Authorship and Ownership
In his introduction to “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts?” composed for our textbook, Tharon Howard notes that despite the legislation passed since the publication of his article in 1996, his piece remains relevant. Howard points to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Copyright Term Extension Act, and the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act as three updates to U.S. copyright law; however, despite this newer legislation, “the fundamental principles” of copyright law remain in effect (397).
What strikes me about this piece is both how little, and how much, has changed since “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts” was published. Two aspects of the article, in particular, stand out: the continued relevance of the three theories of ownership outlined at the beginning of the text and the importance of intellectual property in technical communication pedagogy.
Questions of ownership and copyright are intimately related to questions of authorship. As Howard explains, three theories of textual ownership inform current copyright law. The first two involve a negotiation between the author and the public’s rights to texts; the author owns her work because it is her creation, and the public owns works because knowledge and truth are not the property of the individual. The third approach follows from the second, but it is more complex. Because knowledge is a social construction, it follows that “ . . . a text is a product of the community the writer inhabits, and that the text must therefore be communal, rather than individual property” (400). Howard traces the historical development of these three approaches to textual ownership, noting that copyright law has its roots as a system of privilege and not a right (400) and in the state’s attempt to censor certain kinds of texts (401).
I believe we can see these three theories at work in recent controversies surrounding proposed copyright law, and especially in digital contexts. SOPA and PIPA represent two attempts to privilege the author as sole ownership approach, with content providers (represented by the MPAA and RIAA) as “authors” of texts. The backlash against the legislation demonstrates a move toward the second and third theories of ownership, a move we can see in organizations like Creative Commons and, taken to the extreme, in the wide availability of torrents of copyrighted material.
As Howard suggests, “For most people, including a large number of practicing professional writers and professional writing teachers, the issue of intellectual property isn’t something they usually consider to be problematic” (398). Since “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts?” was published, a number of rhet/comp and technical communication scholars have interrogated intellectual property in digital environments; our field recognizes that intellectual property is problematic and worthy of our attention in the classroom, in the workplace, and in our personal lives.
For this reason, I believe Howard’s call for understanding intellectual property as a component of digital literacy (399) is crucial. Last semester, I devoted a day to intellectual property issues in ENGL 101; we watched part of a TED talk by Lawrence Lessig, a video about SOPA, and discussed the Wikipedia blackout. I asked students to compose a short reflection about their own views on authorship and ownership. It was a (mostly) successful day, and I hope to do something similar in ENGL 305 this semester. The technical communication textbook I use devotes two pages to copyright law and a few tips on ensuring that you don’t violate it. I don’t think these pages are particularly useful to students, however.
Copyright law doesn’t have to be a dry topic. By connecting it to students’ personal lives, I hope to show how the national discussion surrounding intellectual property is relevant to their lives at home, at school, and in the workplace, and to their roles as consumers, students, and writers.
Howard, Tharon W. “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts?” Central Works in Technical Communication. Ed. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 397-408. Print.