English Online

Bob Logie – Pirates, Peers, & Persuasion

Summary: Logie offers a history of the recent debates over Peer-To-Peer technologies by discussing the rhetoric deployed. Rather than offering chapter-by-chapter summary of Logie’s argument, we feel it is important to document that the book is comprised of a collection of similarly structured essays. As such, a discussion of Logie’s methodology will yield an adequate understanding of his argument. Each chapter documents the specific history of a metaphor used in describing or explaining the Peer-To-Peer movement. The various metaphors explored are “hackers”, “theft”, “piracy”, “sharing”, and “combat.” In each case, Logie documents the history of the term itself, then explains the specific deployment of the term in the debate, and finally concludes with an example of the rhetoric of the debates itself. Often times these cases seem loosely connected to the term being analyzed, but, nonetheless, these examples offer longer discussions of Logie’s obvious commitment to copyright reform.

Discussion Questions:

• What do we think about Logie’s decision to move in parallel through the metaphors, rather than writing a single narrative or some other strategy?
• What are the larger social ramifications of Logie’s argument?
• Who’s the audience for this work?

Bill Marsh – Turnitin.com and the scriptural enterprise of plagiarism detection

Summary: Marsh’s essay examines the ways in which Turnitin.com represents and reifies certain discursive practices surrounding “plagiarism”—namely, that plagiarism is a transgressive practice which undermines a masculine authorial paradigm. He uses the website’s example “originality reports” and “ritual recoding” practices to situate Turnitin.com as a purveyor of remediated ideas about authorship and originality. Marsh further argues that Turnitin.com commodifies student writing by selling it back to the institution/instructor with markups which value a cultural and disciplinary emphasis on sole authorship.

Discussion Questions:

• What value (if any) do products like Turnitin.com bring to pedagogy?
• Marsh focuses largely on the website’s presentation of the service rather than the actual workings of Turnitin.com. Would an interrogation of the mechanisms of Turnitin.com (for example, running through one of our papers, then examining the ways in which the text gets marked up) result in a different critique?
• If we adopt a “sampling” or “filesharing” ethic of plagiarism, as other authors have suggested, is there room for a product like Turnitin.com? How else might we evaluate “originality?”
• Do we buy Marsh’s feminist critique of Turnitin.com?

Mickey Hess – Was Foucault a plagiarist? Hip-hop sampling and academic citation

Summary: Hess’s article centers around questions of plagiarism in the postmodern era, following post-structural deconstruction of notions of authorship. Starting with a discussion of Foucault’s citation of Marx (without the official mark of a citation), Hess moves into a discussion of sampling in hip-hop production. By highlighting the manner in which producers manipulate samples to produce music, Hess shows the way that sampling itself engages in a conversation with the material being sampled. In doing so, Hess shows how sampling should not be equated with plagiarism and highlights ways that students can be more fruitfully instructed in how to work with materials they are citing in their papers.

Discussion Questions:

• Do we feel that this argument is overly familiar? Is there anything else we could say about hip-hop?
• I would also ask the question from the title: Was Foucault a plagiarist?
• Are there other ways to make this point? Why hip-hop?

Jessica Reyman – Copyright, Distance Education, and the TEACH Act: Implications for Teaching Writing

Summary: Reyman examines the “Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act” and its implications for pedagogy in general and composition in particular. Noting the specific problems the TEACH Act causes for distance education, Reyman outlines three issues for writing teachers:

• TEACH does not account for the range of teaching activities that occurs in online writing curricula (36)
• The stipulations of the Act do not allow the same level of academic freedom for instructors selecting materials and designing online courses as those teaching face-to-face (37)
• The Act raises concerns about the increase in restriction by copyright owners over materials and decreased opportunities for educational use (37)

Reyman argues that the TEACH Act works to undermine current pedagogical practices which challenge traditional, proprietary notions of authorship.

Discussion Questions:

• After reading this article (and Logie’s discussion of the TEACH Act), are you considering any changes to your pedagogical practices?
• From the article: “What do the concepts of ‘mediation,’ ‘integration,’ and ‘class session’ mean in the context of our writing courses?” (42)

Lunsford and West – Intellectual Property and Composition Studies

Summary: Lunsford and West outline the intellectual property debate as it pertains to composition, arguing that a shift away from public users and toward “information proprietors” has dominated copyright policy. They discuss challenges to the dominant intellectual property paradigm, focusing on theoretical, scientific, and technological challenges in particular. Finally, Lunsford and West diagnose the field of composition’s complicity in the tightening of intellectual property restrictions, noting that composition’s focus on authorship and authority contributes to notions of information ownership. They call for composition teachers to reimagine both the space of the classroom and “authorship,” arguing for “the creation of intellectual property as a temporary appropriation of linguistic territory from the cultural commons, an appropriation meant to enrich not only the ‘creator/s’ but the public domain as well.” (400)

Discussion Questions:

• Reyman and Logie both specifically refer to Lunsford and West’s call for increased awareness of copyright issues in the composition discipline. How do the other essays we read this week also take up the call (do they)?
• Given both the potential for collaboration the Internet brings and the restrictions imposed by the TEACH Act and other copyright laws, how can we rethink our notions of authorship?