collaboration, other arts) to the composition classroom—an irony, it may be argued, since she seems to me to be in the process of denying some of the very qualities that make writing a fine art as well as a craft.

At this point I feel the need to return to a question I seem to remember articulating earlier in the semester: what is it that so offends (some of) us about the idea of what Howard continually refers to as the “autonomous author”? She continually insists that such a concept—the concept against which Barthes and Foucault also labor—does not reflect the actual ways all writers actually write. Yet the autonomous author has been with us since Homer, and most of us who write have no problem with the concept until someone like Foucault—or Howard—suggests that it is problematic. My opinions of the so-called “theories” of Foucault and Barthes are well-recorded so I won’t rehearse them here. It is enough to say that any theory of authorship or composition that relies on either of them has serious credibility issues for someone like me.

Professional Patchwriting Pays

2008-04-05T19:54:00.005-05:00

Like annaluna, I too am a patchwriter. In fact, I am a professional patchwriter. As a grant writer, I am expected to patchwrite using the language provided by the very funders who read my proposals. In my field, it is imperative that proposals reflect the language used in funders' Request for Proposals (RFPs). In fact, it is standard practice to lift the funders' language out of the RFP (without citation) in order to demonstrate that a project is meeting the funders' purpose and goals. Grant evaluators look for that language as a sign of understanding and common mission. Furthermore, the ability and willingness to patchwrite is a signal of a grant writer's experience and expertise--a badge of the elite (or Howard's "liberal culture ideology"), if you will. In effect, I get paid to patchwrite and my employer benefits through awarded grant funds. I know this is institutional authorship rather than individual authorship, but I'm curious if any of the comp instructors in our class are willing to tell your students they can do this for a living?

Reading Response - Howard

2008-04-05T13:48:00.021-05:00

Standing in the Shadow of Giants begins with Rebecca More Howard’s crusade against plagiarism in the ‘80s. The specific form of plagiarism she has focused on is patchwriting which she defines as “copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one synonym for another” (xvii). To her surprise, however, she found that most students she discussed this form of plagiarism with did not know that what they were doing was plagiarism. Howard ultimately questioned the transgression herself until she came to the conclusion that patchwriting is “the heart of writing” (7). Building on Quintilian’s theory and the work of Roland Barthes, Howard says that all writing is to some extent collaborative and built on the works of earlier writers. There is no individual author in the sense that patchwriting is a "writer-text collaboration based on mimesis" (34). Here she also looks at the works of Foucault and Woodmansee to examine our modern conception of the author.

One of the key quotes from the second part of Standing in the Shadow of Giants is "the autonomous, originary author derives from economic and technological change and participates in maintaining hierarchical social relations that are potentially threatened by those changes” (57). It is this idea of authorship that makes patchwriting seem negative or criminal and prohibits "a positive pedagogy for patchwriting." She goes on to describe how this idea of authorship is, in fact, new and cites some of the reading we did earlier in the semester on authorship. Howard also gives us "four properties" of authorship: "autonomy, originality, proprietorship, and morality" (58).

Morality, of course, refers to our need to trust the author has created his own text and not stolen anyone else's work. Proprietorship is the heart of copyright law--it is the basis for intellectual property: that the author owns that idea or work as much as she might own a plot of land. To own that work, however, it must be original. Originality is probably the most debatable among the four properties Howard gives us. The definition or intent is obvious, but determining to what level a work must be original is difficult to do. Howard summarizes autonomy as the idea that "the writer, from the Cartesian point of view, can act autonomously to apprehend and express ideas that are unmediated by social discourse" (80). We've seen the implications of these properties of modern authorship throughout the course in the rhetoric of copyright infringement cases and the arguments by the RIAA and the MPAA, the chief proprietors.

There are problems with plagiarism and how it is regulated and defined in the classroom. Howard talks about how on exams students are expected to (and rewarded for) answer questions based on ideas taught in class that, in terms of proprietorship belong to a different authors, without actually citing them. Even the guidelines used to define plagiarism vary from institution to institution and are considered "a local affair" (21). In many cases, plagiarism is unintentional. In these cases, Howard advocates "[teaching] citation conventions" (110). Intentional plagiarism should be punished. But, as Howard says, in patchwriting, intentional plagiarism is not always the case. Sometimes it is used by writers to help them better "understand what they are reading" and in this case can be used as "a positive learning strategy" (110, 111).

The McLean Suit

2008-04-04T11:31:00.003-05:00

I took a look at Rebecca Moore Howard's blog. She was an expert witness in the McLean suit brought by two students against Turnitin. I agree with lynn168's post and also wonder how anyone can ethically and effectively use SafeAssign or Turnitin? Teachers would be casting students as would-be criminals rather than inexperienced writers. It seems these programs police plagiarism, but are also hobbling the learning process, the "writer-text collaborative experience" as Howard describes.

How can these programs effectively catch a student cheating by using percentages? Using a virtual vault to house thousands of student papers and anteing up rhetorical coincidences through percentages to establish guilt seems ominous. Here's another blog I checked out in reference to the McLean suit. It is a virtual community of responses to the case.

Also, in affirmative response to erenghard's post, I don't get page 11 of Howard's book. I don't understand how the plagiarized paragraph is plagiarism. I showed the page in question to my professor that I G.A. for and she couldn't see it either. Anyone have a clue?

NIU Teaches Us about Academic Integrity

2008-04-03T15:02:00.002-05:00

Here is a link to teach students and faculty about academic integrity. http://www.niu.edu/ai/students/

And now for breaking music news!

2008-04-02T10:19:00.003-05:00

This came through on my RSS reader. How greedy can RIAA get?

Confession

2008-04-02T08:05:00.002-05:00

Hi. My name is Annaluna2369 and I am a “patchwriter.” (cue the laugh track)

So, reading the first bit of Howard’s book, I was surprised that I, Ms. Integrity, would be branded a cheater, a criminal, a…plagiarist! While reading, I frantically tried to recall every piece of writing I have ever done – did I unknowingly do the unspeakable?

I was particularly interested in the passage on page 7 of Howard’s book in the section on patchwriting as learning,

“…students’ patchwriting is often a move toward membership in a discourse community, a means of learning unfamiliar language and ideas. Far from indicating a lack of respect for a source text, their patchwriting is a gesture of reverence.”

And

“…To join this conversation, the patchwriter employs the language of the target community.”

For someone like me, who is struggling to assimilate into grad school, first year, I have this anxiety about contributing original work to the collective pool, when I’m still trying to learn how to swim. I don't mean copying and pasting Foucault into a paper, but how do I write something new? How do I join the conversation?

Now, I wonder (I’m changing topics). Can someone expand a little on “liberal culture ideology” and “social-democratic rhetoric”? I could Google it, but it would be great to hear from others what they know about it and, especially for those who are teaching right now, how it applies in your classroom.

NIU Copyright Climate

2008-04-01T11:36:00.002-05:00

As we were talking last night about universities being likely sites for change in the copyright debate, I decided to look further into the "climate" on our campus regarding copyright issues. Here are a couple of recent events that might be of interest:

NIU compliance with the RIAA. In 2007, the RIAA sent pre-litigation letters to more than 25 students who were sharing (not just downloading, but also uploading) copyrighted music files. Here is the standard procedure if a student is caught violating copyright laws (taken from the Copyright and File Sharing Facts page on the ITS website:

"Per the DMCA requirements, the network connection for the device identified is disabled immediately.
An e-mail notifies you of the alleged violation or notice.
You must visit the Restech Helpdesk to disable the alleged violating software.
You must meet with the NIU Abuse Investigator and sign documentation acknowledging your understanding of NIU's Acceptable Use Policy and the Student Code of Conduct."

In addition, according to the Northern Star, many of the students contacted by the RIAA settled for $3,000.

NIU adoption of SafeAssign as a plagiarism detection tool. It is a searchable database, much like Turnitin.com, that is built into the Blackboard system. Of note is the "Originality Report" produced for instructors, offering an analysis of a student's paper: see Sample Originality Report. Do you use this tool in your classes? I'm wondering how this tool has been presented to instructors, especially to those teaching first-year composition.

(Real) Piracy funds terror

2008-03-31T08:31:00.004-05:00

This came across my RSS feed this morning.

Piracy, in this case, equals counterfeit products. I think this is a worthy distinction. Diabolical amputation of pinkies indeed...

When we discuss "piracy," I think it's important to discuss it with that distinction in mind. I'm, personally, often not talking about counterfeit handbags, but rather the people in the corner of the creepy flea market on Kishwalkee (sp) Street in Rockford, selling copies of movies not even out yet. A for-profit enterprise...

But no boats, at least in Rockford. Johnny Depp will have to wait for the CGI train to hook up to reality.

Feed: Ars Technica
Posted on: Monday, March 31, 2008 1:12 AM
Author: nate@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson)
Subject: US Attorney General: Piracy funds terror

The Attorney General gives a speech on intellectual property in which piracy and counterfeiting turn out to fund—wait for it—terrorism. Bet you didn't see that one coming. Fortunately, the AG understands who the pirates really are.

University of Texas Student Honor Code Plagiarized?

2008-03-31T07:38:00.002-05:00

Heard about this story on NPR this morning. Wow.

Paying for a Download of a "Free" Broadcast

2008-03-31T07:15:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was watching a political show and thought that one of the guest commentators made some interesting remarks. I wrote myself a note to look online for the video later. Several weeks had past before I got to this task, and when I checked the show’s website, the video was moved to an archive page where I would have to pay for the transcript.

I just saw the entire broadcast for “free” on my television set, and I could have recorded the broadcast without any cost per the Audio Home Recording Act--if I understood the reading for this week correctly. Yet, I thought downloading the information online would be quicker, and better yet, accessible. How can companies get away with this? Are they right? Am I wrong?

Links for Tonight's Presentation: Copyright and the Digital Knitting Community

2008-03-31T07:07:00.003-05:00

The Internet Knitting Community
Knit Picks Patterns
Green Apples -- A Knitting Blog
Knitting on Impulse
knitalong.net
Fitted Knits Along
Ravelry (subscription required)

Awareness of Copyright
b natural. c sharp (blog post dealing with copyright)
Knitting copyright personal web page

What Knitters Are Saying about Copyright
Ravelry posting (knitter will not share work as often now)
222 pages of Ravelry posts on "copyright" (at 30 posts per page, that's 6,660 posts!)

Copyright Infringement vs Creative Evolution

2008-03-31T06:03:00.001-05:00

I’m not sure we can blame the professors of composition courses—who encourage single authorship and emphasize the consequences of plagiarism—for our outlook on copyright. I don’t claim to have a crystal clear understanding of all the aspects that surround and separate copyright, patents, trademarks, etc. (Even Logie points to criticism of Judge Stevens’ use of patent law language in a copyright ruling on p. 133.) What does seem to be clear is the audacity of those who take (or attempt to take) literary, lyrical, and/or digital compositions and pass them off as their own. That act seems very different from those who credit the “original” authors’ work and then add to it to create something new.

Apples and oranges!?

Is the Internet a P2P Network?

2008-03-31T06:00:00.002-05:00

I have little to no experience with P2P networks, but Logie struck a cord with me when he implied that the Internet as a whole is essentially P2P file sharing (145). I often attach files, send links to articles and websites, and copy/paste text into other documents such as email. Don’t we do that here on this blog, too? Why can’t the courts see the similarities and rule in favor of the people? They need to force the music and movie corporations to “get with the digital program!”

"free" books still under copyright

2008-03-30T12:50:00.007-05:00

Would have posted this under Lynn168's excellent post about LibraVox, but I think this is the other side of the coin. Anyway:

Wowio allows users to download from their collection of ebooks still protected under copyright, with some limitations:

Users must register in order to gain access to their library.
Users are limited to three downloads per day.
Although Wowio claims they feel that "technology-based DRM is essentially a fraud," publishers/content owners may still restrict use of texts via Adobe Reader controls [see Lessig's Free Culture, 148-53]. I'd be willing to bet $10 that some of these controls are exercised on works in the public domain.

So, this is somewhere in between Netflix and a library, which--to me--is great. But I'm not sold enough to give it a try yet. From the FAQ:

Does WOWIO use any kind of digital rights management (DRM)?

Since anyone can defeat the most "sophisticated" DRM with the print screen button, we believe that technology-based DRM is essentially a fraud. Our approach takes the market incentive out of misbehaving, rewards people for doing the right thing, and tries to stay out of the way of honest users.

^ emphasis mine. I like their ethos here, and took note of the morality approach there at the end. But:

To help keep everyone honest, however, readers must authenticate their identity and agree to a licensing agreement when they set up their account. Then, each ebook is serialized with the reader's authenticated name and a unique serial number, as well as other less visible markers. WOWIO will immediately terminate the account of anyone caught illegally distributing ebooks, and will prosecute serious offenders.

Again, emphasis mine. Why not call a spade a spade and just recognize that some of us cannot be trusted? I'm not railing against Wowio--it seems like they have good intentions--but it's clear that somebody, somewhere, has a different definition of "free" than I do, and is worried that this free experiment will run out of control.

In the very next question in the FAQ, Wowio explains their business model that is awfully close to what Lessig and Logie are talking about--basically, that this business model might lead people to go out and buy the print versions.

So what are we to make of this? On one hand, I feel like it's a step in the right direction. I don't mind that it's ad-supported so long as someone isn't trying to sell me another Baconator on page 146 of Cat's Cradle (available on Wowio, actually). And I can see where this distribution method might benefit aspiring authors willing to allow their work to be available for free, as well as established, "I've heard of her but never read any of her stuff" writers.

But on the other hand, why not go all out and slap a CC license on your work? That would get rid of the hassle of signing up (as well as make an end run around those pesky privacy concerns). My guess is that it eliminates the ad revenue from the equation. And we can't have that, now, can we?

This has to be related somehow...

2008-03-29T20:38:00.002-05:00

This is a different take on what we've seen so far regarding the music industry and lawsuits. Some in the music industry are proposing to charge consumers a tax that basically says "pay us not to sue you as you download our music." Interesting and frightening at the same time.

Discovery Perpetuates Rhetoric

2008-03-29T20:33:00.003-05:00

I decided to rest my eyes from Logie for a bit and surfed television channels only to find Download: The True Story of the Internet appearing on the Discovery Channel. Despite the series' episode title of "People Power," originally airing on March 4, 2008, the production falls into just about every rhetorical cliche that Logie highlights, ultimately missing the episode's own assertion of the public's power (dare I say rights?) over the Internet.

The episode focuses on P2P, and its description lures viewers with "Teenager Shawn Fanning invents Napster and forever changes the way music is shared on the Internet." Indeed, in interviews with Fanning, the show casts him as the same teenager from nearly 10 years ago when he created Napster. They interview him in a Guitar Center retail outlet in between quick edits of him playing around on an unplugged electric guitar. I was disappointed to see the "perpetuation of [Fanning's] hacker/undergraduate persona well past its expiration date" (Logie 146) rather than an experienced innovator who can shed light on the current P2P debate.

What was more disappointing was the dichotomy between the episode's spot-on title (that could have reflected the Internet's ability to reframe the copyright debate toward the original foundational intent of the public's right to access) and the producers' clear misunderstanding of (or should I more aptly say the producers' gullability for the rhetoric involved in) the legal/public debate. For example, as the host explained RIAA's claim against Napster, he literally stuffed CDs down his pants while standing in a record store. Clearly, as Logie so adeptly describes, file-sharing as theft has been well positioned and engrained in our culture. And even as the host decried RIAA's short-sightedness for not "embracing the future," he followed up with the question, "Did [the Napster case] stop illegal file-sharing? Did the amount of pirated tracks decrease?" Again, the assumption is that all file-sharing is illegal and the act is one of piracy.

I know. I know. Shame on me for expecting anything complex and nuanced out of the boob tube.

Focus! Focus!

2008-03-29T16:21:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I have a hard time focusing. Especially at work. I mean, I can close twitter, and my instant message client(s), and even my e-mail, but I still can't seem to focus on the words in front of me.

I guess I'm not alone.

Here are some text editors which, basically, black out the entire screen except for your text. Dead-simple.

Q10 (Windows, Free)
Dark Room (Windows, Free)
WriteRoom (For Mac OSX, Free Download, but a buy button, too?)

I figured I'd share this hear because while we're talking about authorship on-line, sometimes that constant ability to communicate and getting information, well, gets in the way of getting stuff done.

Hackers and Their Hats

2008-03-29T16:04:00.005-05:00

White, Gray, Black: obviously this is more nuanced than usual media coverage of, well, anything. It gives us the possibility of at least a middle ground between good and evil. As if reality were anything like the 1s and 0s of a computer world. As in all cases, perspective is vital here.

Let's put a white hacker example here, which I'll contrast in a bit.

This past week, I was able to demonstrate a security flaw in a new (to me) computer system. I did it at work, and even showed the developer of the software directly what had happened. This circumvented all the security measures put in place in this system. Exploiting this oversight, someone could execute "arbitrary code" on the system. This means that the person could do whatever they wanted. Literally. Delete, corrupt data, render the system useless, install "spyware," etc.

By the end of the week, this hole was fixed and, while I haven't had a lot of time to play with the program, I am confident that the problem was resolved and a non-authorized user would not be able to exploit the system with that particular method. My example is mundane and, as I see it, common.

I do not claim the title "hacker," nor is what I did a hack. Primarily because what I showed was so damn easy, but secondarily, as I do not want to announce myself as "committed to transgressing the boundaries established by a combination of corporate practice and convention" (Logie 32). I, actually, was nervous about discussing this in case I were to get in trouble. As of this date, I have not.

But let's give that kind of action a "White Hack" name.

Now, consider you are on the other side of the table; you are the established coder who just, in front of a client, had a security exploit demonstrated in 4 mouse clicks. By the client's "Technical Writer," none-the-less. What color hat am I wearing now? Gray, I guess. What if I had published that same exploit in 2600: The Hacker's Quarterly? Surely black.

But, the trouble is, I'm not wearing any hat, actually, in my opinion. My hair would even be more messed up if I did. I did what I thought was morally correct with that particular information. I am not a X at hacker. I'm a person, damnit. "I am vast. I contain multitudes," etc.

Assigning hat colors to hackers is inaccurate at best, and slanderous at worst.

What I am willing to call myself is, essentially, lazy about things I do not want to do.

In a book referenced by Logie, "The Hacker Ethic," Himanen contrasts the hacker ethic with the Protestant work ethic and emphasizes the nature of work as play. Playing hard, yes, but essentially play because it is mixed with passion. A "hacker," in Himanen's text, as well as in the "hacker" culture at large, is defined more generally than computers. A previous version of the Jargon File (referenced by Himanen) indicates carpenter hackers (current is Astronomy Hackers) (and the hacker ethic). How can one be a gray hat carpentry hacker? Do black hat carpenters passionately build gallows and guillotines?

They build what they want to. Just as I code what I want to. They're intellectually stimulated by it.

Things are morally neutral, however they may enable a transfer of power. In this case, it can mean that another person's perspective is lost, especially in a morally vague place such as copyright infringement. "No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood."

Re-reading that, it feels like a cop-out there. I really don't have an answer to that toolmaker philosophy problem. In short. I don't know.

Short response regarding the quote appearing on pg 109, "I move a Roman Legion of Walls Street Lawyers[...]": Did anyone else think that the Wall Street lawyers were more like a phalanx while the hackers of the world were more like maniple system? Sorry, too much History of Rome podcast...

Note: A more dramatic, and much more fun version of the "white" hacker is in place in the movie "Sneakers." I heartily recommend it. A bad version thereof is the movie "Hackers," which I have attempted to purge from my memory.

LibriVox free public domain audiobooks

2008-03-27T11:27:00.002-05:00

Here is a really interesting website and project that I stumbled upon today. Through strictly volunteer work, LibriVox has set out to record all of the books in the public domain and make them freely available online. Ambitious project! Many of the recordings are quite good too.

There are several elements of this project that interest me:

1) I commute from the suburbs, so I fly through audiobooks and am always looking for affordable sources of audio entertainment.

2) The very fact that LibriVox has set as a goal to record all of the public domain speaks to the shrinking nature of the domain. If the domain were as large as it could be, this would be nearly impossible. Should this be a red flag?

3) By spreading word of this and other similar projects that specifically discuss the public domain, we help spread the word about the copyright debate. When someone asks why a more recent author's work isn't recorded, a conversation on the extended copyright and the problems that it creates can promptly ensue.

At the bare minimum though, it's a good place to look for a free (and legal) audiobook.

Logie/Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion - reading response

2008-03-26T11:15:00.020-05:00

The Inaccessibility of a Proper Dense Whorled Creamy Mie in DeKalb, Illinois*
In thinking about John Logie’s argument, I was reminded of my teenage years, when I lived in a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere, staaaaarving for Adrienne Rich and Willa Cather and the Marquis de Sade and P.G. Wodehouse. Finally, we joined a library in a nearby town, and when their resources staled and palled, I discovered interlibrary loan. We discussed the concept of the library briefly last class, and I believe, while limited, it is in fact a decent analogy for the rational value and use of P2P networks. Libraries are public institutions, supported by tax dollars. There is a strong case to be made for the librarization of technology (or the technologification of libraries, which is already proceeding apace). This is Logie's alternative to "piracy" in the war of words. I would just like to submit to you that I cannot imagine my life without libraries. It’s not like I can buy (or want to own) every book I want to read.

* Try Inboden’s Meat Market, near the NE corner of 1st and Hillcrest

Medvedevian Merovingians
Logie analyses corporations’ and public use of negatively-loaded rhetoric like “piracy” to propagandize public opinion about P2P sharing – which (“sharing”) I now recognize also to be a rhetorically laden term, more positive, if less melodramatically excessive.

Logie mentions in his acknowledgments “the musicians whose work I listened to as I wrote. I hope this work helps fuel a move toward Internet-based music distribution that fairly and fully compensates you for your tremendous contributions to our culture.” So, like Lessig, Logie is not advocating piracy, and does want to see the artist/creator receiving fair and full compensation (in his language).

What in fact is the rhetorical effect of comparing P2P to Jack Sparrow (possibly rather positive post-movie)? It’s hubristic hyperbole, a betrayal of meaning. P2P is a culture-wide movement to increase access to material, not to hoard it away on a desert island or drink it away on Tortuga, just like libraries. I suppose the difference is that libraries are tax-supported and actually pay for their access to materials, so the equivalent would be a P2P site supported by taxes that actually did pay something for access to materials (though someone always has bought the initial copy of material on any P2P exchange).

Logie (p. 4): “the kind of expansive electronic library that copyright laws typically preclude . . . everything in no particular order, all day, all night, and in stereo.” The library metaphor is a far more neutral one than piracy, theft, hacking, etc., in fact it’s a positive one. The battle of the metaphors!

Is there any national discussion of “intellectual property rights and responsibilities in digital environments”? Are we just assuming that Grokster et al. infringe upon copyrights? Why is there the assumption that innovations in digital technology that permit people to share files of music (and why is there not the same MAJOR issue with books? sad comment on our culture in a way) = bad? Why the decline of any current public domain? linked to the decline of the US political system? linked to wiretapping and waterboarding and W’s in general?

I remember in Tori Amos’s memoir Piece by Piece (interesting in connexion with P2P term) she says that Atlantic Records decided to throw her away and she had to fight to make it out of her contract artistically viable. I could just go back to touring with me and a piano, Tori Amos said. It’s not like I need you corporate losers. You do hear some artists echoing the dogma of their corporate overlords.

Logie Money Quote
"I do not call or wish for the end of copyright. Rather, I seek copyrights calibrated not to print delivered by ponies, but to the torrents of information now spanning the globe via broadband peer-to-peer networks." (146)

"With a measure of initiative, and a collective commitment to an ethical and equitable rebalancing of our nation’s copyright laws, the rich storehouses of information within this, the world’s second largest library, could be available not only to those who have $150 an hour to spare, not only to those who have the opportunity to search at the Library in person, but to anyone with a networked computer." (148)

Wavelengths
Web 2.0, Web 3.0; first-wave, second-wave, third-wave feminism, postfeminist world . . . what’s up since Logie published in 2006? I think a lot, no? Raises a few questions for us, no?

- GoogleBooks success

- RIAA.com still using term “piracy: online and on the street” (calling “piracy” a “too benign term”)

- RIAA chair and CEO Mitch Bainwol on the DOJ approving Sirius-XM merger: “The merger’s approval serves as a powerful validation that competitors should play by the same set of rules. On the heels of this decision, the logic for a performance right for terrestrial radio has never been clearer. Terrestrial radio – unlike satellite, Internet and cable radio – continues to reap special interest subsidies in the form of free government spectrum and an outdated exemption from compensating artists and record companies. It’s time for that to change and for Congress to provide an economic marketplace where there is parity amongst all delivery platforms.”

- RIAA also claims: “Record companies have licensed hundreds of digital partners that offer a range of legal models to fans: download and subscription services, cable and satellite radio services, Internet radio webcasting, legitimate peer-to-peer services, video-on-demand, podcasts, CD kiosks and digital jukeboxes, mobile products such as ringbacks, ringtunes, wallpapers, audio and video downloads and more.”

- Youtube.com (where, for example, the full What a Girl Wants movie is available for viewing, though what tremendous contribution to our culture this is, I don’t know)

- TV shows available online at their own websites (like The Hills woohoo)

FW: Plagiarism screener gets passing grade in copyright lawsuit

2008-03-26T08:21:00.002-05:00

From Ars Technica is this article on a plagiarism screener:

Do students have rights to the material they hand in as class assignments? Is plagiarism detection a form of fair use? These and a number of other intriguing questions were answered in a decision (PDF) handed down by a US District Court in Virginia recently, which threw out a lawsuit filed by students whose school compelled them to use an automated plagiarism detection system.

Plagiarism. Transformative? Fair Use?

What if you disagreed with the terms of service? Should you be forced to comply? A related article on Ars indicates that, at the Plaintiff's school, a score of "0" is recorded if you don't submit your text.

While plagiarism seems bad, is the alternative here--forcing people to submit to a contract from a third party--any better?

Early Pop Culture Intertextuality

2008-03-23T17:31:00.005-05:00

It's interesting how things seem to come together. Recently a couple of things have converged for me in a way that highlights the issues we've been discussing. If nothing else, the following story serves as yet another example of what Lessig is talking about.

As I believe I've mentioned before, I'm a comic book nut -- have been since I was a wee slip of a thing. Just this past week I finally got around to reading Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a fictional account of the early career of a writer/artist team during the Golden Age of comics (which ran from the late thirties through the mid-fifties). I've also been reading the big coffee-table biography of Jack Kirby (who co-created, among other things, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and the Hulk). I'm sure it stands to reason given the nature of comic book art (or, as I suppose I really ought to start calling it, graphic fiction), but I somehow never realized how important the concept of intellectual property is to the industry.

Chabon's novel tells how the title characters, writer Sam Clay and artist Joe Kavalier, created a comic book superhero specifically to capitalize on the success of the National Periodical Company (later to be known as DC, after one of its most successful titles, Detective Comics, in which, incidentally, Batman was introduced in 1939), who had created a pop culture phenomenon in 1938 with the introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1 (the obvious sidebar here is that the actual creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, owned none of the rights to their creation and reaped very little of the monetary rewards that made their employers rich). Now, despite the fact that the character created by Kavalier and Clay --the Escapist -- bears very little resemblance to Superman (they're both super-powered costumed crime fighters), National/DC, in the novel, sues the company that owns the Escapist (not the creators, which is an important point) for copyright infringement. This is based on actual events: National/DC actually sued the publishers of Wonder Man, Master Man, and of course Captain Marvel; though, so far as I know, they were unsuccessful in the case of Captain Marvel, who is quite clearly a Superman knock-off, and who is still very much with us (largely because DC finally bought the character in the 1960s).

Although National/DC was by far the most successful comic book publisher of the thirties and forties, and certainly the most prolific with regard to the creation of costumed superheroes (from 1938 to 1941 they introduced, in quick succession, Superman, Batman, the Flash, the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Aquaman, the Atom, the Sandman, Hourman, Hawkman, and Wonder Woman, as well as several others not nearly so well-known), they were only one of a number of comic publishers in New York, all of whom were eager to jump on board the bullet train of Superman's popularity. And the relationships that developed strike us today as rather incestuous: Superman inspired Captain Marvel and others, Captain America (introduced in 1941 with a blockbuster cover illustration that showed him punching Hitler in the face) was the source of a whole battalion of similar patriotic heroes, Aquaman is a direct descendant of the Sub-Mariner. Batman brought together elements of earlier heroes from literature and radio like Zorro, the Shadow, and the Green Hornet, and even inspired National/DC to create an obvious knock-off in the figure of Green Arrow (another billionaire playboy with a mask fetish and a taste for revenge). And speaking of Batman, when Robin was introduced in 1940, suddenly every superhero had to have a sidekick (Green Arrow had Speedy, Captain America had Bucky, and so on). Superman and Batman had secret identities, so everyone else had to have one too.

The point? Superhero comics -- comics generally -- developed in the way they did because everyone was copying everyone else. The whole superhero genre was born because all these creators and publishers were busily trying to outdo each other. If the culture of fear we live in now had existed 70 years ago, it's hard to imagine that there would have ever been a Golden Age of comics, or a Silver Age (it began in the mid-fifties when DC started re-imagining old characters like the Flash and Green Lantern, and continued in the early sixties when Marvel introduced the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, among others). I can't imagine that a character like Captain Marvel would ever have been permitted to continue -- he's too clearly a Superman ripoff. Come to that, Batman clearly steals from Zorro, the Shadow, and the Green Hornet, so probably he would have had to go. The mingling, borrowing, and outright stealing that went on in the late thirties and early forties was exactly what allowed the genre to develop with such variety and creativity.

Okay, so I'll get to Kirby later....

Web Two Point Naught

2008-03-22T19:14:00.003-05:00

As a former copy edit, I love this sort of detail-intensive language study!

Here is a post from the BBC blog that concluded (in February... I'm a little behind the times here) that the correct pronunciation of "Web 2.0" is "web two point oh." I realized that this is how most of us have been saying it (I would love to hear someone in class say "web two dot naught" thought), but I find the alternative pronunciations that the Brits were considering to be fascinating.

What a great point they make about how written characters need to be able to speak authentically. That's what I call justification for polling! But rest assured it is now official: "web two point oh," as O'Reilly suggested, is the "correct" (or at least preferred) pronunciation.

Free use vs. Fair use vs. Fear use

2008-03-22T17:26:00.003-05:00

If you're anything like me, at this point of the class you probably know how much you don't know about copyright, fair use, Creative Commons, and the grand media conspiracy to get government to legislate protections for the music industry. I never realized it was so complicated, and the very fact that it is so convoluted is a telling sign that something's not right.

Lessig summarizes his project by claiming a middle ground between "all right reserved" and "no rights reserved" with "some rights reserved" in the guise of the Creative Commons, where individuals can decide how much other people can use their creations. Presumably, if you come across a CC license, the creator of that work is giving you some permission to use that work/tool under certain restrictions. Will this lessen piracy and theft? Not knowing any better, the first time I came across a CC license I thought "Whoa. Hold on there. I don't want to get too close to this thing. I'd better back up nice and slow and everything will be okay." Rather than looking into the license, I thought it was copyright on crack, and I probed no further.

The hope is that by using CC, more work will be available for public consumption and the greater culture will flourish. Individuals will no longer have to "borrow" from corporations/institutions. However, don't forget that corporations "borrow" from individuals as well, as the case of the Chinese Olympic website stealing a game from a graphic designer without asking permission or offering compensation. Would this example had been averted if a CC license were present? Will people steal regardless of the restrictions? I don't know.

So we get to the end of Free Culture when we realize that the problem is alot bigger than we thought. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. What do we do? Take to the streets? Riot? Refuse to buy music? Join a cutting-edge p2p group? Ignore it? Lessig actually endorses this last option in regards to cracking down on illegal downloads when he says the ubiquity and speed of the Internet will soon make p2p file sharing obsolete; why be a content manager when it's easier to just subscribe to a service to listen to whatever you want? Though not exactly the same, Apple has been toying with a similar scenario by allowing new iPod owners to get unlimited lifetime use of iTunes for a one-time fee. Is this the future, all Internet, all the time? Abilene Christian University, that bastion of conservatism, recently announced that they're giving all incoming freshmen free iPhones. Is this the end or just the beginning?

Why Does Charlie Rose Have a Black Eye?

2008-03-18T22:52:00.003-05:00

This is just for fun, but I thought I'd share that I was worried about Mr. Charlie Rose when he appeared on my television with a shiner and a Bandaid on his forehead. I was watching a repeat of his original March 17th airing, and was surprised to find that 240,000 matches for "Charlie Rose black eye" appeared on Google within 24 hours. The latest is that he sacrificed his face while trying to save his new MacBook Air as he tripped in a pothole, but my favorite tongue-in-cheek speculation appears on Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080317204929AADtack). Our fellow bloggers are busy.

Electronic Privacy

2008-03-18T22:09:00.003-05:00

This site is a great resource for issues concerning civil liberties. The focus is on electronic privacy but it extends to general government surveillance.

Rights of Photographers

2008-03-18T08:41:00.001-05:00

Based on our “is it legal to take pictures of X” discussion, here is a condensed “Ten Legal Rights of Photographers.” The “More Resources” section at the bottom appears very useful, especially “The Photographer’s Right.” (Browse around that site for some more info.)

Via Digg.

Useless.

2008-03-17T22:58:00.005-05:00

Following Jesse's lead, I thought I'd spread the free software love that just happened to show up in my RSS reader after class. This one is also for you Windows users, so I obviously haven't tried this program myself, but I couldn't resist based on the name of this application:

FairUse DVD Ripper [Full Edition Free for a Limited Time!] Awesome debates regarding DCMA, corporate shenanigans, and The Grateful Dead Business Model™ not included.

Wait.

You probably don't want this. Apparently, the program will not strip copy protection schemes from DVDs [which we learned tonight is against the law], rendering it unable to help you make those DVD clip compilations for educational purposes or create legal backups of your store-bought movies.

Thanks for contributing to the public confusion over copyright law, FairUse DVD Ripper.

[link via Lifehacker]

The Chalk Guy

2008-03-17T21:00:00.003-05:00

http://gprime.net/images/sidewalkchalkguy/

down at the bottom is "all material copyrighted by its original creator"

here is the artist's site, i think. http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

READING RESPONSE: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

2008-03-17T15:40:00.000-05:00

ARE YOU A GOOD PIRATE OR A BAD PIRATE?

I am not sure what else I can add to the previous reading responses. It is difficult to distill 175 pages into 500 words and be more original than my talented classmates.

The first half of this book is a legal, moral, social, and financial argument built upon case histories written in a story-telling format. The argument Lessig writes about is copyright law and the distinctions that need to be made regarding piracy and property as they relate to free culture. Specifically, he addresses the Internet and our ability not only to store information, but to share information. He argues about the pitfalls of extremism and monopoly in ownership rights. The United States government treats intellectual property similarly to physical property; however, only a select few, who are wealthy and powerful, benefit from the laws enforcing copyright. American culture suffers the stifling of its creativity.

Lessig takes us on a historical journey to support his argument about copyright as it relates to new technologies. He shares stories about the various creators of different inventions: photography, the airplane, AM and FM radio, synchronized sound in film, and the Internet. He examines these events in the context of the legal rights the inventors had juxtaposed with the need for everyone in our culture to share (pirate) and expand upon these inventions for the greater creative good.

As Lessig progresses in his argument, he shares examples of individuals expanding and improving upon existing technologies, which would benefit millions of people while threatening the fattened pocketbooks of the owners or inventors of these technologies. He tries to make distinctions between good pirates and bad pirates. He writes that in some cases, there are clear examples of right and wrong ways to copy and distribute information. However, he warns that some instances of piracy need to be examined more closely. As stated before, sometimes piracy rises out of a need for a culture to take advantage of a new technology in a more democratic way to promote creativity and intellectual growth.

Lessig defines piracy as born of a history of each new medium pirating on the generation of technology before it. He gives examples of these “pirates” as film, recorded music, radio, and cable television. He cites clear examples in each industry of piracy. He later differentiates types of piracy into four categories: those who download music without purchasing it (bad), those who use shared networks to sample music (good), those who share networks to access material no longer sold (good), and those who use shared networks that give access to material without copyright (good). (p. 68-69)

Although I simplify the various types of piracy as good or bad, Lessig takes the definition of piracy and teases it apart. He argues that it is not valid to define piracy as good or bad – that it requires a deep investigation to understand if the laws that protect against piracy are logical.

In the second half of Lessig’s book, as has already been written about in the previous response readings, he examines the nature of property. He states that our tradition is to think of property as something physical – I own the land. It is difficult and often times ridiculous to apply the same laws to intellectual property. He gives an example of a director creating a celluloid homage to Clint Eastwood. The director had to spend an enormous amount of time, one year, to clear and cover all the possible copyright infringements. Each actor that had ever been in any Clint Eastwood film for even a second had to be found and compensated in order for that minute or two of old film to be incorporated into something new without legal consequences. It seems wasteful to spend that much time in obtaining permission and waiting that long to create. Lessig gives another example of a man making a documentary. During filming, he captured a Simpsons broadcast on a television set for about 4 seconds. He was allowed to include that 4-second footage if he was willing to pay an exorbitant $10,000.

Lessig poses that copyright should not be regarded solely as property, but as a balance of incentives to artists and authors with public access to their work. He argues that free culture suffers when creativity requires permission and legal advice.

reading response - free culture & permission culture

2008-03-17T08:20:00.001-05:00

In the first two major sections of Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig outlines the American social and legal histories of copyright over the past two centuries. Throughout the first section, "Piracy," Lessig draws parallels between the ways the Internet and other digital technologies have challenged public notions of copyright and the ways in which radio, recorded music, television, and film did when they were emerging technologies. All of the aforementioned industries at least partially owe their development to the same kind of "piracy" that media conglomerates are trying to stop on the Internet. However, in section two, "Property," Lessig illustrates a key difference: whereas previous technologies have brought about changes in copyright law that balanced the interests of the content owners and the general public, the conglomeration of media has created a "permission culture" that has unfairly shifted this balance in favor of those who already hold copyright. As a result, the individual freedom to create and transform existing works of art and ideas is now limited more than ever before.

Lessig’s observations have serious implications for contemporary authors. In an age where one may be threatened with legal action for publishing fanfiction, one’s incentive to share creative works (especially if they are derivative) may be outweighed by the fear of punishment for violating copyright law. In cases like this, ideas may therefore be kept to oneself, which is exactly what the Progress Clause in copyright law is supposed to prevent. Or, artists may begin to recognize the legal implications of their work and instead “publish” pseudonymously.

Whatever the response, it is becoming clear that the transformative forms of creativity are checked by corporations. While the Wu-Tang Clan, who has a contract with a major record company, may have the means and connections to sample The Beatles, the majority of us do not. This includes DJ Danger Mouse, whose mashup of the band’s “White Album” with Jay-Z’s “Black Album” was created and disseminated without permission of the content owners. Despite the fact that this was a noncommercial, transformative use of two works, Danger Mouse was threatened with legal action for violating copyright. Meanwhile, the LOVE album—a Beatles remix/mashup album authorized by the estate—has reached Platinum status, won a Grammy, and can be purchased alongside traditional Beatles albums in stores and online.

I am not suggesting that everyone ought to have the same access, but the situation reveals something important about contemporary authorship. We have reached a point at which the genius of The Beatles can be mixed with someone else’s creativity is culturally acceptable if not outright desirable. This might call into question the public concept of how art is created—the product of a single author, an individual genius. Perhaps the LOVE album does this to some extent, but it is underscored by the corporate control of the original works. After all, nobody is going to confuse The Grey Album for a classic Beatles record (although LOVE will probably leave some feeling duped) and thus will not threaten sales or have a negative effect on the work’s value. But such work is technically not allowed, and one of Lessig’s biggest points is that this sort of noncommercial transformation used to be.

Reading Response: Patronage and Permission

2008-03-15T20:16:00.003-05:00

In Free Culture Lawrence Lessig illustrates how the (d)evolution of copyright law and its often renegade corporate enforcement (through code, use fees and litigation threats) has produced a culture of creative permission rather than creative freedom. Despite an American tradition of encouraging derivative creativity for the development of public knowledge, copyright law has transitioned from solely a publishing issue that affected a relatively small subset to a tightly controlled issue of transformation that affects everyone.

Lessig asserts that the protection of derivative rights is the most significant change in copyright law, which has effectively cast everyone under suspicion—from students to artists to anyone wishing to express herself. And while the copyright net has recently been cast more widely to regulate (and capture) a larger group than that original small subset of publishers, the law, as it is currently enforced, seems to protect only the concentrated few who can threaten and pay for litigation—namely corporations.

Fair use is no longer the accepted norm that provides amnesty to uses that fall outside of copyright law restrictions, but is now a fuzzy notion that corporations use “as a sword” (i.e., “pay me or I’ll litigate until the end of time.”) The creative process has become a process of paying lawyers—in Lessig’s words, of protecting businesses, not artists.

In fact, through the increasing concentration of corporate creative ownership, it seems that artists who make a living through mainstream media may not always own their own work (e.g., Fox trumping Max Groening’s and Gracie Films’ decision to allow a Simpsons clip to be included in a documentary or FCC regulation changes allowing television networks to be content owners of productions). While historical values encouraged creators to freely build on past creations to avoid a society of patronage, it seems that this type of corporate ownership (and corporate chokehold) of individual creativity has created a system of patronage.

Ironically, while more of our culture is owned by the powerful few, we have access to one of the most democratic tools for learning, expression and transformation ever: the Internet. Lessig argues that the Internet affects how our culture is made through noncommercial creativity. However, the litigious nature of our corporate patrons and their ability to enforce beyond the copyright law’s intent through technological code strips that democracy away. And what we value becomes our ability to avoid becoming bankrupt after a corporate lawsuit.

It is quite telling that Lessig defines transformation as the creation of new content or new ways of doing business (emphasis mine) and then later states, “A society that defends the ideals of free culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to threaten the old.” Clearly, the old way of doing business is threatened, and it will do everything in its power to preserve itself. In the end, though, creativity loses, and permission wins, and so goes our culture.

Free Culture Reading Response

2008-03-14T18:26:00.001-05:00

Because of the large scope of this week's reading, I have limited my summary and reflection to what I perceive to be the most important discussions in each of Lessig's sections, "Piracy" and "Property."

Lessig begins his first chapter, "Creators," with an illustration of the beginnings of Disney's sound cartoons. In late 1928, taking inspiration from The Jazz Singer's use of synchronized sound and offering a parody of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., Disney released Steamboat Willie, "the first widely distributed cartoon synchronized with sound" (Lessig 21). Here we can directly see Disney pulling from the surrounding culture and adding to it a creative work that is inspired in one capacity or another from an existing work. This type of "Walt Disney Creativity" (24) brings to mind Bakhtin's discussion of intertextuality in "The Problem of Speech Genres" and Lev Manovich's writings on remixing. Bakhtin writes, "the unique speech experience of each individual is shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with others' individual utterances... Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others' words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of 'our-own-ness,'..." (Bakhtin 89). All of our ideas, Bakhtin argues, come in "varying degrees" from some other source. By reshaping public domain fairy tales, parodying Steamboat Bill, Jr., and advancing the ideas of sound synchronized to motion first seen in The Jazz Singer, Disney effectively demonstrates this principle that Bakhtin describes.

Lessig gives readers this illustration to show how the public's (and the law's) perception of this borrowing and mutation of another's idea has changed over time. Manovich, in "Who is the Author? Sampling/Remixing/Open Source," writes about the development of remix, "a systematic re-working of a source" that typically involves music and a visual to convey a message of the creator's. How is this much different than Disney's Steamboat Willie or Fantasia? Today, derivative works written without permission are a violation of copyright law. In fact, as Lessig's section titled "Piracy" implies, unauthorized derivative works are considered to be a form of stealing. Yet, Lessig questions, what is the significance of taking an idea? (83). While he explicitly states that piracy in the from of downloading an artist's work without compensation is wrong and that individuals should be paid for their intellectual property, he clearly spells out the dangers of being a "permission culture" (xiv). At the conclusion of his second section, "Property," Lessig succinctly illustrates these dangers: "the opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer" (173), but throughout this first half of Free Culture, Lessig also hints at another broad danger.

Because the costs of contributing to today's culture have (in most cases) risen as an author wishing to remix must clear rights or a creator seeking to use material under the free use clause often must prove free use in the courts, the democracy of our culture has been threatened. No longer is the opportunity to create equally available to all participants; now, the right to participate comes at a high price. Lessig attributes much of the rising cost, intimidation tactics, and code-enforced uses (as opposed to law-enforced) to the increased consolidation of the media. With this consolidation, Lessig argues, democracy is again challenged. Even though Americans can influence policy through voting, our awareness of the issues is controlled by the media, which when in the hands of only a few, can easily choose which issues to highlight and how to depict them (167). Here is where one of Lessig's most important arguments surfaces: the issues of copyright and the Internet are not confined to the Internet. As illustrated by the Disney example, our culture’s view of derivative work has radically shifted in the last few decades, but this is not where the influence of the Internet ends, and Lessig cautions us to look beyond the digital world. As we continue to study how digital media has changed authorship and rhetoric, we would be wise to extend our discussion and analysis to include changes that digital technology, digital texts, and evolving copyright law have imposed on other areas of our culture, government, and society.

FW: Physics Journal May Reconsider Wikipedia Ban

2008-03-14T11:09:00.002-05:00

Woopsie! Messed up posting via e-mail...

Physics journal may reconsider Wikipedia ban. on Slashdot.

Anyway, that is all.

better late than never

2008-03-12T16:13:00.002-05:00

One of my students recently emailed this to me just because [ . . . he knows I'm a nerd]. Anyway, this article is about Digg, Wikipedia, and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy.

Might help some of you with your paper, so I thought I would share.

Anti-piracy lawsuits a drain on record companies

2008-03-11T08:46:00.000-05:00

From the Tech Law Prof Blog:

“EMI has struck a deal with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for reduced membership rates. The organization represents music labels on an international basis. Venture capitalists took over the label some time back and threatened to leave the organization due to a lack of return on the membership fees, estimated at $250 million. Specifically, the cash that was paying for anti-piracy lawsuits was high compared to the result of not stopping piracy. Apparently EMI was not happy with the symbolism given the cost.”

What, so just throwing money at it doesn’t make it go away? And sooner or later you have to pay the piper?

Why not stop with the lawsuits, and the anti-piracy software, already? Start a positive outreach to the consumer: make a deal, compromise, even if it’s with the devil you think you know. Get over the breakdown of the old system and deal with the new.

Don't View that Cuban Web Site!

2008-03-10T23:31:00.003-05:00

In light of the Wikinews post earlier, I thought it was interesting that they were not the only ones who have had their domains "blocked."

Link.

This OFAC list is something we did use quite frequently when I worked at a bank to prevent certain people/organizations from opening bank accounts. But this is blocking of speech. From Cuba to Europe. The U.S. only handled some traffic.

Education and Free Use

2008-03-08T11:05:00.004-06:00

Here is an interesting BBC article about schools and free use of images on their web sites. This article argues that while images can be used for educational purposes without gaining permission from the rights' holder, the use of images on a web site or on shared lesson plans, is a violation of copyright law.

While these are UK schools, I find the idea of a school owing large amounts of money because an image was posted on their web site very puzzling. Apparently the line between "educational" free use and piracy is not clear. Isn't sharing a lesson plan with a colleague a form of education? Aren't most school web sites aimed at either the students who attend the school or other people interested in learning?

Here is an area of the copyright law that I feel needs to be reexamined, but even as I write this I recognize the difficulty of this. How can we clarify online, outside of the physical classroom, what is education and what is piracy? In one manner of speaking, couldn't every use be considered educational?

It's Christmas in March (Sorta)

2008-03-04T16:02:00.003-06:00

Here's a freebie that I thought I'd pass along to all my fellow under-funded graduate students: Microsoft is giving away free Web Development software to college students. Yes, you read that correctly, MS of all companies is giving away full-featured versions of Expression Studio, Visual Studio, Windows Server 2003, etc. They call it Dreamspark.

If you're thinking, "What does this have to do with me? I don't even like any of this stuff?!" All I can say is if you ever see yourself wanting to create your own webpage, or edit photos for the web, you really should at least pick up Expression Studio, MS's version of Adobe Dreamweaver. Read about Expression Studio on wikipedia. It's a $600 program. Really.

From what I've read MS is losing credibility with the up-and-coming web developer crowd because it's products are so expensive (and it's, well, Microsoft) compared to free Open Source software that basically does the same thing. So take advantage of this last-ditched effort to snag yourself a cool program or two. For free. Could MS be learning one of Barlow's dictums: "Familiarity has more value than scarcity"?

Reading Response

2008-03-03T17:45:00.001-06:00

“When you control the mail, you control information!”
—Newman, the character from Seinfeld

Boyle noted that most people (by 1997) agreed they were living in the Information Age. He acknowledged that the statement “ownership and control of information is one of the most important forms of power and contemporary society” had been so immersed in that culture that it was not credited to any one person. Boyle approached the challenge of governing intellectual property by attempting to define it, construct it, appropriate it, and compare it to concepts and ideas that were concrete to society then.

It is important to remember that this was written and published ten years ago, and not much research was done on the information society, so people had to look to the creators of this area, the “cyberpunks.” Cyberpunk fiction was an introduction into cyberspace for many, and though people could relate to the virtues and vices of the fictitious characters, they could not wrap their brains around the concept of mixing computers and genetics together in the same space.

So much of the information age was linked to cyber-indecency (i.e., Web porn), so most people did not see a real need for governing intellectual property or protecting it. Eventually, the subject of intellectual property was no longer viewed as a special or unique interest to a small minority, it was soon seen as the power behind the digital age, and it was valued at billions of dollars.

The argument for privacy rights in genetic information cases was very similar to the argument for privacy in electronic information cases. Boyle showed how society tried to make electronic and genetic information akin. Most people could justify owning the rights to computer code, but some could not agree that owning genetic code rights fell into the same justifiable category. Others saw the DNA code analogous to computer codes and tried to show the similarities between computers and genetic code processes, specifically, the “natural selection” process of genetic code compared to the “survival” process of computer code. Once similarities were established between genes and computers, attention moved from devoting resources to the message to devoting them to the medium. Companies began protecting their content and placing the value of the content over the value of how the content was delivered.

This power struggle between the message and the medium spilled over into a battle for information access. Regulations were badly needed to avoid granting access to one body or group over another. Each group had a need for information technology, and each group looked to its own advantages of having and disadvantages of being denied access. Everyone wanted a piece of the digital pie.

Boyle’s case study showed that Clinton’s White Papers did not address many issues such as the possibilities that some people will benefit from higher level intellectual property rights while others could still profit well from lower level rights. He believed that the report should have considered the benefits that intellectual property rights have for both the public and the individual. Boyle also pointed out that the press failed to do an accurate job by not contacting sources beyond the well-known “players.” The press needed to talk with those who would be negatively affected by the proposed regulations in Clinton’s White Papers.

Boyle ended his article by taking a look back at how Environmentalists were able to get past the brick wall to the place where they eventually had a voice and a system for engaging in conversations that lead them to policies. He believed that advocates of intellectual property will be able to achieve the same goal, i.e., politics, if they have theories to base the arguments upon.

Cultural Environmentalism?

2008-03-03T14:07:00.008-06:00

Here are two examples of the rhetoric of "cultural environmentalism" that Boyle calls for.

Bound by Law, a graphic novel co-authored by Boyle.

From the EFF Endangered Gizmos campaign:

copyright video that isn't Disney, sort of

2008-03-03T13:55:00.004-06:00

I am not sure how many of you teach younger students, but I found this short video and think it works as a teaching tool. Essentially, it's a compliation of Disney movies that outlines the basics of copyright and fair use (and of course, takes a swipe at Disney).

Whenever I learn something, I try to figure out the best way to relay that information to students in a manner that is easy to understand and delivered in a format that is commonplace for them. While this video is somewhat annoying to adults, I feel it would work well in the classroom because today's students are entranced by flashing images delivered at record speeds.

"A Fair (y) Use Tale" Has a bias or two showing, but that'll make a nice discussion topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

material relating to presentation tonight

2008-03-03T13:22:00.003-06:00

Vuguru article (NYT)

Piracy article (involving a how-to guide for Miro)

Warner Brothers' China division, in a rare act of intelligence on the part of a major media company, demonstrated significant savvy last year when they began selling cheap, legitimate, high quality DVDs of movies within days of the theatrical release. By pricing the discs at around 12 yuan (approximately US$1.50), Warner is hoping to make cost a non-issue, thus allowing them to compete in one area where they hold the upper hand: Quality. Instead of taking a chance with on a low quality, shaky-camcorder copy of a film, Chinese consumers can get a high quality copy of the movie at a reasonable price, all while enjoying the warm fuzzy feeling that you can get knowing that you've helped to pay for some small portion of a a Hollywood star's private jet. (Source: Surveillance State blog at cnet.com, Sept. 2007)

There were some efforts in Congress to modify the DMCA – Rick Boucher’s Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA) and Zoe Lofgren’s BALANCE Act – neither successful.

Timothy B. Lee (Cato Institute): “The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders — and the technology companies that distribute their content — the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates.” (Source: Wikipedia)

List of some recent fair-use legislation

Points from the BALANCE Act (2005) – Zoe Lofgren (CA) et al.
1. Copyright seeks to encourage and reward creative efforts by securing a fair return for an author's labor. Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). At the same time, `[f]rom the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright's very purpose, `[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . . .' Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 575 (1994).
2. `[P]rivate motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts . . . When technological change has rendered its literal terms ambiguous, the Copyright Act must be construed in light of this basic purpose.' Twentieth Century Music Corp., 422 U.S. at 156.
3. On the one hand, digital technology threatens the rights of copyright holders. Perfect digital copies of songs and movies can be publicly transmitted, without authorization, to thousands of people at little or no cost. On the other hand, technological control measures give copyright holders the capacity to limit nonpublic performances and threaten society's interests in the free flow of ideas, information, and commerce.
4. The authors of the DMCA never intended to create such a dramatic shift in the balance. As the report of the Committee of the Judiciary of the House of Representatives accompanying the DMCA stated: `[A]n individual [should] not be able to circumvent in order to gain unauthorized access to a work, but [should] be able to do so in order to make fair use of a work which he or she has acquired lawfully.' House Report 105-551, Part I, Section-by-Section Analysis of section 1201(a)(1).

The Implications of Intellectual Property and Copyright for Identity Politics

2008-03-03T11:20:00.007-06:00

Reading Boyle and Barlow, I couldn't help but think of Charles Stross, one of the most interesting and radical of the new generation of cyberpunk writers (a term that doesn't really fit the work but which I use here because Stross's fiction is partly influenced by the work of writers William Gibson and Vernor Vinge as well as singularity theorists like Ray Kurzweil and in fact shares some of their stylistic and thematic interests, but mostly because it communicates the exciting sense of radical newness of contemporary sci-fi as exemplified by Stross and others such as Richard K. Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, and Chris Moriarty). Reading this week's articles, I am especially reminded of Stross's best known work, the novel Accelerando, published in 2005 as the final iteration of a famous series of stories originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction between 2001 and 2004.

Obviously it's Boyle's reference to cyberpunk that made me think of this, because Stross uses the situations of the novel to carry the implied ethical problems of copyright and intellectual property specifically as they apply to human identity politics to their logical extreme. Check out the following passages from the book to see what I mean (by the way, if you want to read the whole novel, you might be interested in knowing that Stross has made it available in a number of electronic formats -- go to www.accelerando.org and scroll down a little):

"Let me get this straight. You're uploads--nervous system state vectors--from spiny lobsters? The Moravec operation; take a neuron, map its synapses, replace with microelectrodes that deliver identical outputs from a simulation of the nerve. Repeat for entire brain, until you've got a working map of it in your simulator. That right?"

"Da. Is-am assimilate expert system--use for self-awareness and contact with net at large--then hack into Moscow Windows NT User Group website. Am wanting to defect. Must repeat? Okay?"

Manfred winces. He feels sorry for the lobsters.... Awakening to consciousness in a human-dominated Internet, that must be terribly confusing! There are no points of reference in their ancestry, no biblical certainties in the new millennium that, stretching ahead, promises as much change as has happened since their Precambrian origin....

The lobsters are not the sleek, strongly superhuman intelligences of pre-singularity mythology: They're a dim-witted collective of huddling crustaceans. Before their discarnation, before they were uploaded one neuron at a time and injected into cyberspace, they swallowed their food whole, then chewed it in a chitin-lined stomach....

"Can you help us?" ask the lobsters.

"Let me think about it," says Manfred. He closes the dialogue window, opens his eyes again, and shakes his head. Someday he, too, is going to be a lobster, swimming around and waving his pincers in a cyberspace so confusingly elaborate that his uploaded identity is cryptozoic: a living fossil from the depths of geological time, when mass was dumb and space was unstructured.

This is just to introduce the concept of digital brain mapping and personality/memory upload that is central to the novel (as well as many others both by Stross and others). In a later scene, as the potential subjects of digital personality upload are discussed, so too are the legal and ethical implications of digitizing more complex organisms:

"The lobsters are sentient," Manfred persists. "What about those poor kittens? Don't they deserve minimal rights? How about you? .... The kittens are probably not going to be allowed to run. They're too fucking dangerous--they grow up into cats, solitary and highly efficient killing machines. With intelligence and no socialization they'll be too dangerous to have around. They're prisoners, Pam, raised to sentience only to discover they're under a permanent death sentence. How fair is that?"

"But they're only uploads." Pamela stares at him. "Software, right? You could reinstantiate them on another hardware platform, like, say, your Aineko [a robotic pet cat]. So the argument about killing them doesn't really apply, does it?"

"So? We're going to be uploading humans in a couple of years. I think we need to take a rain check on the utilitarian philosophy before it bites us on the cerebral cortex. Lobsters, kittens, humans--it's a slippery slope...."

[Another character, Bob Franklin, interjects at this point:]

"But they're just software! Software based on fucking lobsters, for God's sake! I'm not even sure they are sentient--I mean, they're, what, a ten-million-neuron network hooked up to a syntax engine and a crappy knowledge base? What kind of basis for intelligence is that?"

Manfred's finger jabs out. "That's what they'll say about you, Bob. Do it. Do it or don't even think about uploading out of meatspace when your body packs in, because your life won't be worth living. The precedent you set here determines how things are done tomorrow.... Some kinds of intellectual land grab just shouldn't be allowed."

"Lobsters--" Franklin shakes his head. "Lobsters, cats. You're serious, aren't you? You think they should be treated as human-equivalent?"

"It's not so much that they should be treated as human-equivalent, as that if they aren't treated as people, it's quite possible that other uploaded beings won't be treated as people either...."

It's worth mentioning that the future being imagined here is not decades or centuries from now, but years. Now I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should take this as an immediately cautionary tale (though there are some out there who would)--what I'm interested in is the connection to Boyle. The future Stross imagines here foregrounds the issues Boyle addresses in his article, particularly the increasingly difficult problem of defining the concept of "information" itself in a culture where information is a highly valuable commodity. As Boyle makes clear, it seems our conceptions both of what constitutes information and of how information is to be legally handled become highly problematic when we are unable to differentiate anymore between electronic and genetic information--it's all just code. For Stross, the inevitable end-point of this revolution (which theorists like Kurzweil posit is coming) is that human identity itself becomes more information. The ethical and legal implications are both obvious and frightening. I don't have any answers or even, really, any insights, but it sure is fun to think about, particularly since these ideas have become so central to contemporary sci-fi, from Accelerando to the Sci-Fi Channel's reinvention of Battlestar Galactica (which reimagines the robotic Cylons of the hokey '70s show as fanatically monotheistic cybernetic clones with the ability to upload and download their consciousnesses, personalities, and memories into newly engineered biomechanical bodies).

Oh, and try assigning Accelerando as a reading in a freshman composition class. You'll have all sorts of fun watching your students' heads explode.

Barlow Reading Response

2008-03-01T21:48:00.003-06:00

Barlow begins his discussion of the economy of ideas, particularly in the digital age, with a question that defines the heart of the issue "If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it?" (1). In the transition from complete reliance on the printed word, with Gutenburg as a reference point, Barlow points out that we have progressed from viewing information as a hard to attain commodity to something taken for granted and exchanged so freely that it becomes difficult to control either the actual movement of information or the value that any work or idea carries. In an effort to control and protect the movement of ideas and their original authors, Barlow sees a level of control that threatens to hinder the actual productions and dissemination of information itself.

With the roots of copyright law in a time when the internet was far from fathomable, the initial intent of a law to protect an author's rights to their work was focused on something other than profit, an aspect of current copyright law that one would be hard pressed to exclude. Yet Barlow suggests that "It may well be that when the current system of intellectual property law has collapsed, as seems inevitable, that no new legal structure will arise in its place" (5). In arguing that our entire understanding of the meaning of information and the social and legal order that surrounds it must be shifted in light of new technology, Barlow (and his contemporaries) look to reexamine the foundation of intellectual property and their place in a digital society.

The inability of an author to control the "finished" product of their work leaves those who have a more economic stake in controlling their work (and the work of others) relatively resistant to accepting a less structured idea of ownership. In addressing this issue, Barlow points out the less tangible (but more valid) ways that the value of information can be measured. Rather than placing standard values on fixed information, Barlow argues that information's worth is based on its relationship with its audience, proximity to the information and the timeliness of it all factor in to more adaptable concepts of worth in this more modern economic system.

At the base of Barlow's ideas about the changing face of intellectual property and information is a shift towards a more ethics fueled establishment and away from one so severely rooted in law and enforcement. Citing consistent software sales despite increasingly available free versions of software, Barlow argues that people buy those things that become essential to their work and lives. When information, or a program, become important to someone's productivity they look for the aspects of that application that can only come through purchasing the support, updates, etc...

In breaking down the various changes that come with the digital age, Barlow asserts that even semantic concepts of information must change. In shifting our thinking from a noun to a verb, "information" becomes something that is harder to actually own, becoming rooted in need and relationship rather than possession and control.

Ethics or Fear

2008-03-01T17:34:00.002-06:00

Here is a really interesting thread about banjoists and copyright.

In Barlow's 1994 essay, he discusses how with the "third wave" of economic development, in which information replaces land and other tangible items as the mainstay of our economy, a new system of intellectual property protection is needed to replace the now-defunct copyright laws.

Barlow makes an interesting argument in both his 1994 and 2000 essays. He claims that as we move further and further away from effective lawful control of the internet, "ethics are going to make a major comeback."

I find Barlow's argument compelling, and I've personally witnessed its application, but I'm wondering if we are really there yet. In this post, "Musicians Censoring Themselves," isn't it fear that keeps the banjoists from sharing not only musical notation but also personal knowledge? How much of the lack of sharing here is based on ethics and how much on fear of being attacked by the law? Interesting stuff, considering our constitution's copyright law is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Art."

I like comics; comics are good.

2008-02-26T19:12:00.004-06:00

Hi.

If I wasn't already taking on the man in my presentation/paper, I'd seriously be considering using one or both of these blogs as objects for rhetorical analysis. Even if you already have your future plans figured out in this class, you might at least get a laugh out of them.

We'll probably talk next week about the semantics and differences between sampling, remixing, et cetera, so maybe then you can help me figure out how to best describe these things:

Marmaduke Explained [in 500 words or less]

Marmaduke Explained is pretty much like it sounds. The author, Joe Mathlete, offers pithy explanations for the comic semi-regularly. The latest one is really great.

Garfield Minus Garfield

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?" [so say the site's creator--not necessarily the opinion of your humble poster]

Here we have two blogs devoted to comics that necessarily depend on the use of copyrighted material. In the first case, the author is adding to the original content by way of paraphrasing text or otherwise describing images. In the second, the author is merely removing an element [arguably the "heart" of the piece] to make something new. In my view, these are both creative and original in a sense, yet it is pretty much assured that they are using material without permission of the author/copyright holder.

FYI, be careful about passing on M.E. to the kids, please. They can get a bit naughty.